The HBO Story: Part Three

it does, But I'm excited this. This is going to be the start of the Internet and streaming age, and uh, you know with that, as with many things, HBO has been a pioneer. So we've got lots of interesting stuff to cover. We're picking up in nineteen nine. Oh yeah, I remember that year. So July nine, Time Incorporated acquires a fifty nine point three percent steak and a little company called Warner Communications Incorporated, creating Time Warner Incorporated, the

largest media and entertainment company in the world. And the following year, Time Incorporate would acquire the remainder of Warner Communications, making it a fully integrated company. So now it's even larger media giant HBO is still a big player in that enormous corporation. In that same year, HBO would launch HBOS lesion Is and Espanol, later renamed HBO Espaniol and then later renamed HBO Latino. So you may have guessed.

This is a channel that offered in parallel with HBO for certain Spanish speaking markets about twenty initially, and took advantage of something called the secondary Audio program or s a P to replace the English speaking track with a Spanish speaking one, and it was a big success, so much so that other markets began to add this to their service, and so much so that eventually they would

start producing their own original content for those markets. Right, so instead of just say, taking an HBO original that was done in English and redubbing it, they actually made their own award winning HBO originals. So you could, if you were a Spanish speaking person, watch these and and really appreciate that same sort of approach HBO had to making entertainment in English speaking countries for Spanish speaking ones. Now,

this was still in the United States. HBO has not branched out into other countries as of yet, so this was for Spanish speaking populations within the US, which you know, stirred up some cultural issues in certain markets with people who might not be as um progressive in some ways. Let's to be really diplomatic about it, but at any rate, it was a bold move and it paid off. And then HBO helped roll out another channel. They were behind the development of the Comedy Channel. So their idea was

to create a special channel specifically catering to comedy. They had seen successes in other fields, right, and their and their comedy specials were doing so well. Yeah, so they're thinking, wait, we know comedy. We know comedy. We we are the people who give comedians that that that cache of I've got an HBO special, I've made it in the business.

So so let's let's let's capitalize on that. Let's take clips from their specials and for movies and just toss them up on the air, and and let's not provide context for them, because that would be too complicated. Let's just let's just like clip the jokes out of their context, and they're going to be just as funny standing on their own as they would be within the UH incorporation of whatever set up there was around that joke, right. You know, actually this sounds a lot like YouTube. This

was forward thinking, this was ahead of its time. Yeah. See that they were trying to follow the model of MTV. You know, they wanted to do what MTV did with music video as they wanted to do with comedy clips. But it failed pretty wildly. Yeah see, it just just was one of those things where unless you had that extra context, you couldn't truly appreciate the joke for what it was. You might find it amusing, but you wouldn't

necessarily find it hilarious. Right. Um. Meanwhile, Viacom launched a rival channel named HA with an exclamation point to nonetheless, which was even worse than than the Comedy Channel. However, they merged these two terrible things together to create the Comedy Network, which eventually became Comedy Central. As we all know, I love right, And so it's interesting to me because one of the things that did happen that helped differentiate

the Comedy Channel from HAW. I didn't put this in our notes, but the Comedy Channel was the channel that started carrying a certain mystery science theater three thousand uh and in fact, I remember that if you've ever read any of the MST three K histories. They talk about how whenever they told people were on the comedy channel, the response was, oh you mean ha oh no, no, no, the other the other college that's called Yeah. So there was some confusion in the marketplace until those two finally

kind of merged into its own unit. But was also when a certain HBO original series premiered, one that had a lasting impression on my childhood me as well, Tales from the Crypt YEP with the crypt Keeper. So this was HBO's second attempt at making a horror anthology series. Yeah. The first one was The Hitchhiker, which nobody cares about. Yeah, I mean I watched it that as a kid too. I mean I grew up during this era. So I

watched The Hitchhiker. But Tales from the Crypt was I mean, I just I just want to give the crypt Keeper a hug. The only thing I have to say about Tells from the Crypt is, uh. It really is unfortunate that their very best episode was also the first episode. It was all downhill after that. The Man Who Was Death phenomenal episode about a crazy executioner who really loses his marbles when the state he's worked ing in Outlaws Capital Punishment. Great episode, great music for that episode. Not

