Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Johan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all Things Tech. And we are in another
Speaker 1: classic episode, folks. This episode originally published May twelve, two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen. It is the third part of our HBO story,
Speaker 1: the conclusion at that point of the HBO Story. Obviously, again,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff has happened since then, so at
Speaker 1: some point I will need to do a big update.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you think that that's a good idea,
Speaker 1: let me know on Twitter. I usually save this for
Speaker 1: the end, but on Twitter we use the handle tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W, So if you ever have a suggestion,
Speaker 1: send it my way through there. But now let's go
Speaker 1: back and listen to this classic episode the HBO Story,
Speaker 1: Part three. So July to nine, Time Incorporated acquires a
Speaker 1: fifty nine point three percent steak and a little company
Speaker 1: called Warner Communications Incorporated's creating Time Warner Incorporated the largest
Speaker 1: media and entertainment company in the world, and the following year,
Speaker 1: Time Incorporate would acquire the remainder of Warner Communications, making
Speaker 1: it a fully integrated company, So now it's even larger
Speaker 1: media giant. HBO is still a big player in that
Speaker 1: enormous corporation, And that same year HBO would launch HBOS
Speaker 1: lesion Is and Espanol, later renamed HBO Espanol and then
Speaker 1: later renamed HBO Latino. So you may have guessed. This
Speaker 1: is a channel that offered in parallel with HBO for
Speaker 1: certain Spanish speaking markets about twenty initially, and took advantage
Speaker 1: of something called the secondary Audio program or s a
Speaker 1: P to replace the English speaking track with a span
Speaker 1: of speaking one. And it was a big success, so
Speaker 1: much so that other markets began to add this to
Speaker 1: their service, and so much so that eventually they would
Speaker 1: start producing their own original content for those markets. Right,
Speaker 1: so instead of just say, taking an HBO original that
Speaker 1: was done in English and redubbing it, they actually made
Speaker 1: their own award winning HBO originals. So you could, if
Speaker 1: you were a Spanish speaking person, watch these and and
Speaker 1: really appreciate that same sort of approach HBO had to
Speaker 1: making entertainment in English speaking countries or Spanish speaking ones.
Speaker 1: Now this was still in the United States. HBO has
Speaker 1: not branched out into other countries as of yet so
Speaker 1: this was for Spanish speaking populations within the US, which
Speaker 1: you know, stirred up some cultural issues in certain markets
Speaker 1: with people who might not be as um progressive in
Speaker 1: some ways. Let's to be really diplomatic about it, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, it was a bold move and it
Speaker 1: paid off. And then HBO helped roll out another channel.
Speaker 1: They were behind the development of the Comedy Channel. So
Speaker 1: their idea was to create a special channel specifically catering
Speaker 1: to comedy. They had seen successes in other fields, right,
Speaker 1: and their and their comedy specials for doing so well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're thinking, wait, we know comedy, we know comedy.
Speaker 1: We we are the people who give comedians that that
Speaker 1: that cashe of. I've got an HBO special, I've made
Speaker 1: it in the business. So so let's let's let's capitalize
Speaker 1: on that. Let's take clips from the specials and for
Speaker 1: movies and just toss them up on the air, and
Speaker 1: and let's not provide context for them, because that would
Speaker 1: be too complicated. Let's just let's just like clip the
Speaker 1: jokes out of their context and they're going to be
Speaker 1: just as funny standing on their own as they would
Speaker 1: be within the UH. Incorporation of whatever set up there
Speaker 1: was around that joke, right. You know, actually this sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like YouTube. This was forward thinking, this was
Speaker 1: ahead of its time. Yeah. See that they were trying
Speaker 1: to follow the model of MTV. You know, they wanted
Speaker 1: to do what MTV did with music videos, they wanted
Speaker 1: to do with comedy clips. But it failed pretty wildly.
Speaker 1: Yeah see, it just just was one of those things
Speaker 1: where unless you had that extra context, you couldn't truly
Speaker 1: appreciate the joke for what it was. You might find
Speaker 1: it amusing, but you wouldn't necessarily find it hilarious. Right. Um. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Viacom launched a rival channel named HA with an exclamation
Speaker 1: point to nontheless, which was even worse than than the
Speaker 1: Comedy Channel. However, they merged these two terrible things together
Speaker 1: to create the Comedy Network, which eventually became Comedy Central.
Speaker 1: As we all know, I love right and so h
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me because one of the things that
Speaker 1: did happen that helped differentiate the Comedy Channel from HAW.
Speaker 1: I didn't put this in our notes, but the Comedy
Speaker 1: Channel was the channel that started carrying a certain mystery
Speaker 1: science theater three thousand uh and in fact, I remember that.
Speaker 1: If you've ever read any of the MST three K histories,
Speaker 1: they talk about how whenever they told people were on
Speaker 1: the comedy channel, the response was, oh, you mean ha
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, the other the other comedy that's
Speaker 1: called Yeah. So there was some confusion in the marketplace
Speaker 1: until those two finally kind of merged into its own unit.
Speaker 1: But was also when a certain HBO original series premiered,
Speaker 1: one that had a lasting impression on my childhood me
Speaker 1: as well, Tales from the Crypt YEP with the crypt Keeper.
Speaker 1: So this was HBO's second attempt at making a horror
Speaker 1: anthology series. Yeah. The first one was The Hitchhiker, which
Speaker 1: nobody cares about. Yeah, I mean I watched it that
Speaker 1: as a kid too. I mean I grew up during
Speaker 1: this era, So I watched The Hitchhiker. But Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypt was I mean, I just I just want
Speaker 1: to give the crypt Keeper a hug. The only thing
Speaker 1: I have to say about Tells from the Crypt is, uh.
