Agreed. Content is king, and I think HBO understands that very well. I go to HBO for curated, high quality entertainment. I see this less as a business problem

Agreed. Content is king, and I think HBO understands that very well. I go to HBO for curated, high quality entertainment. I see this less as a business problem and more of a technology problem with regards to their streaming platform. All big platforms suffer (possibly painfully) in the beginning (e.g. Twitter's fail whale), but that's when it's up to business leadership to stay the course, dive into the problem, and commit to solving it on your own. Look at how much emphasis in this article is placed upon HBO getting away from rivals running their platform! Yet a short period ago they surrender in-house operations to MLB AM? Constant pivoting gets you nowhere. I see AT&T swooping in to "pick up the pieces" as they see it, and the sad conclusion I foresee is exactly what you described.