- AT&T's (T +0.9%) WarnerMedia chief John Stankey had a lot to say in a discussion with Richard Plepler, chief of AT&T's new acquisition HBO -- but foretelling a "tough year" ahead doesn't necessarily mean the service as we know it will be steamrolled, Recode notes.
- While Stankey did highlight the need to get more eyeballs -- the better to monetize them and compete with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and particularly Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), which Stankey name-checked -- he also told Plepler that the company wanted HBO to have autonomy and resources to grow.
- "You will have a lot of autonomy," he told HBO employees. "You’ll be asked to do more of what you already do very well ... I don’t think it’s status quo. We need more. And in order for you to do more, you’re going to have to have the latitude, the freedom and the resources to be able to go about doing what you all do very well."
- "We need hours a day. It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day," Stankey said in one of many comments aimed at Facebook. "You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes."
- The one certainty is that it looks like HBO will get bigger, with the corresponding increase in content budget. Stankey says there will be a select number of platforms with direct consumer relationships, but he doesn't know how many. "It’s not going to be 10, it probably won’t be two. Now, is it going to be eight, six or four? I don’t know, but if it’s four we need to be one of the four. If it’s six, we need to be one of the six."
- Now read: Facebook: Cambridge Bears, Round 2
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