Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes is eating a little crow.
The media executive, whose empire includes pay-TV giant HBO, famously dissed Reed Hastings’ Netflix back in 2010, saying the streaming video service was over-hyped and, despite its meteoric growth, would not amount to much.
“It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world,” Bewkes boasted at the time.
Well, it’s not like Albanian tanks are rolling up Bewkes’ driveway, but last quarter Netflix’s subscriber revenue was greater than HBO’s for the first time ever.
Hastings, locked in a long-running, mostly tongue-in-cheek battle with Bewkes, couldn’t let the occasion pass without tweaking his rival.
“Minor milestone,” Hastings, CEO of the $7.99-a-month service, wrote Wednesday on the company’s Facebook page, “last quarter we passed HBO in subscriber revenue ($1.146B vs $1.141B).”
Just two years ago, HBO had nearly double Netflix’s subscriber revenue.
Hastings, in his post, readily admits Bewkes’ HBO is still tops by several other measures.
“They still kick our ass in profits and Emmys, but we are making progress. HBO rocks, and we are honored to be in the same league,” he added.
Netflix doesn’t have to divvy up its revenue the way HBO does with cable distributors.
Netflix last month claimed 36 million subscribers in the US. HBO, including sister channel Cinemax, had 43 million in the US at the end of last year.