Speaker 1: It really is unfortunate that their very best episode was
Speaker 1: also the first episode. It was all downhill after that.
Speaker 1: The Man Who Was Death phenomenal episode about a crazy
Speaker 1: uh executioner who really loses his marbles when the state
Speaker 1: he's working in outlaws Capital punishment. Great episode, great music
Speaker 1: for that episode. Not particularly scary, but really well done.
Speaker 1: Um and sadly, I do not believe any of the
Speaker 1: subsequent episodes quite lived up to it, even the one
Speaker 1: that had Tim Curry starring as like four different characters
Speaker 1: in the single episode. I watched this a lot. Also
Speaker 1: saw the premiere of the series dream On, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, a comedy series following a a a divorced
Speaker 1: guy who was trying to kind of find his place
Speaker 1: and find love, and interesting that the show itself was
Speaker 1: was pretty amusing. Often it had raunchy situations, a lot
Speaker 1: of gratuitous nudity, both in Tales from the Crypt and
Speaker 1: dream On, partially because they could get away with it,
Speaker 1: like this is HBO, so they're not they're not the
Speaker 1: same standards as over the air TV SO and especially
Speaker 1: the air later on at night. They're not going to
Speaker 1: get that many complaints from parent groups, right, So this
Speaker 1: was one of those things where because they were able
Speaker 1: to do it, they were encouraged to do it, even
Speaker 1: if that wasn't in their plan when they were making
Speaker 1: next at a show pitch that ended up being kind
Speaker 1: of a directive handed down saying, look, guys, throw in
Speaker 1: some nudity and some violence in there, because because why not. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's also part of the point of Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypt I think from the beginning is that
Speaker 1: it was very much one of those old schlock h
Speaker 1: B movie kind of throwbacks. Well yeah, and very much
Speaker 1: like The Twilight Zone, the sort of idea of the
Speaker 1: karma coming back and haunting you, because it was usually
Speaker 1: about really awful people doing really awful things and then
Speaker 1: having really awful things happened to them as a consequence.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was not such an awful person and really
Speaker 1: awful things would happen to them, but it was a
Speaker 1: general general rule, whereas with dream On it was like
Speaker 1: lots of cringe humor and and some other stuff. There's
Speaker 1: some great moments and that I remember when David Bowie
Speaker 1: showed up and he was phenomenal on dream On. See.
Speaker 1: I watched a lot of HBO when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: HBO rolls out HBO two, which was later named HBO Plus.
Speaker 1: So HBO two is a complementary platform essentially has the
Speaker 1: same sort of stuff that HBO has, but a different
Speaker 1: schedule made possible by this signal compression, which allows you
Speaker 1: to put multiple channels on a single transmission line. This
Speaker 1: was a big deal because cable operators didn't want to
Speaker 1: yield up channels multiple channels to one provider, all right,
Speaker 1: They only had so much bandwidth to to to provide
Speaker 1: and so therefore if you only, for example, have have
Speaker 1: forty spots to put stuff in, uh, you know, having
Speaker 1: giving one channel two spots is a big deal, right,
Speaker 1: exactly when you could be increasing the variety that you're
Speaker 1: offering your potential customers, right, sure, and especially at the time,
Speaker 1: I want to mention, everyone did not have like seven channels, right,
Speaker 1: That's what signal compression made possible, because you could actually
Speaker 1: put multiple channels across one transmission line by compressing the
Speaker 1: signal of each one in multiplexing them. So with HBO,
Speaker 1: that meant that they could eventually start creating uh, targeted
Speaker 1: hbos that would be marketed more towards a specific audience.
Speaker 1: So you might have one that has more action movies,
Speaker 1: for example, and one with more comedy content or one
Speaker 1: with more kid friendly stuff. I mean once again, like
Speaker 1: this gave them the option of doing that without having
Speaker 1: to put in as big an investment as something like
Speaker 1: Festival or Take two was. Back in the other episodes
Speaker 1: you heard us talk about those failed attempts at making
Speaker 1: this kind of approach, but now the technology existed for
Speaker 1: them to do it. Also in HBO finally broke into Europe.
Speaker 1: Not physically, not like you know, illegally, they actually made
Speaker 1: a foothold in Europe in Hungary. They had the Hungarian
Speaker 1: cable system called Cable Calm. That's with Kay's for both
Speaker 1: the cable and the calm, and that was partly backed
Speaker 1: by Time Warner. So this system again did not use
Speaker 1: satellite system that was common in the United States. They
Speaker 1: didn't worry about getting a geostationary satellite in orbit above Hungary.
Speaker 1: They instead made microwave transmission towers to get the signal
Speaker 1: out to cable uper returning to that older technology, which
Speaker 1: I mean was was less expensive. Overall, it was considered
Speaker 1: too expensive to to put up a satellite for all
Speaker 1: of Europe when you've got so many languages in such
Speaker 1: a small area to work with, right, it was not
Speaker 1: a practical approach in the case of Europe. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if everyone in Europe spoke the same language, then
Speaker 1: it would be a different story. But with all the
Speaker 1: different languages and cultures, it meant that HBO had very
Speaker 1: different products for each country that it started to get into.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's a story that happens over and over.
Speaker 1: It's repeated over and over in HBO's history, where they
Speaker 1: would tailor make the experience for whatever market they were
Speaker 1: going into. But that meant the microwave transmission approach made
Speaker 1: way more sense than satellite. So they start over there,
Speaker 1: over in Europe, and then they start creeping into some
Speaker 1: other markets, about fifteen more European markets eventually. Meanwhile, that
Speaker 1: year they also launched in Central and South America. YEP.
