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The Home Box Office. Originally conceived in 1965 as "The Green Network", then began operations as HBO in 1972 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but remained chiefly a regional service until it began satellite distribution in 1975.
Unlike most cable stations, HBO is a premium station, meaning you have to pay for the right to watch the channel on top of what you pay as far as cable packaging is concerned (though in recent years, most cable and satellite networks have started offering premium TV packages that do include HBO and its sister stations, including Cinemax). Note the start dates above, too - until about 1980 the concept of "basic cable" didn't exist. There was broadcast TV delivered by cable (one of each of the three major networks plus usually at least one PBS station, several independent stations from a wide radius and, in border areas, Canadian or Mexican stations) and there was "pay TV". HBO nevertheless had a slow start until it began satellite distribution in 1975, which resulted in exponential growth over the next few years and the true beginning of the "cable TV era" as we now know it.
To entice people to pay for the channel, HBO used to offer free "preview" periods. Depending on your cable provider, HBO will temporarily "unscramble" its channels for the briefest of periods (usually for one week, one weekend, or one month) to draw in customers who will then pony up the money to buy the channel full time. However, HBO does it much more rarely than Showtime or Starz to keep its cache, and usually only on weekends, where its highest-profile series are launched.
HBO's line-up mainly consists of major studio films, shown uncut and commercial free. While the main HBO station focuses on new blockbusters, sister station Cinemax focuses on older films and more arthouse-centric movies. In addition, HBO produced original films, and started producing their own series in the '80s (such as First And Ten and Dream On). However, HBO's popularity increased even further in the late 1990s, when two of these series, Sex and the City and The Sopranos, really took off. These two series gained a great deal of acclaim, and swept the Emmys for a while. In addition to original programming and movies, HBO is famous for its coverage of boxing matches. Comedy and music specials were also an important part of the schedule in the early years, as were shows for kids like Fraggle Rock, until the advent of Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and other networks made such programming redundant.
As of 2023, HBO operates seven 24-hour multiplex channels in the U.S. alone. In addition to the main station, there's HBO2 (programming similar to the parent network), HBO Comedy, HBO Family, HBO Latino, HBO Signature (aimed at women), and HBO Zone (aimed at young adults). There's also streaming services HBO On Demand, Max (formerly HBO Max), and HBO Go, plus foreign services aimed at Asia, Brazil, Canada and Europe. The Canadian service is owned by broadcasting giant Bell Media, which operates it as a sister to Crave and Super Écran, the pay-TV networks that served as the original Canadian equivalents of HBO for English- and French-speaking audiences respectively. (Under its original name, First Choice, Crave co-produced HBO's first original movie, The Terry Fox Story, plus the series The Hitchhiker.)
Until it encrypted its signal digitally in 1986, anyone with a satellite dish could watch HBO for free anywhere on the planet. This led to the infamous "Captain Midnight" incident in April of that year, in which a Florida satellite-dish salesman, upset that the encryption was hurting his business, interrupted an airing of The Falcon and the Snowman with a message protesting the move. The moment was captured for posterity and can now be viewed on YouTube. He was eventually caught and given a $5,000 fine and one year's probation.
Series and miniseries broadcast by HBO include:
- Angels in America (2003 miniseries)
- Arli$$ (1996-2002)
- Band of Brothers (2001 miniseries)
- Big Love (2006-2011)
- Boardwalk Empire (2010–present)
- Bored to Death (2009-2011)
- Carnivale (2003-2005)
- Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–present)
- Deadwood (2004-2006)
- Dream On (1990-1995)
- Eastbound and Down (2009–present)
- Encyclopedia Brown (1989) - no relation to the Children's Television Workshop series Encyclopedia, which aired on HBO around the same time
- Entourage (2004-2011)
- Enlightened (2011 - )
- Extras (2005-2007, co-production with the BBC)
- Flight of the Conchords (2007-2009)
- Fraggle Rock (1983-1987; the network's first original first-run weekly series, funded by HBO and made by CBC in Canada)
- From the Earth To The Moon (1998)
- Game of Thrones (2011–present)
- Generation Kill (2008 miniseries)
- Girls (2012)
- Happily Ever After Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995-2000)
- How to Make It in America (2010-2011)
- Hung (2009-2011)
- The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998)
- The Life and Times of Tim (2008–present)
- Luck (2011-2012)
- Mildred Pierce (2011 miniseries)
- NHL 247 (2010–present)
- Oz (1997-2003)
- The Pacific (2010 miniseries)
- Real Time with Bill Maher (2003–present)
- The Ricky Gervais Show (2010–present)
- Rome (2005-2007, co-production with The BBC)
- Sex and the City (1998-2004)
- Six Feet Under (2001-2005)
- The Sopranos (1999-2007)
- Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996)
- Treme (2010–present)
- True Blood (2008–present)
- Veep (2012–present)
- The Wire (2002-2008)
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- World Masterpiece Theater adaptations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Little Women
- Catch Phrase: "It's not television, it's HBO." - The network's tongue-in-cheek method of defending itself against incredulous critics who rail that the series premises would never make it on basic cable or broadcast.
