Do you folks love him or hate him? https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/03/john-stankey-att-coo/
He's career AT&T. He's had a bit of a rough go at running a media company and he doesn't seem to get diversity. He was put into place over WarnerMedia right after the merger. It has been a chaotic mess, but it's unclear how much better a merger and restructuring like this could go - this is the first one I have gone through. He has a rap as a bit of a hard ass, but I imagine that's most CEOs. He did preside over the creation of DirecTV Now, I think, which doesn't bode well. So far it's hard to tell. He isn't the inspirational leader we had in Richard Plepler, so you aren't likely to see a lot of "fuck yeah, that Stankey guy" in here. Time will tell. A lot of folks complain about him in our HBO lounge, but I expect 20% of the complaints are about things that actually hit his radar.
It's important not to understate the diversity thing. He got off on the wrong foot with the company right away on that one. One of the execs at CNN stood up in his first town hall with his new management team and made the observation that it was mostly white men with one non-white man and asked if he was thinking about how to correct that. He basically Elmer Fudded his answer and said everything but, "binders full of women". He's done some repairing since then and hired a dedicated diversity/inclusion exec but we haven't heard anything about that person since, that I know of. The non-white gentleman helped him recover a bit and said some of the things you'd expect from a person being interested in inclusion. Incidentally, that non-white gentleman on stage had a story about improper use of his office to get sexual favors from actresses released *during the town hall* for which he was eventually fired.
He's a culture killer in favor or a nickel and dime bottom line. The Time Warner acquisition isn't the first instance of this.
He's put the same people in charge of making DirectTV Now such an amazing success also in charge of the Warner Media project. So I guess, he's utterly incapable of learning any lessons. But Randall likes him. So if your metric is "does a guy who donates a ton of money to Trump like Stankey" - youd have to give him kudos for that.
The team he assigned totally dismantled HBO. Apparently Turner did a much better job. I think that move will be fatal for HBO Max but I might be mistaken.
Netflix, Disney Plus....I don’t see HBO Max as a competitor. But then I have to see the library list first.
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Do the Stankey leg