particularly scary, but really well done. Um and sadly, I do not believe any of the subsequent episodes quite lived up to it, even the one that had Tim Curry starring as like four different characters in the single episode. I watched this a lot. Also saw the premiere of the series dream On, which was, you know, a comedy series following a a a divorced guy who was trying to kind of find his place and find love, and

interesting that the show itself was was pretty amusing. Often it had raunchy situations, a lot of gratuitous nudity, both in Tales from the Crypt and dream On, partially because they could get away with it, Like this is HBO, so they're not they're not into the same standards as over the air TV, so and especially if the air later on at night, they're not going to get that

many complaints from parent groups, right. So this was one of those things where because they were able to do it, they were encouraged to do it, even if that wasn't in their plan. When they were making next at a show pitch that ended up being kind of a directive handed down saying, look, guys, throw in some nudity and

some violence in there, because because why not. Well, I mean, that's also part of the point to Tales from the Crypt I think from the beginning is that it was very much one of those old schlock h B movie kind of throwbacks. Well yeah, and very much like The Twilight Zone, the sort of idea of the karma coming back and haunting you, because it was usually about really awful people doing really awful things and then having really

awful things happened to them as a consequence. Sometimes it was not such an awful person and really awful things would happen to them, but it was a general general rule, whereas with dream On it was like lots of cringe humor and and some other stuff. There's some great moments and that I remember when David Bowie showed up and he was phenomenal on dream On. Yeah. See, I watched a lot of HBO when I was a kid. HBO rolls out HBO two, which was later named HBO Plus.

So HBO two is a complementary platform essentially has the same sort of stuff that HBO has, but a different schedule made possible by this signal compression, which allows you

to put multiple channels on a single transmission line. This was a big deal because cable operators didn't want to yield up channels, multiple channels to one provider, all right, They only had so much bandwidth to to to provide and so therefore if you only, for example, have have forty spots to put stuff in, uh, you know, having giving one channel two spots is a big deal, right, exactly when you could be increasing the variety that you're

offering your potential customers. Right, sure, and especially at the time, I want to mention, everyone did not have like seven channels, right, That's what signal compression made possible, because you could actually put multiple channels across one transmission line by compressing the signal of each one and multiplexing them. So with HBO, that meant that they could eventually start creating uh, targeted hbos that would be marketed more towards a specific audience.

So you might have one that has more action movies, for example, and one with more comedy content, or one with more kid friendly stuff. I mean once again, like this gave them the option of doing that without having to put in as big an investment as something like Festival or Take two was. Back in the other episodes you heard us talk about those failed attempts at making this kind of approach, but now the technology existed for them to do it. Also in HBO finally broke into Europe.

Not physically, not like you know, illegally, they actually made a foothold in Europe in Hungary. They had the Hungarian cable system called Cable Calm. That's with Kay's for both the cable and the calm, and that was partly backed by Time Warner. So this system again did not use the satellite system that was common in the United States. They didn't worry about getting a geostationary satellite in orbit above Hungary. They instead made microwave transmission towers to get

the signal out to Cable Upper. Returning to that older technology, which I mean was was less expensive. Overall, it was considered too expensive to to put up a satellite for all of Europe when you've got so many languages in such a small area to work with, right, it was not a practical approach in the case of Europe. I mean, if if everyone in Europe spoke the same language, then

it would be a different story. But with all the different languages and cultures, it meant that HBO had very different products for each country that it started to get into. In fact, that's a story that happens over and over, it's repeated over and over in HBO's history, where they would tailor make the experience for whatever market they were going into. But that meant the microwave transmission approach made

way more sense than satellite. So they start over there, over in Europe, and then they start creeping into some other markets, about fifteen more European markets eventually. Meanwhile, that year they also launched in Central and South America. YEP. Much easier to do, as it turns out, because Central and South America, with the exception of Brazil, share a common language for the most part, So they had Spanish speaking language channels that just broadcast by satellite over South

America and Central America. How the new channel was called HBO ol A. I'm surprised they didn't go with HBoL A. Honestly, don't look at me. I'm not the one who named it. I'm just saying I'm surprised they didn't. They didn't do it that way. Um, yeah, it was available in countries in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. I I don't know how I feel about this HBoL a thing.

