Doug is an independent advisor and consultant and senior advisor for Boston Consulting Group. He writes The Mediator, which is widely read and circulated in the industry. Influential posts include One Clear Casualty of the Streaming Wars: Profit, which correctly predicted in 2020 that the transition to streaming would be far more painful for the media conglomerates than expected. Forget Peak TV, Here Comes Infinite TV, written in January 2023, laid out the risk that several technologies, including AI, are on track to disrupt high-quality content creation, a view that has since become mainstream.
From 2021-2022, Doug was the Chief Financial Officer and a Managing Member of Pugilist Capital LLC, an investment firm formed with the purpose of acquiring media and media-adjacent technology businesses.
From 2015 to 2018, he was EVP and Chief Strategy Officer at Turner, a division of WarnerMedia, and member of the Executive Committee. In this role, he headed the Corporate and Data Strategy functions (including Research), with responsibility for extending Turner’s competitive position and developing the tools, platforms and processes to enable data-informed decision making throughout the organization.
Prior to that position, Shapiro was the SVP of International and Corporate Strategy at Time Warner Inc. In this role, he helped drive Time Warner’s global strategy and business development initiatives across the company’s diverse line of media businesses, with a focus on coordinating strategy among the Time Warner operating divisions.
From 2008 to 2013, he headed the Time Warner Investor Relations group, overseeing the development and execution of the company’s investor relations initiatives, formulating investor messaging and serving as the primary contact for Time Warner with the investment community. Over that time, he oversaw all investor communications around the divestitures of AOL, Time Warner Cable and Time Inc. and the rapidly shifting TV landscape, including the rise of over-the-top video competitors. During his tenure, Time Warner’s Investor Relations group was named as one of the top IR groups in Media several times by Institutional Investor magazine. Shapiro also served as a Board Director for Central and Eastern European Media Enterprises from 2014 to 2018.
Before joining Time Warner in 2007, Shapiro was a senior analyst at Banc of America Securities (B of A) from 1999 to 2007. He covered the Cable and Satellite TV and Media Conglomerate sectors and was the head of the Media and Telecommunications research team. Prior to B of A, he was a senior analyst at Deutsche Banc Securities. He was ranked as one of the top Cable and Satellite analysts by Institutional Investor magazine each year from 1997 to 2006 (the last year he was eligible for voting).
Shapiro received a B.A. degree in economics from the University of Michigan. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.