AT&T Executive Taking Over HBO and CNN Promises a Hands-Off Approach

Have you met with Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN?

Yes, and I’m very excited that Jeff has agreed he’s going to spend time with me and teach me the things that I didn’t grow up with and get me deeper in some of the knowledge of how media and the news cycles work. And I’m really anxious to get involved with that. I think we’re going to have a great working relationship.

What about investment? HBO spends about $2.5 billion, for example, to Netflix’s $8 billion. Hulu already spends about $2.5 billion annually. Does ATT plan to invest more in HBO?

I think HBO is a tremendous brand. I think they’ve done a phenomenal job. What I’ve learned about it during the pendency of this transaction, I think they’ve got a funnel and an opportunity to do even more. And I’m very excited personally about opening up those opportunities for them to pursue it and build more audience and more engagement. Because at the end of the day, we want our technology and we want our content to drive more customer engagement. If we have the opportunity to do that by investing we are going to invest to make that happen.

Does that mean more streaming services from HBO?

Whether it’s HBO or Turner or CNN or any other assets, over time you have to have direct relationship with the consumer where you can gauge how many minutes, or how many hours, you’re getting with that end user. And that is the North Star we’re following here.

I think the dynamic is: How do you get more engagement with the customer where you own a degree of that relationship, and you understand what the customer is doing, and you have the benefit of the data they bring to that equation? And you drive that engagement by putting more and engaging content in front of them.

And it sounds like you plan to use data as a way to inform programming decisions at Turner and HBO?

Nothing replaces the creative process, and having the best creative minds and the best ideas.

But data can inform issues like, how do you bundle and aggregate content? Who and how do you choose to distribute it to? How do you find monetization models where maybe instead of charging the customer directly through subscriptions or increasing rates, you can do it through advertising monetization? How do you learn about what kind of content customers are more passionate about that they burn through faster and therefore you want to start the right kind of relationships with creative talent that can build that kind of content? Data can help you be better, but it doesn’t replace a creative process and the value of creative assets.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/media/warnermedia-john-stankey-time-warner.html?partner=rss&emc=rss