I guess probably other folks aren't upset by it. It just seems a little culturally insensible to seem But anyway, HBO gets a coup with The Larry Sanders Show starring Gary Shandling, and you might say, well, how is that a coup? Well, Gary Schandling had really made a big success in the eighties and early nineties with another show called It's Gary Shandling Show, which was a send up of sitcoms that aired on a different station on Showtime,

so direct competitor to HBO. Yeah, so Gary Schandling gets gets uh notoriety through Showtime and the It's Gary Shandling Show, which by the way, I thought was hilarious, and then moves over to HBO for what you could argue was an even better show. The Larry Sanders Show was more of a send up of late night television talk shows like things like The Tonight Show or uh late night type shows, those kind of things, with the character of

Larry Sanders played by Gary Schandling. As this very vain, very petty host and it was supposed to show you kind of the backstage stuff that happens on the shows where on on camera everyone's really friendly and interested in each other, you know, the host has to be engaged with the guest, but then when the cameras go off, they become nasty, petty, terrible people. Uh, And it was

a pretty amusing show. This is also the year when HBO launched another series called Real Sex, which was a magazine format show about sexual matters and had a very frank, open minded approach. They it was a little bit documentary in style, and um, they covered some pretty like some things that could have easily been sensationalized or trivialized or or or portrayed in such a way as to say, aren't these people unusual? But but for the most part

it was. It was pretty welcoming of the unusual, which was which was really nice. Actually, I mean, and I'm not saying that it wasn't. I mean, you know, they were putting it on the air, I think largely because sex exactly some reason why they had so many so

much gratuitous nudity on dream On, you know. But but at the same time, the uh Michael, folks, you know, the CEO of HBO said, look, this series is what's giving us the money to fund all the documentaries that you guys love, and we're trying to deal with this frank subject matter in a way that's respectful, which could have easily gone a different way. So yeah, Also, uh then HBO expands yet again. See now they're entering into a new era of expansion where they're getting new customers.

They're not able to invent new customers in the United States. Uh, you know, people do that on their own, but they're not able to create a new market. So what they did was they started to expand in other parts of the world. So in the launched HBO Asia, which initially service the Philippines and Thailand, but eventually, through multiplexing, the service would be available in several Asian languages and spread the twenty three nations. I think Mandarin Chinese was probably

their biggest. Uh bet on that one. I would imagine this an enormous population in China. So h Then in nine four HBO l A yeah, God, that's cringe worthy.

They launched a second channel in Center in South America UM as well as a Portuguese language channel in Brazil, so once again expanding in other markets, and Michael Folks gets promoted to overseeing all of Warner Music, and Jeff Bukes, who we mentioned in the previous episode, steps up as the new head of HBO, and in we get the premiere of one of I would say a predecessor to

the really big breakout hits of HBO original program. It was the first hour long drama series produced for HBO, and that was Oz Yes, which of course was the drama series about a maximum security prison and the shenanigans they go on inside. Shenanigans is maybe a shanking, let's let's of Uh. Yeah, And i never watched the series myself, but but I've heard many colorful things about it. Yeah, it was. It was rough. It was a rough series.

But again, it was one of those things that HBO did because one they knew there was going to be a market for it, and to no one else could really do it. They didn't have the money for it, and they couldn't do it on broadcast television, basic cable. So uh, that ended up getting some notice, but it wasn't a breakaway hit yet. HBO produces a mini series called From From the Earth to the Moon, which was a big budget mini series. It was produced by Tom

Hanks and Ron Howard. Tom Hanks did not star in it, he was just a producer behind the camera. Mostly starred actors who were not recognizable to most the audience, and that was on purpose. It was to be able to put the focus on the drama of the story and to recreate the time of the story without distracting by saying, Oh, it's such and such from so and so. Also to lower the costs a little bit, I imagine probably also

a factor. So this particular model would end up serving as an example for future mini series that HBO would deduced, including things like Band of Brothers or John Adams. There was another one called Generation Kill, which probably is not as well known as those two, but other ones as well. So this was an approach to producing mini series which

HBO had not really done. It tried a couple in the early eighties, but in general had stayed away from mini series and had only been producing open ended series where run it season after season until you get tired and you stopped doing it. Uh one one of those that that happened that began Sex in the City at debut that year, and and as we all know, became a pretty wildly successful spawned two films. I mean, it

was a big, big hit. Lots of people either loved it or hated it, or loved to hate it, love to hate it. I never ever watched it. My knowledge of sex Sex in the City was based solely upon other people's conversations, and just like I was aware of it culturally, but I never watched the show. And uh, I got the feeling that I probably it. Probably I'm not the right audience for that particular. I'm not sure either.

