David Eilenberg, who joined Roku last April to lead the streaming company’s original programming, has been named head of content, Deadline confirmed.
Eilenberg is well known in creative circles and has spent his career as an executive at Turner and Mark Burnett’s company ITV. With his boost, VP of programming Rob Holmes, who spent about six years at the company and spearheaded initiatives such as the launch of the Roku channel and the acquisition of shows from Quibi, left the company.
The moves are the first significant C-suite moves since former Fox and AMC Networks CEO Charlie Collier became Roku Media’s president last year.
Eilenberg’s raise will bring content across Roku Originals and Roku Studios under one roof. Roku as a company faces a weak advertising market and overall financial constraints as it looks to continue to ramp up original content. Last November, the company announced that it would cut 200 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce. While Roku remains an important streaming gatekeeper in the US, a number of key investors and influential voices on Wall Street have expressed skepticism about the company’s prospects. The stock, which was a pandemic darling during the upstream boom, has fallen more than 80% in 2022.
Unlike competitors in subscription streaming, Roku makes its own content available for free. It has put the Roku Channel, a hub for on-demand movie and TV titles and FAST channels, at the center of its content efforts and gets the majority of its revenue from advertising. While the number represents a fraction of what Netflix and other SVOD players spend, reports that Roku was on track to spend $1 billion on content last year drew a lot of attention. At CES earlier this month, however, Roku said it reached 70 million active accounts by the end of last year, with total streaming hours up 19% in 2021.
Holmes joined Roku in 2017 after working in advanced advertising for Comcast and in strategic planning and development for NBCUniversal.
Lynette Rice contributed to this report.
Writer: father Hayes
Source: Deadline
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