Media industry tongues are still wagging over AT&T executive John Stankey’s June 19 town hall meeting with HBO employees, in which he discussed the telco-giant’s plans for the network.
As first reported by the New York Times, which got its hands on an audio recording of the event, Stankey came off like a bull in a china shop, seemingly admonishing HBOers they were in for a “tough year” to meet AT&T’s goal of making the boutique network “bigger and broader,” in the Times’ characterization, by cranking out subtantially more content to better compete with over-the-top services like Netflix.
“We need hours a day,” the Times quoted Stankey saying. “It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.”
The goal, he said, was more engagement. Read More »