HBO -Home Box Office
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HBO (Home Box Office) is an American premium cable and satellite television network that is owned by Home Box Office Inc., the flagship cable television division of Time Warner. HBO's programming consists primarily of theatrically released motion pictures and original television series, along withmade-for-cable movies and documentaries, boxing matches and occasionalstand-up comedy and concert specials.
It is the oldest and longest continuously operating pay television service (basic or premium) in the United States, having been in operation since November 8, 1972. In 2014, HBO had an adjusted operating income of US$1.79 billion, an increase compared to the US$1.68 billion it accrued in 2013.
Overview[edit]
As of July 2015, HBO's programming is available to approximately 36,483,000 households with at least one television set (31.3% of all cable, satellite and telco customers) in the United States (36,013,000 subscribers or 30.9% of all households with pay television service receive at least HBO's primary channel),[3] making it the second largest premium channel in the United States (Encore's programming reaches 40.54 million pay television households as of July 2015[3][4]). In addition to its U.S. subscriber base, HBO broadcasts in at least 151 countries, covering approximately 122 million subscribers worldwide.[5]
HBO subscribers generally pay for an extra tier of service that includes other cable- and satellite-exclusive channels even before paying for the channel itself (though HBO often prices all of its channels together in a single package). However, a law imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires that cable providers allow a person to get just "limited" basic cable (which includes local, and in some areas, out-of-marketbroadcast stations and public, educational, and government access channels) and premium services such as HBO, without subscribing to expanded service (Comcast is the only major provider to have purposefully offered the network in such a manner utilizing this law, as it offered a bundled cable/Internet package that included limited basic service and HBO from October 2013 to July 2014, or January of the latter year in some markets).[6][7][8] Cable providers can require the use of a converter box – usually digital – in order to receive HBO.
HBO also provides its content through digital media, maintaining HBO Go, avideo on demand streaming service available as a website and slate of mobile apps exclusively to existing subscribers of the linear channel suite; a separate, but similar standalone service, HBO Now, launched in April 2015 as a subscription streaming platform that does not require a subscription to the HBO television service.[9][10]
Many HBO programs have been syndicated to other networks and broadcasttelevision stations (usually after some editing), and a number of HBO-produced series and films have been released on DVD. Since HBO's more successful series (most notably shows such as Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Wire, Entourage, Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and True Blood) air on over-the-air broadcasters in other countries (such as in Canada, Australia and much of Europe – including the United Kingdom), HBO's programming has the potential of being exposed to a higher percentage of the population of those countries compared to the United States.
Because of the cost of HBO (which is the most expensive of the U.S. premium services, costing a monthly fee as of 2015between $15 and $20 depending on the provider), many Americans only view HBO programs through DVDs or in basic cable or broadcast syndication – months or even years after these programs have first aired on the network – and with editing for both content and to allow advertising, although several series have filmed alternate "clean" scenes intended for syndication runs.[11]
History[edit]
Development and launch[edit]
In 1965, Charles Dolan, who had already done pioneering work in the commercial use of cables and had developed aclosed-circuit tourist information television system distributed to hotels in the New York metropolitan area called Teleguide, won a franchise to build a cable television system in the Lower Manhattan section of New York City.[12] The new system, which Dolan named "Sterling Information Services" (later to be known as Sterling Manhattan Cable, and eventually becoming the present Time Warner Cable), became the first urban underground cable television system in the United States.