- Some earlier catch phrases: "The Great Entertainment Alternative" (late 1970s); "HBO people don't miss out" (circa 1980); "Great movies are just the beginning" (1982, used in advertisements); "America's number one pay TV network" (early 1980s); "There's no place like HBO" (1984-85); "Nobody brings it home like HBO" (late 1980s); "The best time on TV" (circa 1990); "Simply the best" (early 1990s, using the Tina Turner song "The Best" in its image promos)
- Early Installment Weirdness: HBO tried very much to be "all things to all people" during its first roughly two or so decades, with a varied program menu in addition to uncut feature films, including comedy specials, music videos and concerts, recordings of live theatrical events, shows for kids, and even documentaries such as the acclaimed America Undercover series. By the mid-'90s the channel's focus was pretty much exclusively on movies and "edgier" serials, as other types of programming had become the domain of competitors or had been shuffled off to HBO's sister networks. And did we also mention it wasn't even a 24/7 service until the start of 1982?
- Growing the Beard: With The Sopranos, was the start of the network's shift into true recognition.
- Hey, It's That Guy/Voice: The network has used a number of celebrity spokespeople and voiceover talent over the years. In the '80s, HBO's "coming attractions" preview specials were hosted by a succession of famous faces, including Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara (aka Ben Stiller's parents), Dick Cavett, and legendary New York radio personality Dan Ingram. Mason "With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good" Adams also hosted a program in the mid-'80s in which he read, and responded to, viewer mail. Detroit area viewers might also have recognized the voice of Ray Otis, who worked on Detroit radio stations during the 1960s and '70s, as an imaging voice for HBO circa 1980.
- Insistent Terminology: The "It's not TV, it's HBO" promos.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: HBO was insanely popular amongst movie tape traders in the 1980s and 1990s, as far as fans taping movies off the network.
- HBO's shows are also insanely popular on BitTorrent sites, due to the vast number of non-subscriber fans of its original shows who want to follow them without having to wait a year or so for the DVD sets (which are often twice the price of normal network DVD sets).
- Leitmotif: Part of the score to the "HBO In Space" opener (mentioned below) has become a musical logo for the network, and it even shows up at least thrice in the music of the feature presentation opener used from 1999 until 2011, and shows up once in the simpler 2011 open.
- Lighter and Softer: Prior to HBO Family, HBO attempted family-friendly "sister" networks on two earlier occasions: Take 2 in 1979, and Festival in 1986. No movies with an R or harsher rating were allowed on either channel (except for PG/PG-13 edits provided by the movie studios). Both services failed quickly due to lack of subscriber interest, plus Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were providing competition for family viewing by 1986.
- HBO itself was considerably Lighter and Softer in its early years, with imaging that was considerably less "in your face" and more subdued than today. Interstitials shown between programs included such features as footage of a bike ride through Central Park set to easy-listening piano music. And then there's the animated nightly signoff the channel aired until it went 24/7 in 1981, depicting a family's bedtime preparations set to a lullaby-like melody. Disney programming was also a regular part of programming prior to the introduction of Disney Channel in 1983. Well into the '90s, the network also set aside early morning and after-school hours for children's programming, including shows like Fraggle Rock, Edutainment shows such as Braingames, dubbed foreign cartoons (particularly anime), and reruns of After-School Specials and the like. This more or less ended with the introduction of HBO Family.
- The Rival: Several. A plethora of competing pay-TV services popped up during the 1970s and early '80s, including Showtime, The Movie Channel, Home Theater Network, and regional services such as the LA-based "Z Channel," not to mention franchised pay services such as ONTV that flourished for a time on UHF broadcast stations in large cities that took longer to get cable. For Spanish-speaking viewers, there was also Galavisión, which specialized in Mexican films and Spanish dubs of Hollywood blockbusters; HBO would later start its own Spanish-language channel to compete. HBO's creation of Cinemax was itself an attempt to thwart the growth of the rivals by offering a second service of its own so that subscribers would think they didn't need Showtime or TMC. Many of the rivals didn't survive, but Showtime and TMC did and remain rivals to this day (as does Galavisión).
- In the 2000s, FX, previously filled with Fox-owned reruns, became its main rival, as far as copying HBO's formula and producing a line-up of shows (The Shield, Nip Tuck, Rescue Me, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) that rivaled HBO (and was on basic cable).
- Seasonal Rot: The channel has been producing more shows that have gotten less critical recongition (if still well-received) then their earlier efforts, and the channel has criticized for having more shows that focus on the sex & gore rather than the storytelling.
- Theme Music Power-Up: HBO in Space, the ident to new movies they'd play in the 80s and 90s where the camera goes up into space and the HBO logo spins. Nothing got people more pumped up to watch a movie than this introducing it.
"This intro makes me feel like I am about to witness the most important event in the universe." -sterpinator |
- Inverted with HBO's brief and simple original programming ident. A Theme Music Power On, but not Up.
- The 1984 movie Flashpoint (the first of HBO's several ventures into films for the big screen) is the only chance to date to experience this in cinemas, as a shortened version appears at the beginning.
- HBO aired variations of this ident before every program in the early '80s, not just movies. There were variations for "HBO Comedy," "HBO Music," "HBO Rock," "HBO Theater," "Standing Room Only," "HBO Special," "HBO Family" and so on, each with a different musical "stinger" at the end. HBO cut back on this starting about 1986, but HBO in Space wasn't retired for good until 2002, and the network still makes occasional Shout-Outs to it.
- For those curious about the making of the HBO In Space opening, there's a ten minute making of special on YouTube.
- The set took three months to build.
- It took 14 hours to film each take of the 20 second sequence.
- The HBO "Spaceship" was made from brass and was chrome plated - it was not CGI.
- The lights swooping around the "O" were not CGI nor animated.
- The people sitting down to watch HBO at the beginning were filmed last.
- Inverted with HBO's brief and simple original programming ident. A Theme Music Power On, but not Up.