This week, the New York Times had a juicy media story about HBO, which, thanks to a recent merger, is now a division of the faceless corporate borg known as AT&T. Times media reporters Edmund Lee and John Koblin got their hands on a leaked recording of a company “town hall meeting,” which featured a clenched, faux-friendly chat between longtime HBO chief Richard Plepler and AT&T executive John Stankey, Plepler’s new boss and frenemy.

The Times played the story as a personality conflict: Plepler, tan and dapper, is a doyen of Manhattan’s cultural elite. Stankey is a pasty Republican telecom exec who lives in Dallas. It’s basically Kabletown vs. 30 Rock, only nastier.