“Longtime HBO communications head Quentin Schaffer is stepping down from his post next month after 39 years as a key architect of HBO’s premium TV brand,” writes Cynthia Littleton, Variety’s business editor.

Quentin Schaffer (courtesy HBO)

“Schaffer will exit as HBO’s executive VP of corporate communications next month, after steering HBO through one last Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills,” the story says, adding, “He is the latest in a string of departures of long-serving executives at HBO. It comes five months after HBO’s new parent company, AT&T’s WarnerMedia, shook up the status quo at the company with the appointment of Bob Greenblatt as content chief overseeing HBO, Turner’s entertainment networks and the HBO Max direct to consumer platform coming next year from WarnerMedia. Greenblatt in turn recruited his own corporate communications chief in ABC alum Kevin Brockman as executive VP of global communications for WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct-To-Consumer.”

Variety notes that, “Based in New York, Schaffer is a well-loved figure on both coasts at HBO. He joined the company as a senior publicist in 1980, which gave him a front row seat to the wave of industry-changing innovations that HBO unleashed starting in the late 1980s. He helped steer publicity and Emmy campaigns for such landmark HBO series as ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘The Wire,’ ‘Big Little Lies’ and ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.’

To read more about this story please click here, which will take you to Littleton’s full piece.