I a fellow that I dated loved it and and maybe watch the entire thing, so I hear past tense, delightful fellow, Okay, alright, fair, fair enough, all right. Well, anyway, Sex in the City, uh, Sex and the City, I should say, ends up being one the first of the big three uh breakaway hits of HBO originals. We've got two more to talk about that that round this out. But before we get to that, let's take a quick

break to thank our sponsor. All Right, it's nine, It's the year after Sex in the City debuts and gives HBO. It's first real incredible popular SHIPBO ends up debuting another original series that kind of sets the tone for what HBO original programming is all about, at least for several series that follow behind. The Sopranos, obviously one of the most important series in HBO history, not only that, but

in cable history, because The Sopranos was critically acclaimed. It was not just successful, the critics loved it, and it would win Emmy's in two thousand four and two thousand seven. It was nominated for Emmy's every single year that it was eligible to do so, because remember The Sopranos was one of those shows that would go on a hiatus for more than a year, but it would garner more than it would garner a hundred and eleven nominations over the span of its life. So this was a cable

show winning an Emmy. Now that's a big deal because for a while, cable television was looked down on, like it was looked at something that was always pretending to be as good as broadcast TV. And so the Emmys were for broadcast television. That's where the quality programming was. And and and furthermore, something that might be a CD or or a little bit patronizing. Um but yeah, but with with Something is as hard hitting and dramatic and beautiful as the Sopranos. It was a hit. Yeah, So we

started to see cable shows being taken seriously. They no longer needed to have their own little UH Awards ceremony. The ACE Cable Awards were around back in the day where because they weren't really eligible for the Emmys, they were only eligible for for ACE Cable nominations. The Sopranos definitely knocked that door wide open by consistently being one of the most nominated shows while it was on the air.

So it really did change the entertainment industry. It's yet another reason why we talked so much about HBO because again, I had this huge effect on how things happened following. You know, the stuff that HBO would try, whether it was successful or not, it would end up impacting the rest of the industry and other industries as well. So then in two thousand we get the third of the Big Three. We've already got Sex in the City, We've

already got the Sopranos, So what comes next? Under Yeah, this was a show about two brothers who inherit their father's funeral service business after their father passes away. And it was a weird series. It's one of those series it's really difficult to describe to someone who's never seen it, because there were episodes where there's stuff that happened that was pretty funny, there was stuff that happened that was really tragic. There was stuff that happened where you felt

like there would be no scenery left unchewed. I mean it was you couldn't easily range. So it was one of those that ended up again being wildly successful. So that's why you've got the Big three, and Oz was not part of the Big three because even though it was fairly popular and fairly well critically acclaimed, it never reached that same level of popularity as the other the other three. I think it was a little bit less

palatable to a very large market. Yeah. Yeah, there's another big show we'll be talking about briefly that had a similar issue that it appealed to one particular market really really well and other markets not so well. So two thousand two, we have Jeff Bucks getting promoted to president and chief operating officer of Time Warner. So now he has left HBO and joined the you know that not left it, but he's now the head of the parent company. And so Chris Albrecht takes Bukes's place as head of HBO,

and all Breck would end up struggling a bit. He was very big on taking chances, and he launched a lot of different programs on HBO, but he was really trying to aim to to continue this momentum of the Big Three, to make another series that was just as impactful and compelling as those, and as it turns out, that's really hard to do. Sometimes you're just lucky, you know, you just strike on the right formula that just happens

to resonate with the audience. Uh. And so even though they produced a lot of different shows, and many of them were really good ones, they didn't really hit the popularity of the Big Three, and so HBO was kind of kind of floundering a little bit, you know, trying lots of different stuff and occasionally launching something really ambitious and then pulling the plug when realizing that okay, this is this isn't that it wasn't making them as much money as they thought it would have been. In two