Rather than stringing cable on telephone poles or using microwave antennas to receive the signals, Sterling laid underground cable beneath the streets of Manhattan – because the multitude of tall buildings in the city blocked television signals (besides that issue, the New York City Council had also required that all electrical and telecommunication wiring be laid underground to limit service disruptions during inclement weather conditions, an ordinance which was passed following a blizzard in the early 20th century that caused damage to telephone and telegraph lines in the area).[13] That same year,Time-Life, Inc. purchased 20% of Dolan's company.[14][15]
Sterling Manhattan consistently lost revenue during its first six years of operation due to the expense of running cable underground and into buildings throughout Manhattan (a cost that amounted as much as $300,000 per mile) and a limited subscriber base, with only 400 subscribers borough-wide by 1971. In the summer of 1971, while on a family vacation inFrance, Charles Dolan began to think of ideas to make Sterling Manhattan profitable. He came up with the concept for a cable-originated television service called "The Green Channel". Dolan later presented his idea to Time-Life management; though satellite distribution seemed only a distant possibility at the time, he persuaded Time-Life to back him.[13]
To gauge whether consumers would be interested in subscribing to a pay television service, Time-Life sent out a direct mailresearch brochure to residents in six U.S. cities. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed (approximately 99%) opposed the idea; 4% of those polled in a second survey conducted through an independent consultant said they were "almost certain" to subscribe to such a service. Time-Life later conducted a test in Allentown, Pennsylvania in which salesmen presented the concept of a pay channel to residents by offering free service for the first month and a refundable installation fee; one out of every two residents surveyed in the test expressed interest in purchasing the conceptual service.[13] In a meeting involving Dolan and some Time-Life executives that were working on the project, other names were discussed for the new service. They ultimately settled on calling it "Home Box Office", although the name was originally intended as aworking title in order to meet deadlines to publish research brochures for the new service, with the belief that management would come up with a different name at a later date.[13]
Originally, Home Box Office was to debut on a Service Electric cable television system in Allentown; in order to avoidblackouts for NBA games that it was set to televise (Allentown was within the NBA's designated blackout radius for thePhiladelphia 76ers' market area, under rules that were in effect at the time to protect ticket sales), Time-Life agreed to an offer by Service Electric president John Walson to launch the channel on its system in Wilkes-Barre (outside of the 76ers' DMA, in northeastern Pennsylvania).[13] Home Box Office launched on the evening of November 8, 1972.[citation needed]However, HBO's launch came with no fanfare in the press, as it was not covered by any local or national media outlets. In addition, the city manager of Wilkes-Barre declined an offer to attend the launch ceremony, while Time Inc. president andchief executive officer J. Richard Munro was unable to attend as he was stranded in traffic while trying to exit Manhattan on the George Washington Bridge on his way to Wilkes-Barre.[16]
The first program and film broadcast on the channel, the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newmanand Henry Fonda, was transmitted that evening to 325 Service Electric subscribers in Wilkes-Barre (a plaque commemorating this event is located at Public Square in downtown Wilkes-Barre). Home Box Office broadcast its first sports event immediately after the film: an NHL hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucksfrom Madison Square Garden.[17][18] Four months later in February 1973, Home Box Office aired its first television special, the Pennsylvania Polka Festival.[19] Home Box Office would use a network of microwave relay towers to distribute its programming.[17][20][21]
Sterling Manhattan Cable continued to lose money because the company had only a small subscriber base of 20,000 customers in Manhattan. Dolan's media partner, Time-Life, Inc., gained control of Sterling when it acquired an additional 60% interest in the company, increasing its interest to 80%; Time-Life then decided to pull the plug on the Sterling Manhattan operation. Time-Life dropped the "Sterling" name and the company became "Manhattan Cable Television" under Time-Life's control in March 1973.[12] Gerald Levin, who had been with Home Box Office since it began operations as itsvice president of programming, replaced Dolan as the company's president and chief executive officer.[22]
In September 1973, Time-Life, Inc. completed its acquisition of the pay service. At the time, Home Box Office's future looked dim: it only had 8,000 subscribers across 14 cable systems, all of which were located in Pennsylvania,[16] and it was suffering from a significant subscriber churn rate. HBO would eventually increase its fortunes within two years: by April 1975, the service had around 100,000 subscribers in Pennsylvania and New York state, and had begun to turn a limited profit.[16]
National expansion, innovation and rise to prominence (1975–1993)[edit]
Time-Life executives realized the problems in trying to expand Home Box Office's distribution footprint using microwave towers because of the time and expense that would be incurred in developing such a vast relay infrastructure, and began looking for cost-efficient methods of transmitting the channel nationally. In 1974, they settled on using a geostationary communications satellite to transmit HBO to cable providers throughout the United States. Other television broadcasters at the time were hesitant about uplinking to satellite due to fears that the satellites may inadvertently shut down or go out of orbit, as well as due to the cost of purchasing downlink receiver dishes, which in 1974, were sold for as much as $75,000. Seeing satellite transmission as the only viable option, Gerald Levin allocated $6.5 million to lease transponder space on the Westar 1 satellite for a five-year term.[16] The Time-Life board subsequently approved the plan to transmit HBO via satellite.[22]
