If you want a higher-level executive position in the business of media and technology, you must be able to respond to tough questions from equity analysts in a way that doesn't deliver a straightforward answer, but nonetheless offers something vaguely provocative and which keeps the discussion moving slooowly forward. They won't let you on an earnings call without that skill. 

As for Andy Forssell, executive VP and general manager of HBO Max, he was asked on Twitter by prominent Lightshed Partners principal Rich Greenfield why HBO Max is encouraging customers to pay $149.99 for a full year of service by offering four free movie tickets for WarnerMedia's upcoming reboot of The Matrix.

Since the full-year offer represents a 16% discount from the monthly $14.99 price of ad-free HBO Max, Greenfield wondered if WarnerMedia and HBO Max are worried about churn. 

Forssell, a grizzled veteran who's logged plenty of hours over center, responded Wednesday morning, acknowledging that it's a "challenge" for "external observers" like Greenfield--and the rest of us!--to understand the machinations behind HBO Max's go-to-market strategy.

And frankly, it still is. 

"We're constantly doing many tests in parallel (volume would surprise you) of so many kinds of offers--really wide ranging, otherwise you don't learn fast enough or broadly enough," Forssell tweeted back, before asking Greenfield if he took advantage of the price discount. (He said he did.)

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As anyone who reads the day's top headlines will tell you, ending long entanglements can be a bloody affair. 

And WarnerMedia is finding that out the hard way with its ongoing extrication of HBO from Amazon Channels, a departure HBO chief Andy Forssell concedes will cost the premium programmer around 5 million subscribers in the near term. Forssell said HBO will still meet its full 2021 target of around 70 million total subscribers worldwide across IP and linear. But it might come up a little short on third-quarter customer growth results, however. 

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell told Bloomberg. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

For the last half of the past decade, HBO was the biggest seller in the Amazon Channels smorgasbord, which disaggregates various subscription video services (Starz and Acorn TV, also among them) into a unified Amazon Prime Video app experience with centralized billing. Besides revenue sharing, Amazon gets to hoard all the data. 

When it launched the HBO Max app in May 2020, WarnerMedia was determined to control its direct-to-consumer destiny, and keep the new app out of Amazon Channels. The result was tech battle with Amazon, which didn't agree to support HBO Max until the end of 2020, following WarnerMedia's capitulation on a new Amazon Web Services cloud computing service agreement. 

These days, as parent company AT&T readies a $43 billion spinoff of WarnerMedia and merger of the media entity with Discovery Inc., HBO seems intent on enduring the pain of course correction. 

HBO Max, for example, is in the process of reprogramming its app, moving away from a core architecture that was rooted in legacy software, HBO Now and HBO Go.

And as Bloomberg describes it, that's not all HBO is moving away from. 

The story describes the channel's founding architects -- aughts-era HBO president Chris Albrecht and his successor, Richard Plepler, as well as former Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes -- as interpreting the direct-to-consumer global streaming biz as "uninteresting," its finer details as "gibberish." 

As it launched its HBO Go app in 2014, Bloomberg noted, HBO was still licensing out streaming rights to crown jewels including The Sopranos and Sex and the City to Amazon. 

And because of output deals signed with companies in Canada, the U.K. and Australia, WarnerMedia is curtailed in its ability to deploy HBO Max into regions that collectively yield rival Netflix 20 million customers. 

“As you see agreements in other territories come up, were more likely to lean into direct-to-consumer posture than not,” Forssell told Bloomberg.

So he's just fixing the mess left by linear-focused tools? 

OK, we'll buy lots of accusations of shortsightedness for Bewkes, the pre-AT&T acquisition corporate overseer who once referred to Netflix as posting a threat on par with the "Albanian Army."

And if you want to toss Plepler under the ol' too-linear-focused bus, I suppose you can, although it could be argued that he did a marvelous job of sustaining the HBO water-cooler brand with Game of Thrones. Being a programmer was his core job.

But Albrecht? The man who pioneered the whole destination programming model that that was copied by many DTC streaming services, including Netflix, left HBO way back in 2007, just as Netflix was starting nascent streaming service. 

With the ad-supported version of its HBO Max product only a few days old, HBO Max executive VP and general manager Andy Forssell told an industry audience that the product and others like it could open up a whole new market for streaming, and eventually help to push the TV universe past 100 million homes. 

WarnerMedia launched its ad-supported version of HBO Max on June 2, priced at $9.99 per month and geared toward more cost-conscious consumers.  At the Barclays virtual Future of Media conference Thursday, Forssell said that the potential for ad-supported streaming is huge.   

“You’re going to get to a larger market. The total addressable market is larger,” Forssell said. “Netflix is probably defining the ceiling on what full penetration in the U.S. market is and they’re riding that up and in some cases they are propelling that wave. I think with ad supported, you add 20% to that."

Currently there are about 85 million pay TV customers in the U.S., but Forssell predicted ad-supported streaming could help push that total higher. 

“We should get back to [the] 100 million-plus homes that we served during the heyday of cable,” he continued. “I think SVOD and some ad-supported SVOD versions should get back to that.”

HBO Max said that it will keep ad loads low on the service -- a maximum of 4 minutes per hour -- and Forssell said that won’t change. 

“Our hypothesis there is message recall, brand recall will be higher the fewer ads you have,” Forssell said. “They’ll be worth more and we'll get to monetize that, ad partners will agree that they are worth more. That’s the experiment we have to prove out in the next year and make it reality and not flip back into what many providers have done in maybe starting with a similar thesis, but saying let’s add another ad to this break because that's the easiest way to increase revenue.”  