thousand three, a show like that launched. It was called Carnival, which I personally love so much. It's really important. It's got the Kurrigan in it, so I mean, you can't really go wrong. Oh yeah, yeah, the Kurrigan. As as of course his philosophy. We should all remember it's better to burn out the feet away. Thank you, thank you for that. Uh. And so it had excellent critical reception. It It got five Emmy's among fifteen nominations over the two seasons that it was on the air, which is

pretty incredible. Um. But it was also costing the company two million dollars per episode, and um yeah, it's the first in this whole range of series that HBO would start pursuing. Um. But also that year, Time Warner sold its stake in Comedy Central to Viacom for one point to three billion dollars. So now Time Warner is out of the comedy biz as far as Comedy Central is concerned. But is still, of course, HBO is still very much

known for its comedy specials. And then in two thousand four we get an amazing comedy Deadwood, a silly little show about cowboys. Deadwood was plenty funny. Um yeah, I guess if you found, uh, if you found if you found the multiple uses of certain incredibly blue phrases to be amusing, I did. Yeah. Well, no, I can't blame you.

I've only ever seen two episodes and they weren't connected to each other, but they were both fascinating, and so it's It's one of those things where I really wish I had been able to watch the whole series and just stick around, folks, because I'm about to get excited towards the end of this podcast. But yeah, so it's it's a Shakespearean Western. The language was very much inspired by Shakespeare. Now I'm a Shakespearean scholar, so and I love Westerns, so both of these things appealed to me.

But it's absolutely filthy. Shakespearean Shakespeare's absolutely filthy. Just that's true. Where the words don't mean the same thing anymore, that's fair. So yeah. Then they also launched in two thousand four Entourage, which was a show about making fun of the Hollywood lifestyle and trying to break into Hollywood. Uh, and and being a hanger on to someone who has met with

some meager success. Uh. It has fewer foul mouth cowboys in it, but Albrett really struggled to get another big hit like The Sopranos, and most of the shows that he produced were either critically acclaimed but sparsely watched, or they were just outright panned. So a couple of the ones that didn't do well at all were with titles like K Street and Unscripted, and that's two series that

most people don't talk about anymore. Then there was also Louis c Kay's Lucky Louis sitcom, which didn't do very well either. Um, of course would pave the way for the actual series Louis, which is not on HBO, but the this earlier attempt was not a success. Now, Deadwood lasted three seasons and then was very quietly killed off because HBO didn't want to make a big deal out of ending Deadwood. I mean, their their whole like corporate identity was that we produced shows that other people cannot

or will not do. We have that money, we have that flexibility, we have the customers who want it, so we're gonna do it well. And then they realized, oh, we might not actually have that much money. Yeah, Deadwood, as it turns out, another very expensive changing the period, costume drama with really big actors and yeah, really big actors, really really expensive set pieces, and I mean it was

a very ambitious show that cost a lot of money. Meanwhile, they also had The Wire, which had an even smaller audience than Deadwood did, but the Wire was less expensive to produce and was also critically acclaimed. Yeah it was. It was still very much critically aclaimed. So if you've got two series and you've got one that's really expensive and it's critically acclaimed, but only seems to be attracting mostly a male audience because men tend to like Westerns

and women tend not to. Those are just general trends, obviously not descriptive of everyone everywhere. So don't write me and tell me how you are a woman who loves Westerns and then I'm wrong. I actually wonder how the numbers on dead would chook out. Now I need to research this well. At any rate, they weren't good enough HBO, so they wanted to very quietly kind of back off. And they had originally said that they were thinking about

doing four seasons, they actually only did three. Um, they said that they were going to do two movies to follow up and tie up all the loose ends which had never never have happened. They haven't surfaced, So pretty sure that that ship has sailed to mix some cowboy pirate metaphors. But but the Wire they kept going because it was critically claimed and cheap. Yeah, so this way they got the benefit of having a critically acclaimed television show on their network, but it wasn't a huge financial

