It was supposed to be another one of those glittery New York nights for Richard Plepler, with a screening of a new HBO documentary followed by a dinner party at Porter House, a spacious steak restaurant with a view of Central Park. But Mr. Plepler, the HBO chief executive who announced his resignation on Thursday, was not among the roughly 200 filmmakers, screenwriters, journalists and HBO employees who filed in at around 9:30.

As the guests made their way to their tables, a few cast glances at a conspicuous sign — a literal sign — of what had happened. There, at a front-and-center table set with glowing candles, bouquets of yellow roses and untouched salads, was a name card that read RICHARD PLEPLER.

This was the power table. Every seat was empty.

Mr. Plepler, an urbane alpha-executive at ease among writers and politicians, had decided that the network where he had spent 27 years — the last six as its top boss — was no longer the place for him. He plans to stay at the company another month or so, likely through the final premiere of “Game of Thrones,” which is entering its last season, at Radio City Music Hall in April.

At some point after AT&T had absorbed HBO as part of its $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner last year, Mr. Plepler had sensed that his ability to run his own shop with his usual swaggering independence was not going to fly under his Dallas-based bosses, two people with knowledge of his thinking said.

Last month the telecommunications company entered into talks with Robert Greenblatt, the former chairman of NBC entertainment, for a high-level position at Warner Media, the media division of AT&T that includes TBS, TNT, CNN and HBO. Mr. Greenblatt has worked in premium cable before, having been in charge of entertainment at Showtime during its “Dexter” and “Weeds” period, from 2003 to 2010.

Lavish parties and premieres — a coin of the realm in Los Angeles and New York — were a hallmark of Mr. Plepler’s tenure. There were the big-budget red-carpet premieres for “Game of Thrones” and more intimate dinners for the prestige documentaries. And while the trappings were the same as usual on Thursday night at Porter House, the mood was more like that of a wake. The Plepler regime was done; and the AT&T team, with its ambition of bundling HBO into its main business, was ascendant.

At Porter House, Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair, and the sort of establishment figure who tended to stay close to Mr. Plepler’s side, surveyed the scene. “If you look around this room, they worship him,” he said of the absent executive’s staff.

Like others in the intersecting media and entertainment circles of Manhattan and Hollywood, Mr. Carter said that the status quo would not hold, now that AT&T has signaled that, for the time being, it was not going to operate the network in a hands-off manner.

“Richard will be mourned by the people here, and HBO will change,” Mr. Carter said. “Don’t underestimate the effect this will have.”

The filmmaker Alex Gibney — whose latest work, “The Inventor,” about the failure of the much-hyped medical start-up Theranos, was the documentary being feted — described Mr. Plepler as a “great impresario” as he spoke of him in the past tense.

“It wasn’t just showbiz with Richard,” Mr. Gibney said at Porter House. “It’s sort of like: How do you trumpet the horn in a way that lets people know that this is important, that you should watch, and attention must be paid? That’s what Richard was great at. He was also great at nurturing talent. I mean, I loved him for that.”

In interviews on Friday, some producers and television executives cautioned that the departure of an executive beloved by many may not have such a dramatic effect on HBO. Mr. Plepler, they noted, did not invent HBO’s culture or its programming philosophy. And however much he made himself the public face of HBO, the network, which wins scores of Emmys every year and makes $2 billion in profit, will go forward.

Several high-profile projects that have already gotten the green light — including a “Game of Thrones” prequel, a science fiction series from the heavyweight producer-director J.J. Abrams and a comic-book adaptation from the TV auteur Damon Lindelof — are on their way.

The tumult at Warner Media is a result of the widespread notion that a boutique premium cable channel may not represent the future in an industry upended by the deep-pocketed digital companies Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Apple, which have forced Hollywood to sell shows and films directly to consumers.