Speaker 1: Much easier to do, as it turns out, because Central
Speaker 1: and South America, with the exception of Brazil, share a
Speaker 1: common language for the most part, so they had Spanish
Speaker 1: speaking language channels that just broadcast by satellite over South
Speaker 1: America and Central America. How the new channel was called
Speaker 1: HBO ol A. I'm surprised they didn't go with HBoL A. Honestly,
Speaker 1: don't look at me. I'm not the one who named it.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I'm surprised they didn't. They didn't do
Speaker 1: it that way. Um. Yeah, it was available in countries
Speaker 1: in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. I I
Speaker 1: don't know how I feel about this HBO ol a thing.
Speaker 1: I guess probably other folks aren't upset by it. It
Speaker 1: just seems a little culturally insensible to me. But anyway,
Speaker 1: HBO gets a coup with The Larry Sanders Show starring
Speaker 1: Gary Schandling, and you might say, well, how is that
Speaker 1: a coup? Well, Gary Schandling had really made a big
Speaker 1: success in the eighties and early nineties with another show
Speaker 1: called It's Gary Shandling Show, which was a send up
Speaker 1: of sitcoms, and that aired on a different station, on Showtime,
Speaker 1: so direct competitor to HBO. Yeah, so Gary Schandling gets
Speaker 1: gets uh notoriety through Showtime and the It's Gary Shandling Show,
Speaker 1: which by the way, I thought was hilarious, and then
Speaker 1: moves over to HBO for what you could argue was
Speaker 1: an even better show. The Larry Sanders Show was more
Speaker 1: of a send up of late night television talk shows
Speaker 1: like things like The Tonight Show or uh late night
Speaker 1: type shows, those kind of things, with the character of
Speaker 1: Larry Sanders played by Gary Schandling as this very vain,
Speaker 1: very petty host And it was supposed to show you
Speaker 1: kind of the backstage stuff that happens on these shows
Speaker 1: where on on camera everyone's really friendly and interested in
Speaker 1: each other, you know, the host has to be engaged
Speaker 1: with the guest, but then when the cameras go off,
Speaker 1: they become nasty, petty, terrible people. Uh. And it was
Speaker 1: a pretty amusing show. This is also the year when
Speaker 1: HBO launched another series called Real Sex, which was a
Speaker 1: magazine format show about sexual matters and had a very frank,
Speaker 1: open minded approach. They it was a little bit documentary
Speaker 1: and style and um, they covered some pretty like some
Speaker 1: things that could have easily been sensationalized or trivialized or
Speaker 1: or or portrayed in such a way as to say,
Speaker 1: aren't these people unusual? But but for the most part
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty welcoming of the unusual, which
Speaker 1: was which was really nice. Actually, I mean, and I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that it wasn't. I mean, you know, they
Speaker 1: were putting it on the air. I think largely because
Speaker 1: sex exactly some reason why they had so many so
Speaker 1: much gratuitous nudity on dream on you know. But but
Speaker 1: at the same time, the uh Michael folks, you know,
Speaker 1: the CEO of of HBO said, look, this series is
Speaker 1: what's giving us the money to fund all the documentaries
Speaker 1: that you guys love, and we're trying to deal with
Speaker 1: this frank subject matter in a way that's respectful, which
Speaker 1: could have easily gone a different way. So yeah, Also, uh,
Speaker 1: the HBO expands yet again. See now they're entering into
Speaker 1: a new era of expansion where they're getting new customers.
Speaker 1: They're not able to invent new customers in the United States. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people do that on their own, but they're
Speaker 1: not able to create a new market. So what they
Speaker 1: did was they started to expand in other parts of
Speaker 1: the world. So in the launched HBO Asia, which initially
Speaker 1: service the Philippines and Thailand, but eventually through multiplexing, the
Speaker 1: service would be available in uh several Asian languages and
Speaker 1: spread to twenty three nations. I think Mandarin Chinese was
Speaker 1: probably their biggest uh bet on that one. I would
Speaker 1: imagine enormous population in China. Oh yes. Uh. Then in
Speaker 1: HBO l A yeah, God, that's cringe. Where they know
Speaker 1: they launched a second channel in Center in South America
Speaker 1: as well as a Portuguese language channel in Brazil, so
Speaker 1: once again expanding in other markets, and Michael Folks gets
Speaker 1: promoted to overseeing all of Warner Music, and Jeff Bukes,
Speaker 1: who we mentioned in the previous episode, steps up as
Speaker 1: the new head of HBO, and in we get the
Speaker 1: premiere of one of I would say a predecessor to
Speaker 1: the really big breakout hits of HBO original program. It
Speaker 1: was the first hour long drama series produced for HBO,
Speaker 1: and that was Oz Yes, which of course was the
Speaker 1: drama series about a maximum security prison and the shenanigans
Speaker 1: they go on inside. Shenanigans is maybe a shanking, let's
Speaker 1: let's have uh Yeah, And I never watched the series myself,
Speaker 1: but but I've heard many colorful things about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was um, it was rough. It was a rough series.
Speaker 1: But again, it was one of those things that HBO
Speaker 1: did because one they knew there was going to be
Speaker 1: a market for it, and to no one else could
Speaker 1: really do it. They didn't have the money for it,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't do it on broadcast television, basic cable.
Speaker 1: So uh, that ended up getting some notice, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a breakaway hit. Yet HBO produces a mini series
Speaker 1: called From From the Earth to the Moon, which was
Speaker 1: a big budget mini series. It was produced by Tom
Speaker 1: Hanks and Ron Howard. Tom Hanks did not star in it,
Speaker 1: he was just a producer behind the camera. Mostly starred
Speaker 1: actors who were not recognizable to most of the audience,
Speaker 1: and that was on purpose. It was to be able
Speaker 1: to put the focus on the drama of the story
Speaker 1: and to recreate the time of the story without distracting
Speaker 1: by saying, Oh, it's such and such from so and so.
