HBO - Changing an Industry

[Music] when looking at all the tv channels i would say that hbo stands out from the others they're what you would call a pay tv or premium channel historically the biggest most popular one so they offer something a little different in terms of pricing and availability i would argue even a different type of programming they are among the most expensive channels you can get whenever i look at the packages from the cable or satellite providers they seem to offer hbo as an add-on for the cheaper ones but if you want it included in the package it is always the most expensive one the price that you pay is determined by how they decide to offer it but hbo themselves sets it at 14.99 a month the idea behind it is that you'll pay more than the other channels and hopefully get more out of it the lack of advertising is a big selling point in 2019 hbo's operating revenue totaled 6.75 billion dollars 86 of which was from subscriptions you know it's not just a cable channel there's all these apps and streaming services that have confusingly similar names there's hbo go as of 2010 hbo now as of 2015 hbo max has of 2020. go and now feature content from the channel they're just different based on whether or not you subscribe to the channel and hbo max is more of a netflix equivalent with additional content that ventures outside of hbo they're owned by warner media who owns the rights to the warner movies and content from the turner channel so they can easily put that onto the service i know it's a lot to keep track of which is why i'm going to be focusing much more on the channel itself as of the end of 2019 it had 43 million subscribers in the us which is actually a bit down you may expect that with how competitive the streaming services have made everything but they've obviously responded to it see hbo has always been successful by doing things a little differently and often changing the industry around them in the process they were an early significant force in creating cable television and satellite television they've made their impact on movie production and pop culture in general you're welcome to dispute this statement but i'd argue that they've had a greater impact on the world than any other cable channel and here's why i say that cable itself goes all the way back to the 1940s but it was nothing like we would picture it today really at that time television itself was relatively new and yet to be popular i don't want to get too technical about any of this but it would be broadcast through a signal that was then received by an antenna at people's homes the system worked well except for the people who lived in these remote areas that signal would be coming from so far away that their little antennas couldn't pick it up the answer to this was a big powerful antenna that the whole community would use they would then run cables from that antenna to their home so they can pick up the broadcast i hope that was clear because for a couple of decades that was the primary use for cable charles dolan was one of the first people to help change that in 1962 he operated the service in the hotels of new york city called teleguide it was one of those things that broadcast on the tv telling people all the wonderful things that they can do in new york city during their vacation well in creating that he actually installed some of the first cable lines in the city then three years later he was granted a permit that gave him the exclusive rights to install these cable lines through the lower part of manhattan basically the city said you can do whatever you need to do to get the cable to these residents but you have to give us a percentage of your sales and i have to say this was not a quick way to make money i don't think i would have had the patience for it installing all those cables is a slow expensive process with no guarantee that you'll ever gain any customers from it at one point a couple years into the project he had spent over two million dollars and had only served about 400 subscribers with those numbers it's clear that he was losing a ton of money and he needed help that is when time became involved you know time like the magazine when very few people had any interest in cable surprisingly time wanted to be a part of it i realize it doesn't seem like it would make sense but they considered themselves more of a media company rather than a magazine they saw their magazine as a medium to convey information to people in this cabled television endeavor would be yet another way to do that so dolan had investments from time but he still needed a way to bring in the customers and make this whole business work when you spend all of this time and money laying cable you need to find a way to make people care about it that's where hbo comes in and the idea for it was not unlike what it is today he figured that he can pay the movie studios for the licensing rights to show their movies and then use those movies to attract subscribers to the channel who would hopefully be willing to pay six dollars a month for it or as a different source of revenue the cable providers would pay him so they can carry his channel the other piece to this was local sporting events that would secure the rights to air those as well and that's where the name comes from hbo stands for home box office because they were providing entertainment straight to your home that you would otherwise have to go out and buy a ticket to see in 1972 they made their first broadcast and i think this is pretty cool it was an ad that they placed in the newspaper to promote it they showed a hockey game followed by a lesser-known paul newman movie i like this part of it it says your monthly subscription to home box office is the one and only ticket you need to enjoy entertainment like this month after month after month and you get the best seats in the house your house i mean how do you turn that down well in reality most people did in fact turn that down that first broadcast went out to a small part of pennsylvania to something like 350 people still for quite a while after that first broadcast none of this was profitable so he kept needing more and more money from time until they practically had taken things