The departure of one independent-minded executive amounts to a small event in a larger drama that has forced traditional media and entertainment companies to rethink how they do business. As part of this ongoing story, Comcast and The Walt Disney Company engaged in a bidding war last year to win the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, 21st Century Fox. This duel of corporate giants was really a battle for survival, with both companies realizing the need for a streaming service and content arsenal that would allow them to fend off new rivals. Disney eventually won out, at a price of $71.3 billion, but Comcast still has plans for a streaming service of its own.

When AT&T announced its acquisition of Time Warner, the telecommunications company described plans to marry its voluminous subscriber data with Time Warner’s millions of viewers to sell targeted advertising, which fetches higher rates than ads that reach a generic assortment of consumers. The company also said it would tap its Warner Media properties — HBO, Turner Broadcasting and the Warner Bros. movie studio — to generate new forms of video for mobile devices.

A clue about a possible strategy became public in 2017, when Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T, said at a conference: “It will cause Plepler at HBO to panic when I say this, but can you begin to think about things like ‘Game of Thrones,’ as an example, where, in a mobile environment, a 60-minute episode may not be the best experience? Should you think about 20-minute episodes?”

Three people at AT&T, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions, said that the company believes a shift in strategy requires new leadership at Warner Media’s networks. In addition to the departure of Mr. Plepler, David Levy, the president of the Turner division, announced on Friday that he was stepping down after 32 years at the company. AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner also meant consolidating operations across various departments, such as legal, accounting and human resources.

John Stankey, who became the chief executive of Warner Media at the time of the merger, has occasionally irked executives because of his sometimes opaque communication style, according to four people familiar with the company. When Mr. Stankey announced the leadership team for Warner Media’s streaming business, some of the top leaders at the business units were not aware of the appointments until the news release hit the wires, the people said.

Mr. Stankey, who declined to comment for this article, has changed course in recent months, sending out regular communiqués. But how budgets may change is still a question for many divisions, the people said.

Warner Media will likely not be getting a spending boost for at least another year. AT&T’s top priority is tackling its debt load of $171 billion, much more than most public companies carry. The company borrowed $40 billion to finance the Time Warner acquisition, and it pays out a dividend that costs $14 billion a year.

Mr. Stephenson, the chief executive, has said the company will easily pay off about $30 billion of the debt from its profits, along with the sale of some assets. The company has been talking to The Walt Disney Company about selling its 10 percent stake in the streaming service Hulu, which could fetch nearly $1 billion. The company also owns extensive real estate that could be put up for sale.

The acquisition of Time Warner was a way for AT&T to set itself apart from Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. Those major cellular service providers have been locked in a price war for years. Most people in the United States already pay for mobile service, and the wireless carriers have had to lower prices to steal customers away from one another. That has reduced profits and encouraged them to merge with rivals or venture into new territories.

The addition of Time Warner allows AT&T to offer products like HBO and other video services, either at discounted rates or as part of a package, to keep customers from defecting.

In June, right after AT&T closed its purchase of Warner Media, Mr. Stankey told HBO employees that the network would have to produce more shows and films, and that it should keep in mind that this content should keep eyes on screens for longer periods of time.

That tension — between HBO’s identity as a place for carefully crafted series and AT&T’s ambitions — was a point of discussion at the Porter House party.

“You understand that things have to change,” Mr. Gibney, the documentary filmmaker, said. “The part that I’m concerned about is that the ability to be a curator of really high-quality stuff seems not to be as important.”

And what will become of the high-priced parties?

Mr. Carter, the former Vanity Fair editor as well as a producer of Mr. Gibney’s new documentary, was referring to Mr. Plepler when he spoke of the value of such gatherings. “Richard calls them halo events,” he said. “They’re very important. If someone makes a film with HBO, they know it’s going to get noticed, and they feel like they’re being acknowledged.”

After the guests had finished their steaks and three-berry shortcake desserts, the room began to empty out. At 11:33 p.m., a waiter in a white jacket made his final rounds. He barely broke stride as he swooped in and removed Mr. Plepler’s name card.

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