loss to the company. It was and to be fair, involved fewer contrasting plaids, which I know not everybody appreciates to the level that I do. You obviously haven't watched The Wire season two. Contrasting Plaids was the subtitle of that season. I just made all that up. But yeah, so so that's you know, they wanted to have the benefit of having this kind of critically acclaimed programming on their channel, but obviously not have the albatross of an

incredibly expensive production around the corporate neck. Yeah, which is why in two thousand five they started realm Okay, so clearly they did not. Maybe they learned from the mistakes and that's how they were able to repeat them almost exactly. Well, I think that they learned to those I think that they made those mistakes after Rome had already premiered that they were still and that excited, let's do everything we want to do phase with Rome um. But it was

also very expensive, hard to get viewers into it. They did, they canceled it after two seasons. Now. Of course, originally they had talked about just being a mini series where it would have only have been uh something like twelve episodes, but then they said that there it would come back for a second season, and sometime in that second season they're like, whoops, okay, let's just let this quietly die too, And there's only so many times you can watch someone

fall out of a toga. I guess. Yeah. By the way, still in that era of hey, we can get away with it because we're on We're a paid television station, so let's create content, there's lots of gratuitous violence and or nudity. Rome had plenty of both two thousand seven. In November of two thousand seven, a major event happened that affected all all television channels everywhere because at least in the United States, well, all television channels that were

producing original content. Yeah, because that's when the Writer's Guild of America had a strike. Now, Yeah, animation was fine because they weren't in the writer's guild. I knew a lot of animators who were grumbling about this. But the Writer's Guild of America had a strike, and so HBO had banked a lot of stuff that helped them kind of coast through the writer's strike without too much trouble. They had the mini series John Adams that helped them

get through it. They had another season of The Wire that helped them get through it. But HBO did not get through two thousand seven without some major trouble. For example, Chris Albrecht, the of HBO, was arrested following a physical altercation. It was actually he was arrested because he uh physically threatened his girlfriend at the time. Yeah, that's not good. And apparently it wasn't his first offense either. Yeah, and time Warner called for his resignation. Actually, I read the

letter he wrote. Albrecht wrote where he was very frank and admitted guilt and said, I thought I had put these problems behind me. I was. I was an alcoholic. I went to Alcoholics Anonymous two years ago. I thought, you know, I can handle drinking alcohol, and clearly I was wrong, So he was very much admitting his fault in it. Uh so at least there's that. I mean, it's still a terrible, terrible thing. But um, he didn't

deny it, so I guess that's something. So Time Warner now is saying, all right, well, what are we gonna do with HBO? Who's gonna lead it? There was not a specific person that they could point to and say, this is the person upon whose show, whose shoulders HBO should rest, So they ended up picking three people to kind of divide up the the entire job of ruling this kingdom, all of whom had been working for HBO

since the nineties. Yep, you had Bill Nelson who became the CEO of HBO, Eric Kessler became one of the co presidents, and the other was Richard Plepler. And yeah, they all had experience. Richard Plepler did not have any experience in programming going into it, but would turn out to have some very keen ideas on where to go.

Because remember this is still when HBO is trying to recapture the glory of the Big Three and try and find another another original series that they can they can really be proud of and they can, that can carry the company. So around the same time, in two thousand seven, little upstart company called Netflix, which had been in business for a few years, announced that it was going to create a streaming service, an online streaming service. All right.

They had already been offering DVDs via mail, but at this point they started offering streaming. Yep. So, uh, this becomes another competitor to HBO because HBO now they still have as part of their business this idea of uncensored, uncut movies that you can watch, but with Netflix streaming, at least watch them whenever you want. Yeah, assuming assuming that the title is in their library, which we all

know is a huge assumption. And and and furthermore, they obviously at that time, we're not making their own original content. Yeah yeah, Netflix was pretty much beholden to whatever uh studios were producing content at that time. But yeah, this was another another competitor, and it was outside the cable industry. Everyone got a little nervous at this point, including HBO. Oh sure sure. Speaking of that original content, however, in two thousand eight, HBO debuted True Blood um, which was

really its first, its first big hit since those Big Three. Yeah, yeah, this one was a huge hit. It was extremely popular. You can debate upon whether or not it merits that I know there are such debates. I never watched the series, so I can't comment one way that it's terrible. I love it. Yeah, okay, I mean terrible things have their place in this world. Uh. Then other shows such as Boardwalk, Empire,

