HBO CEO Throws a Punch – Slams Netflix’s Library of Original Content, “More is not better, only better is better”

Anyone who has a Netflix account, or is at least borrowing someone else’s password to access a Netflix account has seen firsthand as the library has gotten smaller, replaced with hundreds of Netflix originals.

The service has even announced intentions to spend somewhere around $7 billion on original content in the next year, likely focusing heavily on new original content. This of course decreases the amount of money they have to spend on third party content, resulting in a decrease in total title count.

HBO’s CEO Richard Plepler apparently isn’t a big fan of all that Netflix content, stating he much prefers a smaller but higher quality offering, as seen on HBO.

“More is not better, only better is better,” Plepler told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Tuesday. “It is very hard to create outstanding content, and we think we have a good record of doing that very very well. We’re not trying to create the most, we’re trying to create excellence across our categories — and we have more than the resources necessary to do that.”

There’s two things going on here that are interesting.

Yes, HBO definitely holds the crown with ‘Game of Thrones’ likely being a once-in-a-generation show, and other series like Westworld and The Deuce seem to be darlings of both the press and their growing fan bases. But they have plenty of their own stinkers too, with Vinyl being cancelled after one season, and lots of “niche” dramedy that always seems to struggle to find an audience. They even pulled the plug on ‘The Brink’ after one season, even though renewal had already been announced.

The other thing is that Netflix is outpacing ALL the networks and streaming services by a large margin. There’s no doubt that the more content they produce, eventually they’ll hit on some winners. The lightning clip they’re releasing content at might be hard to keep up with, but it makes it a lot easier to stay a Netflix subscriber when compared to HBO, that has a severe seasonality calendar.

What are your thoughts? If you had to pick just HBO or just Netflix, what would you choose? Let us know in the comments below.