Speaker 1: Also to lower the costs a little bit, I imagine
Speaker 1: probably also a factor. So this particular model would up
Speaker 1: serving as an example for future mini series that HBO
Speaker 1: would produce, including things like Band of Brothers or John Adams.
Speaker 1: There was another one called Generation Kill, which probably is
Speaker 1: not as well known as those two, but other ones
Speaker 1: as well. So this was an approach to producing mini
Speaker 1: series which HBO had not really done. It tried a
Speaker 1: couple in the early eighties, but in general had stayed
Speaker 1: away from mini series and had only been producing open
Speaker 1: ended series where run it season after season until you
Speaker 1: get tired and you stopped doing it. UH one one
Speaker 1: of those that that happened that began with Sex in
Speaker 1: the City at debut that year, and and as we
Speaker 1: all know, became a pretty wildly successful spawned two films.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a big, big hit. Lots of
Speaker 1: people either loved it or hated it, or loved to
Speaker 1: hate it that love to hate it. I never ever
Speaker 1: watched it. My knowledge of sex Sex in the City
Speaker 1: was based solely upon other people's conversations, and just like
Speaker 1: was aware of it culturally, but I never watched the show.
Speaker 1: And uh, I got the feeling that I probably it's
Speaker 1: probably I'm not the right audience for that particular. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure either. I a fellow that I dated loved
Speaker 1: it and and maybe watch the entire thing, so I
Speaker 1: hear past tense, delightful fellow, Okay, alright, fair, fair enough,
Speaker 1: all right. Well, anyway, Sex in the City, uh, Sex
Speaker 1: and the City, I should say, ends up being one
Speaker 1: the first of the big three uh breakaway hits of
Speaker 1: HBO originals. We've got a lot more to say about HBO,
Speaker 1: but before we can do that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right. It's ninete, It's the year after Sex in
Speaker 1: the City debuts and gives HBO it's first real incredible
Speaker 1: popular ship. Yebo ends up debuting another original series that
Speaker 1: kind of sets the tone for what HBO original programming
Speaker 1: is all about, at least for several series that followed
Speaker 1: behind The Sopranos, obviously one of the most important series
Speaker 1: in HBO history, not only that, but in cable history,
Speaker 1: because The Sopranos was critically acclaimed. It was not just successful,
Speaker 1: the critics loved it, and it would win Emmy's in
Speaker 1: two thousand four and two thousand seven. It was nominated
Speaker 1: for Emmy's every single year that it was eligible to
Speaker 1: do so, because remember The Sopranos was one of those
Speaker 1: shows that would go on a hiatus for more than
Speaker 1: a year, but it would garner more than it would
Speaker 1: garner a hundred and eleven nominations over the span of
Speaker 1: its life. So this was a cable show winning an Emmy.
Speaker 1: Now that's a big deal because for a while, cable
Speaker 1: television was looked down on, like it was looked at
Speaker 1: something that was always pretending to be as good as
Speaker 1: broadcast TV. And so the Emmys were for broadcast television.
Speaker 1: That's where the quality programming was and and Furthermore, something
Speaker 1: that might be h c D or or a little
Speaker 1: bit patronizing. Um, but yeah, but with with something is
Speaker 1: as hard hitting and dramatic and beautiful as the Sopranos.
Speaker 1: It was a hit. Yeah, So we started to see
Speaker 1: cable shows being taken seriously. They no longer needed to
Speaker 1: have their own little UH Awards ceremony. The ACE Cable
Speaker 1: Awards were around back in the day where because they
Speaker 1: weren't really eligible for the Emmys, they were only eligible
Speaker 1: for for ACE Cable nominations. The Sopranos definitely knocked that
Speaker 1: door wide open by consistently being one of the most
Speaker 1: nominated shows while it was on the air. So it
Speaker 1: really did change the entertainment industry. It's yet another reason
Speaker 1: why we talked so much about HBO, because again, I
Speaker 1: had this huge effect on how things happened following. You know,
Speaker 1: the stuff that HBO would try, whether it was successful
Speaker 1: or not, it would end up impacting the rest of
Speaker 1: the industry and other industries as well. So then in
Speaker 1: two thousand we get the third of the Big Three.
Speaker 1: We've already got Sex in the City, We've already got
Speaker 1: the Sopranos, So what comes next? Six under Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a show about two brothers who inherit their father's
Speaker 1: funeral service business after their father passes away. And it
Speaker 1: was a weird series. It's one of those series that's
Speaker 1: really difficult to describe to someone who's never seen it,
Speaker 1: because there were episodes where there's stuff that happened that
Speaker 1: was pretty funny, there was stuff that happened that was
Speaker 1: really tragic. There was stuff that happened where you felt
Speaker 1: like there would be no scenery left unchewed. I mean
Speaker 1: it was you couldn't easily the whole range. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it was one of those that ended up again being
Speaker 1: wildly successful. So that's why you've got the Big three.
Speaker 1: And OZ was not part of the Big three because
Speaker 1: even though it was fairly popular and fairly well critically acclaimed,
Speaker 1: it never reached that same level of popularity as the
Speaker 1: other the other three. I think it was a little
Speaker 1: bit less palatable to a very large market. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another big show we'll be talking about briefly that
Speaker 1: had a similar issue that it appealed to one particular
Speaker 1: market really really well and other markets not so well.