over in 1969 they made a big jump to almost 50 percent ownership and then three years later that was raised to two-thirds ownership and then in 1973 they had bought all of those operations despite being mostly his idea charles dolan completely ended his involvement with hbo when they had only 8 000 subscribers though i should mention that after the sale he became known for establishing cablevision a cable provider throughout the northeast region of the us that his family sold for 17 billion dollars in 2015. in addition to owning the new york knicks the new york rangers and at the arena in which they play at madison square garden and amc networks so there's a lot there but back to hbo having started in 1972 in the early early days of cable it is the oldest cable channel that still exists today by 1978 premium channels had grown to 1.5 million subscribers hbo made up most of that and here's how they did it fcc regulations were relaxed they started putting stuff on the channel for more hours each day there was much more physical cable throughout new york city and therefore more potential customers but the part that i think is the coolest is in 1975 hbo became the first tv channel to continuously broadcast a signal over satellites it was a good event to do it with too it was one of the biggest boxing matches of all time muhammad ali against joe frazier for the heavyweight championship of the world it was their third match together held in the philippines it was called the thrilla in manila hbo used this as an opportunity to use satellite technology to reach a national audience without installing an absurd amount of cable across the country the whole thing is considered to be a big event in sports technology and television moving forward in 1978 they started making a more noticeable impact on the film industry their big expense had always been obtaining the rights to show the movies so in that year they made the decision to start investing in the production of movies they did it in return for the exclusive pay tv rights saying that they'll help pay to make the movie as long as they're legally the only premium channel that can show that movie and then three years later they took it a step further when they worked with columbia pictures and cbs to create tristar pictures so whenever you see this screen before a movie just know that they were created in part by hbo is a way to more effectively add to their collection of movies that they can show on their channel now in addition to hbo they've also been responsible for establishing a couple of other channels i mean of course you have hbo2 and hbo signature an hbo family and a ton of those but you also have cinemax back in 1980 showtime was their biggest competitor even though hbo was still three times larger and seen as the main premium channel showtime was becoming a concern so that year they introduced cinemax and because it was a little cheaper it became a direct competitor with showtime and is thought to have been hbo's attempt to slow them down hbo and showtime have always been very competitive with each other another example would be in 1989 when stand-up comedy was reaching new heights in popularity hbo decided to launch a separate channel centered around it logically called the comedy channel then as a response to it a few months later viacom the owner of showtime launched a very similar channel called ha and i have to admit a pretty funny name for a comedy channel neither channel did very well so the two agreed to put their differences aside and merge the channels together into a new collective channel called comedy central they split the ownership of it until 2003 when viacom spent over a billion dollars to buy the other half of it so that's significant in addition to the obvious channels fewer people may know that hbo was responsible for establishing both cinemax and comedy central finally i want to talk about their original programming and the cultural impact that it's had see the great thing about hbo is that there are no advertisers so it's much more of a direct relationship with their subscribers without other people meddling with it since they have never had to worry about pleasing advertisers they've been able to air some more explicit edgy content tales from the crypt would be a good earlier example of this going back to the early 1980s they had produced tv shows and made for tv movies but in the 1990s it's when they started dedicating more resources toward these productions and i would say really became known for them some of the bigger ones at that time would be sex in the city and the sopranos more recently it's true blood and game of thrones all shows that i think you'll agree it would be much different if aired on a more traditional network they have been critically acclaimed too hbo won their first emmy award in 1988 and have since received literally hundreds of them far more than any other cable channel in 1997 they received 90 nominations which was the first time that a cable channel had more than any other traditional network we can't deny that hbo has formed their own path and i think things like this prove that they used it to not only catch up to the others but in many cases surpass them i just think it's neat how a channel that couldn't get more than a few hundred people to watch its first broadcast has since become the producer behind all these massively successful shows such as entourage and the wire let me know in the comments what is your favorite hbo original there are some good ones to choose from but i think i'm gonna have to go with curvier enthusiasm controversial opinion but i say it better than seinfeld so would you agree with me that hbo stands out from the other television channels aside from creating their own path that remains less traveled hbo has changed the tv and movie industries in more ways than i can express so any thoughts that you have about the network their evolution their model or any of these confusingly named streaming services leave them in the comments i'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching

Channel: Company Man

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Id: m2YLog9H_tI

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020