Forssell also talked about sports rights, adding that the old way of selling sports rights -- offering what he called “odd little slices” of rights to cable networks -- probably won’t work in a streaming world. 

“I don’t think that [sports] rights landscape is going to be nearly as successful in SVOD,” he said. 

He pointed to Turner Networks’ agreement with the National Hockey League, which also has an HBO Max component.

“Hockey primarily was a vote of confidence and investment in the Turner Networks,” Forssell said. “To add a major sport there was a statement we wanted to make. Will we experiment with that on HBO Max? Sure.” 

But he added that sports brings new challenges to streaming, especially on how they are presented. Providers should also be thinking about things like shoulder programming around games, and whether talent connected with that content should be different in the digital and linear worlds. 

For news operations like CNN, he said the linear relationship will continue as the company looks for streaming complements. 

CNN is said to be readying a streaming service called CNN Plus, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. 

“We will look at what you can do direct-to-consumer,” Forssell said. “We don’t think it’s just repurposing all of that and putting it online in some IP directed format. We think it’s going to change, some of the content needs to change. There is a lot of work going on as to what that will look like.”

Still, Forssell said he was optimistic about the fit between streaming news and entertainment. “They [have] different needs, but I’m optimistic," he said. “Sports, I’m not pessimistic, but it’s going to take some experimentation on what works in SVOD, because what works in cable doesn’t necessarily translate.” 

“We’ll get it done.”

In what is perhaps the most affirmative statement yet regarding HBO Max’s six-month distribution impasse with Roku, Andy Forssell, the top product executive for the streaming service, told CNET that it’s only a matter of time before a deal with the No. 1 OTT platform operator gets done.

Forssell and other WarnerMedia executives were making the press rounds following the media conglomerate’s landmark announcement that it will premiere all 17 Warner Bros. theatrical releases day-and-date on HBO Max.

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The consensus has emerged among video industry observers that WarnerMedia and Roku are in at least somewhat advanced stages of talks to put the HBO Max app on the top connected TV device system in the U.S.

But the WarnerMedia theatrical slate announcement will do little to accelerate the timeline.  

Forssell added that Roku has “been a good partner for years; they’ll be a good partner for years to come. We’ll figure something out. I have nothing to say about the timeline, and I don't think today’s announcement changes anything dramatically ... but we already both had really strong imperatives to find a way to work together. So we have to go do that, and we'll get it done.” 

Forssell is in charge of the new HBO Max business group, overseeing international expansion. Already, there have been plenty of challenges. The $14.99-a-month service launched in May with a confusing brand proposition, and lacking distribution deals with Amazon Fire TV or Roku. More than 30 planned original shows had to be scuttled or delayed as a result of the pandemic. 

In October, however, WarnerMedia reported that HBO and HBO Max were reaching 38 million combined subscribers — up from 33 million at the end of March — including 8.6 million on HBO Max. 

“From programming to product to technology to marketing and everything in between, the team did not miss a beat when we went into lockdown in March,” Forssell said. “While we had to adjust some of our plans, especially marketing, which planned extensive campaigns around live sporting events, the launch was pretty seamless.” 

With an Amazon deal now in place, a Roku pact reportedly on the way and an end to the pandemic at least in sight, HBO Max has aggressive growth benchmarks to meet.

AT&T CEO John Stankey, who has pledged to invest $4 billion into HBO Max over the next three years, has also told investors that he wants the service to have more than 50 million U.S. subscribers by 2025.

Forssell’s international agenda is also ambitious.

The SVOD’s first international launch will be in Latin America in the first half of 2021. HBO Max will also “start upgrading HBO branded streaming services in Europe to HBO Max,” Forssell said.

Forssell is also focused on content. Hit TV franchises like “Friends” and “South Park” are available to HBO Max subscribers, as are series and movies from within the broader WarnerMedia portfolio and superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” is set to debut on Dec. 25.

“We’ll need to add capabilities to accept new payment methods for each region and, of course, provide full local language support,” he added. “To be successful, streaming services must be global in operation but local in appeal, so that means adding regional programming as well as very tailored marketing efforts that authentically reach audiences in each country.”

AT&T has shuffled the executive ranks of its video business as it prepares to launch a new subscription streaming service next year under the WarnerMedia banner.

Former Showtime and NBCUniversal top executive Bob Greenblatt, who joined AT&T in March as head of the company’s entertainment and direct-to-consumer operations, will now be in charge of digital production unit Otter Media.

Otter produces digital platforms including Fullscreen, Crunchyroll and Rooster Teeth. And AT&T is looking to integrate these properties with its broader umbrella of WarnerMedia content. 

Veteran DirecTV entertainment executive Tony Goncalves, who has been serving as CEO of Otter, will now be in charge of developing the new WarnerMedia OTT platform, reporting to Greenblatt.

Also in the mix is Otter Media COO Andy Forrsell, the former Hulu CEO who joined the company in 2015. He’ll report to Goncalves.

Meanwhile, Brad Bentley, whose roots at DirecTV span two decades, will depart his role as executive VP and general manager of direct to consumer development.

Kevin Reilly, who serves as president of TBS, TNT and TruTV, as well as the top content exec for the new streaming service, will keep reporting to Greenblatt.

“As we continue to build out our new streaming business and realign WarnerMedia functions, this step will facilitate further scale and focus in our efforts to offer customers an engaging and compelling product experience,” said WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey in a statement. “I’m confident that with Tony and Andy leading our product and operations, Kevin and HBO’s Casey Bloys guiding our content strategy, and with Bob at the helm, we have a formidable team creating a curated streaming service with a winning combination of content and features. I also want to thank Brad for his leadership in bringing the project to this point in record time.”