At 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on September 30, 1975, HBO became the first television network to continuously deliver its signal via satellite when it broadcast the "Thrilla in Manila" boxingmatch between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier; it was beamed to cable providers in Fort Pierce and Vero Beach, Florida, and Jackson, Mississippi,[23] as well as those already carrying HBO in the northeastern United States.[16][20][24] Through the use of satellite, the channel began transmitting separate programming feeds for the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones, allowing the same programs that air first in the eastern half of the United States to air at accordant times in the western part of the country.[25]HBO switched its domestic satellite transmissions from Westar 1 to Satcom 1 in February 1976. By 1977, Ted Turner'sAtlanta superstation WTCG-TV (soon to become WTBS) and Pat Robertson's CBN Satellite Service (later to become the present-day Freeform) had joined it, pioneering satellite delivery for the cable television industry.[20][26] By 1980, HBO was carried on cable providers in all 50 U.S. states.[16]
HBO broadcast its programming for only nine hours each day, from 3:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time, during its first nine years of operation. The network first began to operate a 24-hour schedule on weekends in September 1981, running from 3:00 p.m. on Friday afternoons until 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Sunday nights/early Monday mornings; this round-the-clock schedule was expanded to weekdays three months later on December 28, 1981 (however, HBO was not the first pay television network to maintain an uninterrupted programming schedule asShowtime and The Movie Channel had both switched to 24-hour daily schedule months earlier). By this time, the full "Home Box Office" name was de-emphasized by the network, in favor of branding solely by the "HBO" initialism (although the full name is still used as the legal corporate name of its parent division under Time Warner, and in on-air use within copyright tags featured during the closing credits of its original programs and a legal disclaimer slide seen daily on its primary and multiplex channels).[citation needed]
In 1983, HBO premiered its first original movie, The Terry Fox Story, a biopic that was also the first movie ever produced for pay television. That year also saw the premiere of the first children's program broadcast on the channel: Fraggle Rock (that series' creator, Jim Henson, had earlier produced the special Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, which won an ACE Award in 1978[19]). HBO continued to air various original programs aimed at children until 2001, when these programs almost completely moved over to HBO Family (which continued to occasionally broadcast its own slate of original children's programming until 2003).[27]
HBO became involved in several lawsuits during the 1980s, involving legal statutes imposed by state and city laws that would have resulted in some programs on HBO and other pay television networks being censored by cable systems. In January 1986, HBO became the first satellite-delivered television network to encrypt its signal from unauthorized viewing by way of the Videocipher II system; this initially resulted in a mass lodge of complaints from television receive-only (TVRO) satellite users that previously received HBO's programming without a subscription.[25] The objections by TVRO users over having to now pay for HBO as cable subscribers had long done (requiring dish subscribers to purchase an expensive descrambler to unencrypt the signal) came to a head four months later, as HBO became a victim of broadcast signal intrusion when satellite television dealer John R. MacDougall, a Florida man calling himself "Captain Midnight", redirected a receiver dish towards the network's transponder on Galaxy 1 and intercepted its signal during a movie presentation of The Falcon and the Snowman; MacDougall overrode the telecast of the film with a message placed over SMPTE color bars in protest of the channel's decision to scramble its signal for home satellite subscribers. The Federal Communications Commission subsequently prosecuted MacDougall.
In 1988, HBO's subscriber base expanded greatly as a result of the Writers Guild of America strike that year. HBO had new programming in its inventory, while the broadcast networks were only able to air reruns of their shows. In 1989, HBOcompared its programming against rival pay television network Showtime, with the slogan "Simply the Best", using the Tina Turner single "The Best" as part of the network's on-air image campaign.[28]
On January 2, 1989, HBO launched Selecciones en Español de HBO y Cinemax ("Spanish Selections from HBO and Cinemax") – an alternate Spanish-language feed of HBO and Cinemax. The service, which initially launched on 20 cable systems in markets with significant populations of Spanish speakers,[29] originally only ran Spanish audio simulcasts of live boxing matches televised by HBO (except for certain events that were already broadcast in Spanish on networks such asGalavisión), dubbed versions of recent feature film releases from HBO's movie suppliers and first-run Spanish-language movies (mostly from Mexico, Argentina and Spain), but later added Spanish dubs of films and other programs broadcast by HBO. Selecciones – which was offered in tandem with HBO, although it operated as a separate service – utilized thesecond audio program auxiliary channel. Selecciones en Español de HBO y Cinemax became successful to the point that it added 35 additional cable systems to its list of carriers within a few weeks after its debut.[29] Selecciones en Español became HBO en Español on September 27, 1993.[30]
Taking advantage of HBO's successes, Warner Communications (which ironically was part-owner of one of the network's pay-cable competitors, The Movie Channel, from 1973 until joint venture group Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment sold its stake to Viacom in 1986) merged with HBO parent Time Inc. in 1989 to create Time Warner, which as of 2015, remains the parent company of the network.[31] In 1991, HBO and Cinemax became the first premium services to offer multiplexedchannels to cable customers with the launches of HBO2, HBO3 and Cinemax 2 on three cable systems in Wisconsin,Kansas and Texas.[32] In 1993, HBO became the world's first digitally transmitted television service.[33] The move proved successful, eventually resulting in HBO and Cinemax starting up additional multiplex channels of both services – starting with the December 1996 launch of HBO Family and concluding with the launch of four Cinemax channels in 2001: WMax (now MovieMax), @Max (now MaxLatino), OuterMax and 5StarMax.
