The contrasting national and international performances of HBO Max and Netflix make for captivating viewing – mainly for highlighting how far behind the curve HBO Max is. Frustratingly, getting a handle on the true figures for HBO Max continues to be a tricky task due to the way traditional HBO subscribers are still bundled in with HBO Max on an international basis. However, AT&T’s WarnerMedia division doesn’t adopt this trickery in the motherland – so we know that HBO Max ended 2021 with exactly 43.3 million subscribers in the US, leaving just 3.5 million domestic viewers on HBO traditional (those who haven’t been converted from pay TV to streaming). This homegrown base increased by 1.6 million in the fourth quarter,…