The news Room, and Veep followed. So these were shows that didn't necessarily have the same following as the Big three, but again, we're critically acclaimed, seemed to be popular among the audiences that really love these shows. Um. And then you started seeing a couple of major breakthrough hits that that followed. So yeah, yeah it stuff like Girls and Game of Thrones. Do I can't do anymore because they'll they'll take us down. Uh yeah No, Game of Thrones,

big big hit obviously for HBO. Um. I don't have HBO. By the way, this is where I mentioned I don't own HBO. But I read all the books, so you can't spoil me, su Yeah, you can tell me about stuff that happened in the show but didn't happen the books. But here's the thing, I don't care because I read the books. So to me, that's the story. So bring it, is what I'm saying, unless your name is George R. R R. Martin,

in which case, do not bring it, sir. I will be happy to read it when you publish it, and take your time. Take your time, sir, as long as you need. Yeah. No, no, no no. As as Neil Gaiman once said, George R. Martin is not your bitch. Yeah, okay. And then Paul and Storm sang a song, and then George R. Martin came out and broke their their guitars. It's a great, great moment on YouTube. Look it up. For for the record, I've also read the books. You

cannot spoil me either. Yes, that's a challenge unless you're George R. Martin. Yeah, I don't. I don't want him writing in and say guess which Stark dies next. I totally want him to do that. Actually, come on, it would be the best. Well, then we can hold it over everyone else's George R. Martin, if you're listening, please write it's spoil me, spoil Lauren. We'd have to give him just your email address and the one that I give out of the end, it goes to both of us.

Lauren this is this is irresponsible of you. All right, just send her a direct tweet. Okay. So in two, HBO launches HBO Go, which is its online streaming service for HBO subscribers, which allow HBO customers to watch content on demand for the is time, only three years after Netflix had already been doing the same thing. And of course it's limited to just people who will Theoretically, it's

limited to just people who have an HBO subscription. So if you do not subscribe to cable and subscribe to HBO, you cannot access HBO Go legally. I say legally because it is my understanding and again I do not do. This is my understanding that some people occasionally will lend out their log ins to friends or family who do not have HBO so that they can watch things. In fact, that'll tie into, uh, something we're gonna talk about in just a moment. Now, we're we're finally up to current day.

So here's the thing. We don't have to take the way back machine back to present day because we are in present day now. So the way back machine took Yeah. Now, granted we have been traveling through time for three episodes and it's gotten a little warm in this room. Yeah, because that's the problem with being in this way back machine. It's like a quarter of the size of our studio. So it's been a little, been a little let's just go ahead and step out right now. Okay, that's better. Yeah,

that's way better. All right, So we're in present day now. First of all, Uh, Game of Thrones, that that series we mentioned just a couple of points ago before we got off on our George R. Martin, please spoil us brand. Uh, it's turned out to be the most pirated show in

the world. Almost more people illegally downloaded the Game of Thrones premiere for season four than the next closest rival, which was The Walking Dead, So almost more people, and that shows that the show is incredibly popular, and in fact, in April fourteen, Game of Thrones broke the record for most pirated episode within the first twenty four hours of going live, with one point one seven million unique IP

addresses torrenting the premiere of season four. So that doesn't count all the people who used uh someone else's HBO go profile. Okay, but but but I but I want to say here it's drawing some seventeen million legit viewers per episode. Well legit or legit ish um, you know, you know again, not not counting people who are stealing that password. Um. But the thing is is that HBO

officially does not care about that thing. CEO Richard Pepler has said, uh, and I quote it's a terrific marketing vehicle for the next generation of viewers, and also quote, we're in the business of creating addicts. They've actually noticed that people have subscribe to HBO after pirating stuff because they wanted to have access to this and I didn't want the problems of either using someone else's HBO Go pass, which might crash, because that's happened a couple of times.