Speaker 1: So two thousand two we have Jeff Bukes getting promoted
Speaker 1: to president and chief operating officer of Time Warner. So
Speaker 1: now he has left HBO and joined the you know,
Speaker 1: the not left it, but he's now the head of
Speaker 1: the parent company. And so Chris Albrecht takes Bukes's place
Speaker 1: as head of HBO, and all Breck would end up
Speaker 1: struggling a bit. He was very big on taking chances,
Speaker 1: and he launched a lot of different programs on HBO,
Speaker 1: but he was really trying to aim to to continue
Speaker 1: this momentum of the Big Three, to make another series
Speaker 1: that was just as impactful and compelling as those, and
Speaker 1: as it turns out, that's really hard to do. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're just lucky, you know, you just strike on the
Speaker 1: right formula that just happens to resonate with the audience. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so even though they produced a lot of different shows,
Speaker 1: and many of them were really good ones, they didn't
Speaker 1: really hit the popularity of the Big Three, and so
Speaker 1: HBO was kind of kind of floundering a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, trying lots of different stuff and occasionally launching
Speaker 1: something really ambitious and then pulling the plug when realizing
Speaker 1: that okay, this is this isn't that it wasn't making
Speaker 1: them as much money as they thought it would have been.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, a show like that launched. It
Speaker 1: was called Carnival, which I personally love so much. It's
Speaker 1: really important. It's got the Kurgan in it, so I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't really go wrong. Oh yeah, yeah, the Kurgan
Speaker 1: as as of course his philosophy. We should all remember
Speaker 1: it's better to burn out the feet away. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. Uh. And so it had excellent
Speaker 1: critical reception. It it got five Emmy's among fifteen nominations
Speaker 1: over the two seasons that it was on the air,
Speaker 1: which is pretty incredible. Um. But it was also costing
Speaker 1: the company two million dollars per episode, and um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the first in this whole range of series that
Speaker 1: HBO would start pursuing. Um. But also that year, Time
Speaker 1: Warners sold its stake in Comedy Central to Viacom for
Speaker 1: one point to three billion dollars. So now Time War
Speaker 1: is out of the comedy biz as far as Comedy
Speaker 1: Central is concerned. But is still, of course, HBO is
Speaker 1: still very much known for its comedy specials. And then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four we get an amazing comedy Deadwood,
Speaker 1: a silly little show about cowboys. Deadwood was plenty funny. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess if you found, uh, if you found if
Speaker 1: you found the multiple uses of certain incredibly blue phrases
Speaker 1: to be amusing, I did. Yeah. Well, no, I can't
Speaker 1: blame you. I've only ever seen two episodes and they
Speaker 1: weren't connected to each other, but they were both fascinating.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where I really wish
Speaker 1: I had been able to watch the whole series and
Speaker 1: just stick around, folks, because I'm about to get excited
Speaker 1: towards the end of this podcast. But yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: it's a Shakespearean Western. The language was very much inspired
Speaker 1: by Shakespeare. Now I'm a Shakespearean scholar so and I
Speaker 1: love Westerns, so both of these things appealed to me.
Speaker 1: But it's absolutely filthy. Shakespearean Shakespeare's absolutely filthy. Just that's true.
Speaker 1: That where the words don't mean the same thing anymore,
Speaker 1: that's air. So yeah. Then they also launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand four Entourage, which was a show about making fun
Speaker 1: of the Hollywood lifestyle and trying to break into Hollywood,
Speaker 1: uh and and being a hanger on to someone who
Speaker 1: has met with some meager success Uh, it has fewer
Speaker 1: foul mouth cowboys in it. But Albert really struggled to
Speaker 1: get another big hit like The Sopranos, and most of
Speaker 1: the shows that he produced were either critically acclaimed but
Speaker 1: sparsely watched, or they were just outright panned. So a
Speaker 1: couple of the ones that didn't do well at all
Speaker 1: were with titles like K Street and Unscripted, and that's
Speaker 1: two series that most people don't talk about anymore. Then
Speaker 1: there was also Louis c Kay's Lucky Louis sitcom, which
Speaker 1: didn't do very well either. Uh. Of course would pave
Speaker 1: the way for the actual series Louis, which is not
Speaker 1: on HBO, But the this earlier attempt was not a success. Now,
Speaker 1: Deadwood lasted three seasons and then was very quietly killed
Speaker 1: off because HBO didn't want to make a big deal
Speaker 1: out of ending Deadwood. I mean, their their whole like
Speaker 1: corporate identity was that we produce shows that other people
Speaker 1: cannot or will not do. We have that money, we
Speaker 1: have that flexibility, we have the customers who want it,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna do it well. And then they realized, oh,
Speaker 1: we might not actually have that much money. Yeah, Deadwood
Speaker 1: as it turns out another very expensive, changing the period
Speaker 1: costume drama with really big actors and yeah, really big actors,
Speaker 1: really really expensive set pieces, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: a very ambitious show that cost a lot of money. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: they also had The Wire, which had an even smaller
Speaker 1: audience than Deadwood did, but the Wire was less expensive
Speaker 1: to produce and was also critically acclaimed. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was still very much critically acclaimed. So if you've
Speaker 1: got two series and you've got one that's really expensive
Speaker 1: and it's critically acclaimed, but only seems to be attracting
Speaker 1: mostly a male audience because men tend to like Westerns
Speaker 1: and women tend not to. Those are just general trends,
Speaker 1: obviously not descriptive of everyone everywhere. So don't write me
Speaker 1: and tell me how you are a woman who loves
Speaker 1: Westerns and that I'm wrong. I actually wonder how the
Speaker 1: numbers on dead Wood chok out. Now I need to
Speaker 1: research this well. At any rate, they weren't good enough
Speaker 1: for HBO, so they wanted to very quietly kind of
Speaker 1: back off. And they had originally said that they were
Speaker 1: thinking about doing four seasons, they actually only did three. Um,
Speaker 1: they said that they were going to do two movies
Speaker 1: to follow up and tie up all the loose ends,
Speaker 1: which never never have happened. They haven't surfaced, so pretty
Speaker 1: sure that that ship has sailed to mix some cowboy,
Speaker 1: pirate and metaphors. But but The Wire they kept going
Speaker 1: because it was critically claimed and cheap. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: way they got the benefit of having a critically acclaimed
Speaker 1: television show on their network, but it wasn't a huge
Speaker 1: financial loss to the company. It was and to be fair,
Speaker 1: involved fewer contrasting plaids, which I know not everybody a
Speaker 1: prey dates to the level that I do. You obviously
Speaker 1: haven't watched The Wire season two. Contrasting Plaids was the
Speaker 1: subtitle of that season. I just made all that up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so that's you know, they wanted to
Speaker 1: have the benefit of having this kind of critically acclaimed
Speaker 1: programming on their channel, but obviously not have the albatross
Speaker 1: of an incredibly expensive production around the corporate neck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why in two thousand five they started realm Okay,
Speaker 1: so clearly they did not. Maybe they learned from their
Speaker 1: mistakes and that's how they were able to repeat them
Speaker 1: almost exactly well, I think that they learned to those
Speaker 1: I think that they made those mistakes after Rome had
Speaker 1: already premiered, that they were still and that excited, let's
Speaker 1: do everything we want to do phase with Rome. But
Speaker 1: it was also very expensive, hard to get viewers into it.