Rising prominence of original programming (1993–present)[edit]
During the 1990s, HBO began to experience increasing success with its original series such as Tales from the Crypt, Dream On, Tracey Takes On..., Mr. Show with Bob and David and Arliss. One such program, The Larry Sanders Show, arguably became HBO's flagship series during that decade and although it was not commercially as successful as programs that aired on the Big Three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) and Fox, the show did enjoy a cult status and critical acclaim, and received nominations and wins for many major television awards (including Primetime Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards).[34] The series ranked #38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time (becoming the only HBO comedy series to make the list)[35] and was also included in Time's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time".[36] The Larry Sanders Show was also ranked by various critics and fans as one of the best TV comedies of the 1990s.[37]
The original programs that HBO has developed since the early 1990s have earned the channel numerous nominations for and wins of Emmy and Golden Globe Awards.[38] One aspect as to the perceived higher quality of these shows is due to both the quality of the writing on the programs and the fact that as a subscription-only service, HBO does not carry "normal" commercials; instead the network runs promotions for upcoming HBO programs and behind-the-scenes featurettes between programs. This relieves HBO from some pressures to tone down controversial aspects of its programs, and allows for more explicit content to be incorporated into its shows that would not be allowed to air on broadcast television or basic cable, such as strong graphic violence, nudity, graphic sex scenes and profanity.
Beginning with the 1997 launch of its first one-hour dramatic narrative series Oz, HBO started a trend that became commonplace with premium cable services. Although critically acclaimed, it was not until The Sopranos premiered in 1999, that the network achieved both mass critical and Emmy success. The Sopranos received 111 Emmy nominations during its six-season run, resulting in 21 wins, two of them for Outstanding Drama Series.
1998 saw the debut of the 12-part miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, which was produced by Tom Hanks, Ron Howardand Brian Grazer and based on the Andrew Chaikin book A Man on the Moon; costing $68 million to produce, it traced the U.S. space program from the U.S./U.S.S.R. space race through the final moon landing, Apollo 17. From the Earth to the Moon won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries, and helped spur other HBO miniseries based on historical events such as 61*, Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific. That year also saw the debut of the comedy series Sex and the City, which was based on the book series of the same name by Candace Bushnell; over the course of its six-season run, the show – centering on the friendship and romances of four New York City women[39] – received 54 Emmy nominations, winning seven, including one win for Outstanding Comedy Series.
In 1999, HBO became the first U.S. cable channel to operate a high-definition simulcast feed.[40] In July 2001, HBO launched HBO on Demand, the first premium subscription video-on-demand enhancement in the United States, to Time Warner Cable subscribers in Columbia, South Carolina.[41]
In 2002, HBO debuted The Wire, which, although not surpassing The Sopranos in viewership success, did however match its critical acclaim over its five-season run[citation needed] and further cemented HBO's reputation as being a network that produced quality programming. HBO experienced another success among viewers in 2008, with the debut of True Blood, avampire drama based on a series of gothic novels by Charlaine Harris. The network saw three more hit series in the 2010s with Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin's fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, which earned both critical and viewer praise; Girls, a comedy series created by series star Lena Dunham; and True Detective, an anthology-style series – structured to feature a different cast and setting within each season's storyline – which initially saw established film actors Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in its lead roles.[42]
On August 13, 2015, HBO announced its re-entry into children's programming, when it reached a five-year programming and development deal with Sesame Workshop. Through the agreement, HBO obtained first-run television rights to Sesame Street, beginning with the January 2016 debut of its 46th season (with episodes being distributed to the program's longtime broadcaster, PBS, following a nine-month exclusivity window at no charge to its member stations); Sesame Workshop will also produce original children's programming content for the channel, which will also gain exclusive streaming rights to the Sesame Workshop programming library for HBO Go and HBO Now (assuming those rights from Amazon Video, Netflix and Sesame Workshop's in-house subscription streaming service, Sesame Go, the latter of which will cease to operate as a standalone offering). Although struck with the intent to having the show remain on PBS in some fashion, the nonprofitproduction company reached the deal due to cutbacks resulting from declines in public and private donations, distribution fees paid by PBS member stations and licensing for merchandise sales.
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