It happened on the premiere of season four. Too many people were trying to access the HBO Go network and as a result, it crashed under the demand, which caused a lot of people to complain. I maintained that the complaining we're borrowing someone else's HBO Go pass. I think that's probably an accurate I haven't done any research on this. This is based upon the people I saw on Twitter complaining. I'm like, you don't subscribe to HBO, you're using someone

else's pass. And you're complaining that doesn't work entitled much anyway, in the business of creating addicts, it's working. It's work. Apparently it works really well. So, yeah, it seems like it's going pretty well. Uh see, I guess I see some figures here you've got in this in this notes here, Lauren. Yeah, they're they're doing pretty okay. They're they're operating at a thirty six percent profit margin of the some one point

three billion dollars they rake in every year. UM. They currently have some a hundred and thirty million subscribers worldwide, and n HBO that their subscription base is growing faster than it has in the past seventeen years. To be fair, Netflix is growing even faster still and has surpassed HBO in the number of subscribers. It did so back in

Q three. UM. But Netflix is operating costs are a whole lot higher, being that it's still busy building its original content and investing in all of those new markets. And HBO recently made a partnership with a direct competitor to Netflix that could really shake things up. We're talking about Amazon Prime. Yeah, yeah, they they announced a deal where Amazon is going to get to stream a bunch of HBO's original content, um, not all of it. I think that Game Thrones in Sex and the City were

both left out of the deal. Game of Thrones specifically, not surprising anyone has left out of the deal. Yeah, but a lot of their older content, in particular things like The Sopranos and say Deadwood, will be allowed to stream on Amazon Prime. So that has me really excited because now I'll finally get to watch both those shows. I am not seen them so to me. I mean, granted, I know a lot about what happens in them, it's just culturally you do. Oh sure, sure, but but that's

not that's not really the point. Now. The performances and the exit cution uh and literal senses in both in both those shows are what will be really interesting to me because I've always heard so much about them. Now I hope that I'm able to go in with with managed expectations and not just you know, super hyped, because obviously very few things live up to a super hyped expectations. But I'm looking forward to seeing them. Honestly, Deadwood lived

up to the hype for me. I'm I'm looking forward to seeing it from the beginning, because like I said, I only saw two episodes completely out of context, and that was that was troubling under age listeners. These these shows are for mature audiences only or immature. Does that let me out immature mature audiences? Uh yeah so uh so, so don't go, don't don't go running out and watching this and parents and ptition that that would be, you know, don't don't be like Jonathan was watching Tales from the

Crypt when he was a little kid. Clearly no damage was done to either of us. We turned out completely normal. Um. But at any rate, now, this this entire Amazon deal, especially with Amazon expanding its empire to include that new fire TV gig, that that ninety nine dollar Internet TV device streaming thing, um, could potentially mean a bit of a crunch for Netflix. Yeah yeah, I mean this is this is the next era, right, So I'm sure Netflix's response will be to go and invest even more in

original programming, because again, you have to differentiate yourself. Um. They you know, they've had some very famous issues with keeping films in their libraries and licensing licenses expiring. People get upset about that. The funny thing is that's the way it's worked ever since this whole pay TV model even started. I mean HBO had the same issues where they would have a movie under license and then the license expires and they don't have access to that film anymore.

That's why you're not going to see Star Wars all the time. It's only whenever the license comes up and they're allowed to show them. Also, as we said in our streaming content episodes, Netflix's game plan right now is too and and I think this was the quote, become HBO before HBO can become us. Yeah, so the race is on. Both both of them are are racing all the gates and uh, we don't know. Maybe they'll maybe they'll be a photo finish. Maybe we'll have two amazing

content providers that we all enjoy. Maybe one will come out on top. We'll have to wait and see. But yeah, it's been great getting a chance to talk about HBO. And we know that we really went super in depth with this one, and that's not normally what we do with our episodes, but in this case, because it had such an impact on the way cable television works today and the reason we even have cable in our our cities,

we felt that it merited this kind of discussion. So, guys, if you have any any topics you want us to cover, whether it's you know, crazy in depth version, or you just hey, there's this these eight things that none of them would probably make a full episode, but I want to know about all eight. Could you answer these questions? Send us your questions, send us your suggestions. Let's know on email, we got an email address. It's text stuff

at Discovery dot com. We get a lot of people sending email to how Stuff Works asking what our email addresses. Let me repeat it, it's tech stuff at Discovery dot com. Or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler, or handle it. All three is tex stuff hs W and we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and bousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com