Speaker 1: They did, they canceled it after two seasons. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: originally they had talked about just being a mini series
Speaker 1: where it would have only have been uh, something like
Speaker 1: twelve episodes, but then they said that there would come
Speaker 1: back for a second season, and sometime in that second
Speaker 1: season they're like, whoops, okay, let's just let this quietly
Speaker 1: die too. And there's only so many times you can
Speaker 1: watch someone fall out of a toga. I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, still in that era of hey, we
Speaker 1: can get away with it because we're on we're a
Speaker 1: paid television station, so let's create content. There's lots of
Speaker 1: gratuitous violence and or nudity. Rome had plenty of both.
Speaker 1: All right, home stretch for this part of HBO's history.
Speaker 1: Before we can get to that, let's take another quake
Speaker 1: break two thousand seven. In November of two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: a major event happened that affected all all television channels. Everywhere,
Speaker 1: because at least in the United States, well, all television
Speaker 1: channels that were producing original content. Yeah, because that's when
Speaker 1: the Writer's Guild of America had a strike. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: animation was fine because they weren't in the Writer's Guild.
Speaker 1: I knew a lot of animators who were grumbling a
Speaker 1: about this. But, uh, the Writer's Guild of America had
Speaker 1: a strike, and so HBO had banked a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that helped them kind of coast through the writer's
Speaker 1: strike without too much trouble. They had the mini series
Speaker 1: John Adams that helped them get through it. They had
Speaker 1: another season of The Wire that helped him get through it.
Speaker 1: But HBO did not get through two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: without some major trouble. For example, Chris Albrecht, the head
Speaker 1: of HBO, was arrested following a physical altercation. It was
Speaker 1: actually he was arrested because he uh physically threatened his
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time. Yeah, and that's not good. And
Speaker 1: apparently it wasn't his first offense either. Yeah, and time
Speaker 1: Warner called for his resignation. Actually, I read the letter
Speaker 1: he wrote Albrecht wrote where he was very frank and
Speaker 1: admitted guilt and said I thought I had put these
Speaker 1: problems behind me. I was. I was an alcoholic. I
Speaker 1: went to alcoholics Anonymous two years ago. I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I can handle drinking alcohol. And clearly I was wrong.
Speaker 1: So he was very much admitting his fault in it.
Speaker 1: So at least there's that. I mean, it's still a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible thing. But um, he didn't deny it, so I
Speaker 1: guess that's something. So Time Warner now is saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do with HBO? Who's gonna
Speaker 1: lead it? There was not a specific person that they
Speaker 1: could point to and say, this is the person upon
Speaker 1: whose whose shoulders HBO should rest. So they ended up
Speaker 1: picking three people to kind of divide up the the
Speaker 1: entire job of ruling this kingdom all of whom had
Speaker 1: been working for HBO since the nine Yep, you had
Speaker 1: Bill Nelson who became the CEO of HBO, Eric Kessler
Speaker 1: became one of the co presidents, and the other was
Speaker 1: Richard Plepler. And yeah, they all had experience. Richard Plepler
Speaker 1: did not have any experience in programming going into it,
Speaker 1: but would turn out to have some very keen ideas
Speaker 1: on where to go. Because remember this is still when
Speaker 1: HBO is trying to recapture the glory of the Big
Speaker 1: Three and try and find another another original series that
Speaker 1: they can they can really be proud of, and they
Speaker 1: can that can care area the company. So around the
Speaker 1: same time, in two thousand seven, little upstart company called Netflix,
Speaker 1: which had been in business for a few years, announced
Speaker 1: that it was going to create a streaming service, an
Speaker 1: online streaming service. All right, they had already been offering
Speaker 1: DVDs via mail, but at this point they started offering streaming. Yep. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this becomes another competitor to HBO because HBO now they
Speaker 1: still have as part of their business this idea of uncensored,
Speaker 1: uncut movies that you can watch but with Netflix streaming,
Speaker 1: and we can watched them whenever you want. Yeah, assuming
Speaker 1: assuming that the title is in their library, which we
Speaker 1: all know is a huge assumption. And and and furthermore,
Speaker 1: they obviously at that time, we're not making their own
Speaker 1: original content. Yeah. Yeah, Netflix was pretty much beholden to
Speaker 1: whatever uh studios were producing content at that time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this was another another competitor, and it was outside the
Speaker 1: cable industry. Everyone got a little nervous at this point.
