Mr. Stankey described a future in which HBO would substantially increase its subscriber base and the number of hours that viewers spend watching its shows. To pull it off, the network will have to come up with more content, transforming itself from a boutique operation, with a focus on its signature Sunday night lineup, into something bigger and broader.

HBO focuses on quality, spending millions on making a project right. When I saw HBO picked up the rights to make Game of Thrones, I was excited because I expected it would be high quality and got better than I expected. When I saw Auckland File Studios was making The Shannara Chronicles, I was disappointed because I did not expect high quality. It was so bad MTV dumped it to a lower profile network. The same as with Legend of the Seeker (based on The Sword of Truth), which was pretty bad. Both were other networks trying to capture the magic of GoT. Sony and Amazon Studios are co-developing a Wheel of Time series, and I have been pretty happy with what Amazon Studios has put out there.

Netflix is much more hit-and-miss as some things I like and other are meh. I rather liked the way South Park mocked N by having the kids trying to sell them on a hundred superhero movies because N will buy anything. Having HBO trying to be Netflix bothers me because I will always make sure to watch the HBO shows I am interested in watching. I often have conversations with people excited about their shows. Fewer people talk about Netflix shows and when they do, it is usually about how they were disappointed in it being not as good as they expected.

AT&T having HBO be more like Netflix means sacrificing quality to achieve quantity. Sure, this executive wants to have both, but to make that happen, AT&T better be prepared to heavily invest so much money into HBO that it is a huge money sink for them. My guess is that is not acceptable. So, RIP HBO.