Speaker 1: Including HBO. Oh sure. Speaking of that original content. However,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, HBO debut True Blood, um, which
Speaker 1: was really its first, its first big hit since those
Speaker 1: Big three. Yeah yeah, this one was a huge hit.
Speaker 1: It was extremely popular. You can debate upon whether or
Speaker 1: not it merits that. I know there are such debates.
Speaker 1: I've never watched the series, so I can't comment one
Speaker 1: way the other. It's terrible. I love it, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean terrible things have their place in this world. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then other shows such as Boardwalk, Empire, The News Room,
Speaker 1: and Veep followed. So these were shows that didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have the same following as the Big three, but again,
Speaker 1: we're critically acclaimed, seemed to be popular among the audiences
Speaker 1: that really love these shows. Um. And then you started
Speaker 1: seeing a couple of major breakthrough hits that that followed
Speaker 1: so three Yeah yeah, stuff like Girls and Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1: Do I can't do anymore because they'll they'll take us down. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, big big hit obviously or HBO. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't have HBO. By the way, this is where
Speaker 1: I mentioned I don't own HBO, but I read all
Speaker 1: the books, so you can't spoil me, suckers. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can tell me about stuff that happened in the show
Speaker 1: but didn't happen the books. But here's the thing, I
Speaker 1: don't care because I read the books, so to me,
Speaker 1: that's the story. So bring it, is what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: unless your name is George RR. Martin, in which case,
Speaker 1: do not bring it, sir. I will be happy to
Speaker 1: read it when you publish it, and take your time.
Speaker 1: Take your time, sir, as long as you need. Yeah, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: As as Neil Gaman once said, George R. Martin is
Speaker 1: not your bitch. Yeah. And then Paul and Storm sang
Speaker 1: a song, and then George RR. Martin came out and
Speaker 1: broke their their guitars. It's a great, great moment on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Look it up. For For the record, I've also read
Speaker 1: the books. You cannot spoil me either. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: challenge unless you're George R. Martin. Two. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want him writing in and say guess which
Speaker 1: Stark dies next? Want it? I totally want him to
Speaker 1: do that. Actually, oh, come on, it would be the best. Well,
Speaker 1: then we can hold it over everyone else is George R. Martin.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, please right, it's spoiled me, spoil Lauren.
Speaker 1: We'd have to give them just your email address and
Speaker 1: the one that I give out of the end it
Speaker 1: goes to both of us. Lauren, this is this is
Speaker 1: irresponsible of you. All right, Just send her a direct tweet, Okay.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand, HBO launches hbo Go, which is
Speaker 1: its online streaming service for HBO subscribers, which allow HBO
Speaker 1: customers to watch content on demand for the first time,
Speaker 1: only three years after Netflix had already been doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. And of course it's limited to just people
Speaker 1: who will Theoretically, it's limited to just people who have
Speaker 1: an HBO subscription. So if you do not subscribe to
Speaker 1: cable and subscribe to HBO, you cannot access hbo Go legally.
Speaker 1: I say legally because it is my understanding and again
Speaker 1: I do not do. This is my understanding that some
Speaker 1: people occasionally will lend out their logins to friends or
Speaker 1: family who do not have HBO so that they can
Speaker 1: watch things. In fact, that'll tie into something we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about just a moment. Now we're we're finally up
Speaker 1: to current day. So here's the thing we don't have
Speaker 1: to take the way back machine back to present day
Speaker 1: because we are in present day now. So the way
Speaker 1: back machine. Yeah, now, granted we have been traveling through
Speaker 1: time for three episodes and it's gotten a little warm
Speaker 1: in this room. Yeah, because that's the problem with being
Speaker 1: in this way back machine. It's like a quarter of
Speaker 1: the size of our studio. So it's been a little,
Speaker 1: been a little Let's just go ahead and step out
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, that's better. Yeah, that's way better. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're in present day now. First of all, Uh,
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, that that series we mentioned just a
Speaker 1: couple of points ago before we got off on our
Speaker 1: George R. Martin please spoil us rand Uh. It's turned
Speaker 1: out to be the most pirated show in the world.
Speaker 1: Almost more people illegally downloaded the Game of Thrones premiere
Speaker 1: for season four then the next closest rival, which was
Speaker 1: The Walking Dead, so almost more people's That shows that
Speaker 1: the show is incredibly popular, and in fact, in April tween,
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones broke the record for most pirated episode
Speaker 1: within the first twenty four hours of going live, with
Speaker 1: one point one seven million unique IP addresses torrenting the
Speaker 1: premiere of season four, So that doesn't count all the
Speaker 1: people who used uh, someone else's HBO go profile. Okay,
Speaker 1: but but but I but I want to say here,
Speaker 1: it's drawing some seventeen million legit viewers per episode. Well
Speaker 1: legit or legit ish um, you know, you know, again,
Speaker 1: not not counting people who are stealing that password. Um.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that HBO officially does not
Speaker 1: care about that thing. CEO Richard Pepler has said, uh,
Speaker 1: and I quote it's a terrific marketing vehicle for the
Speaker 1: next generation of viewers and also quote, we're in the
Speaker 1: business of creating addicts. They've actually noticed that people have
Speaker 1: subscribe to HBO after pirating stuff because they wanted to
Speaker 1: have access to this and I didn't want the problems
Speaker 1: of either using someone else's HBO Go pass, which might crash,
Speaker 1: because that's happened a couple of times. That happened. On
Speaker 1: the premiere of season four, too many people were trying
Speaker 1: to access the HBO Go network and as a result,
Speaker 1: it crashed under the demand, which caused a lot of
Speaker 1: people to complain. I maintained that the people complaining we're
Speaker 1: borrowing someone else's HBO Go pass. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: an accurate I haven't done any research on this. This
Speaker 1: is based upon the people I saw on Twitter complaining.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you don't subscribe to HBO. You're using someone
Speaker 1: else's pass, and you're complaining that doesn't work entitled much anyway,
Speaker 1: in the business of creating addicts, it's apparently it works
Speaker 1: really well. So, yeah, it seems like it's going pretty well. See,
Speaker 1: I guess I see some figures here you've got in
Speaker 1: this in this notes here, Lauren. Yeah, they're they're doing
Speaker 1: pretty okay. They're they're operating at a profit margin of
Speaker 1: the some one point three billion dollars they rake in
Speaker 1: every year. UM. They currently have some a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million subscribers worldwide, and and HBO that their subscription
Speaker 1: base is growing faster than it has in the past
Speaker 1: seventeen years. To be fair, Netflix is growing even faster
Speaker 1: still and has surpassed HBO in the number of subscribers
Speaker 1: it did so back in Q three UM. But Netflix
Speaker 1: is operating costs are a whole lot higher, being that
Speaker 1: it's still busy building its original content and investing in
Speaker 1: all of those new markets. And HBO recently made a
Speaker 1: partnership with a direct competitor to Netflix that could really
Speaker 1: shake things up. We're talking about Amazon Prime. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they announced a deal where Amazon is going to
Speaker 1: get to stream a bunch of HBOS original content. Um,
Speaker 1: not all of it. I think that Game Thrones in
Speaker 1: Sex and the City were both left out of the deal.
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones specifically, not surprising anyone has left out
Speaker 1: of the deal. Yeah, but a lot of their older content,
Speaker 1: in particular things like The Sopranos and say Deadwood, will
Speaker 1: be allowed to stream on Amazon Prime. So that has
Speaker 1: me really excited because now I'll finally get to watch
Speaker 1: both those shows. I am not seen them so to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, I know a lot about what happens
Speaker 1: in them, it's just culturally you do share share, But
Speaker 1: but that's not that's not really the point. Now. The
Speaker 1: performances and the execution, uh and literal senses in both
Speaker 1: in both those shows are what will be really interesting
Speaker 1: to me because I've always heard so much about them.
Speaker 1: Now I hope that I'm able to go in with
Speaker 1: with managed expectations and not just you know, super hyped,
Speaker 1: because obviously very few things live up to a super
Speaker 1: hyped expectations, but I'm looking forward to seeing them. But honestly,
Speaker 1: Deadwood lived up to the hype for me, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to seeing it from the beginning because, like
Speaker 1: I said, I only saw two episodes completely out of context,
Speaker 1: and that was that was troubling under each listeners, these
Speaker 1: these shows are for mature audiences only or immature way
Speaker 1: does that let let me out immature mature audiences? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So uh so, so, so don't go. Don't don't go
Speaker 1: running out and watching this parents, that would be you know,
Speaker 1: don't don't be like Jonathan was watching Tales from the
Speaker 1: Crypt when he was a little kid. Clearly no damage
Speaker 1: was done to either of us. We turned out completely normal. Um.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, now, this this entire Amazon deal,
Speaker 1: especially with Amazon expanding its empire to include that new
Speaker 1: fire TV gig, that that dollar Internet to TV device
Speaker 1: streaming thing, um, could potentially mean a bit of a
Speaker 1: crunch for Netflix. Yeah yeah, I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is the next era, right, So I'm sure Netflix's response
Speaker 1: will be to go and invest even more in original programming,
Speaker 1: because again, you have to differentiate yourself. Um. They you know,
Speaker 1: they've had some very famous issues with keeping films in
Speaker 1: their libraries and licensing licenses expiring. People get upset about that.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is that's the way it's worked ever
Speaker 1: since this whole pay TV model even started. I mean
Speaker 1: HBO had the same issues, which they would have a
Speaker 1: movie under license and then the license expires and they
Speaker 1: don't have access to that film anymore. That's why you're
Speaker 1: not going to see Star Wars all the time. It's
Speaker 1: only whenever the license comes up and they're allowed to
Speaker 1: show them. Also, as we said in our streaming content episodes,
Speaker 1: Netflix's game plan right now is too and and I
Speaker 1: think this was the quote, become HBO before HBO can
Speaker 1: become us. Ye, So so the race is on. Both
Speaker 1: both of them are are racing out the gates, and uh,
Speaker 1: we don't know. Maybe they'll maybe they'll be a photo finish,
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll have two amazing content providers that we all enjoy,
Speaker 1: Maybe one will come out on top. We'll have to
Speaker 1: wait and see. But yeah, it's been great getting a
Speaker 1: chance to talk about HBO. And we know that we
Speaker 1: really went super in depth with this one, and that's
Speaker 1: not normally what we do with our episodes, but in
Speaker 1: this case, because it had such an impact on the
Speaker 1: way cable television works today and the reason we even
Speaker 1: have cable in our our cities. We felt that it
Speaker 1: merited this kind of discussion and that wraps up the
Speaker 1: HBO story as a May fourteen. Like I've said multiple times,
Speaker 1: I'll probably have to go back do an update talk
Speaker 1: about what's happened since then. Um, but yeah, if there
Speaker 1: are any topics that you would like me to cover
Speaker 1: in the future, whether it's a company, trend in tech,
Speaker 1: a specific technology and how it works, or you know,
Speaker 1: anything along those lines that is related to technology, let
Speaker 1: me know you can do that. As I said over
Speaker 1: on Twitter, the handle we uses tech stuff h s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.