WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The HBO Story-Part One 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.680 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:17.799 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.080 I love all things tech and it is time for 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.400 a classic episode. And this is gonna be a doozy 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:26.360 because it's actually a three partner. So for the next 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.440 three weeks, we're going to have some classic episodes play 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.400 out over a full story and it's one that, uh 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:36.159 that you know continues today. This is the HBO story. 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:41.839 And obviously a lot has happened with HBO since I mean, 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:46.519 there's HBO Max. That alone deserves a full episode. But 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.959 let's learn about how HBO and the cable industry really 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:56.920 were tightly knit back in the early days. And uh, 0:00:57.440 --> 0:00:59.360 what better way to do it than to jump right 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:04.720 in here we HBO Home Box Office. That is what 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.160 we are talking about for the next three episodes because 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.959 there's so much history involved and and I never realized 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:14.360 it before we started researching this, but if it weren't 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.840 for some of the people who were working in HBO's 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.560 early days, we might not have cable TV or or 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.880 satellite cable as we know it, right, Yeah, For example, 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.800 all those other basic cable stations that you are familiar 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.280 with may not have existed had it not been for 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:34.200 some of the efforts on the part of multiple players 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:37.920 in the story. And also some of the other issues 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:43.640 everything from scrambling signals to piracy to streaming online. All 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.959 of these things come into play with HBO and and 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:51.680 original content as many many of you statistically probably know, yes, 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.920 whether whether you are subscribers or the other type. So 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:58.640 we're going to um, we're gonna have to journey back 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.760 in time. So yeah, I know, we just we just 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.559 tossed it off recently, but it's gonna getta workout. Let's 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.880 file into the way back machine. As it turns out, 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.639 we're gonna have to go back way before HBO was founded, 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:15.120 all the way back to nineteen twenty two. So let's 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.760 let's just set that right here, and uh push the button. 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:30.160 Lauren pushed. All right, here we are sunny nineteen two. 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:34.959 N's when Henry Loose and Brittain hadn't decided to u, 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:37.240 you know, pack it up. They had been working for 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:39.920 the Baltimore News and they decided they didn't want to 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.320 do that anymore. They cut their ties, said their goodbyes 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.000 and went to the Big Apple. Because if you can 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:48.960 make it there, well you know the rest. So they 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:53.080 had this crazy idea they wanted together to launch a 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:58.040 brand new magazine with the title of Time, and they 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.560 got about eighty five dollars and startup money from initial 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:06.359 stockholders and uh and incorporated in that November of nineteen two. 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.320 That's right, So the very first issue of the magazine 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:14.400 launched on March third, nineteen twenty three. Now, this company 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:18.600 would actually debut lots of other titles. It wasn't just Time. 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.200 Time was the starting point. But then they also launched 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.040 Fortune in nineteen thirty, which was a year after the 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.600 great stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine when a 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.440 lot of people lost their fortunes. UH. They also launched 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.480 Life in nineteen thirty six. The magazine Life, the actual 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.720 you know, point of existence, had existed for billions of 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:43.200 years we know, yes, at least on Earth, perhaps longer 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.360 in other places, but the magazine itself didn't come into 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.080 existence till nineteen thirty six. And then, of course the 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:53.320 most important magazine of all time nineteen fifty four, Sports Illustrated. 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:58.280 I've never read a single issue I know, of sports. 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:00.560 But it's pretty it's pretty big. All of these are 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.520 pretty big. The company has certainly become a print media giant, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.200 and I mean, at the time was a print media 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:11.160 giant and would go on to become an other media giants, right, 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.320 because why why would you limit yourself to print media? 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:18.920 They wanted to diversify. So moving into the nineteen sixties, 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:21.080 just just come along with us. The nice thing about 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.320 the way back machines that lets us go forward in 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.800 time much faster than backward. We don't even have to 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:30.680 get into it. So nineteen sixties, Time Incorporated starts looking 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.640 at a way of getting into this crazy television business 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.800 to branch out from print media, and so as doing that, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.240 they looked at a little company called Sterling Communications and 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.800 they bought up a twenty steak. In that company, there 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.279 was a man running that by the name of Chuck Dolan, 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.719 who um was it was a bit of a visionary, Yeah, oh, 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.960 huge visionary. He's talked about sometimes. I mean, despite the 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.160 fact that he's kind of unassuming and and pretty off 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.200 spoken and doesn't really he's not a public figure the 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:05.120 way that some of our other tech visionaries are. I mean, 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.120 he's not he doesn't have the stage presence of say 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:11.000 a Steve job, but nonetheless, without him, we probably would 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.320 not have cable TV as we know it. Um He 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.400 was born in Cleveland and served in the Air Force, 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.520 dropped out of John Carroll University and started up a 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.159 company that edited sports reels for TV syndication. Eventually he 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.200 sold that and moved to New York where he founded 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.560 Sterling in nineteen sixty. Yeah, that little company where he 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.960 was adding sports footage. He did that out of his home. 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.359 He and his wife, He and his wife in Cleveland, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.159 in their house, ran this entire company UM and and 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:39.479 sold it for enough money that he was able to 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.640 found a cable television company. And at the time, cable 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:45.719 was not what it is today, right. Yeah. In fact, 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.240 cable at that time was really meant to deliver broadcast 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:52.040 television as an over the air television. This is the 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.159 stuff that normally you would put an antenna on top 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:56.320 of your TV or perhaps on top of your home 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.880 or apartment building, and you would get signals over the 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.520 air which would then run down to your television. A 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.279 lot of people considered this free television. It's not like 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.280 you had to subscribe to it. However, it's ad supported TV, 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.320 I'm sure, and I mean nothing's nothing's free there in 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.120 its freelance. Yeah, so even public television that exists on 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:21.039 on grants and donations, the other commercial TV that existed 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:24.599 through ads supported. But anyway, the issue was that in 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.760 rural areas you couldn't necessarily get a good signal because 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.719 if you did not live near a transmission tower, the 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.240 transmission tower might not have enough power to put out 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.840 there so that you could get the same sort of 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.360 content that you could if you lived closer. Al Right, 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:42.679 So cable stations were really just ways of getting TV, 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.239 regular old broadcast airway TV out to those rural areas exactly. 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.880 It didn't exist in big cities like New York, right, 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:51.680 because the thing about New York was that you happen 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.719 to live really close to all those transmission towers. Yeah, 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.800 everything was being broadcast out of the Empire State Building basically. 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.960 Except the thing is is that New York has other skyscrapers, 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.200 and if you lived, say behind a skyscraper, you might 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.600 not I mean you absolutely wouldn't be able to get 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:07.880 that signal from that tower. Right. If you got a 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:09.920 signal at all, it would be really weak, so you 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.119 would have lousy reception, which meant that there were people 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.880 in New York who might live a few blocks away 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.240 from the Empire State Building, but their reception on their 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:20.560 televisions were worse than what you might see in the 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.000 suburbs in New Jersey. You can get a better in Jersey. 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:25.360 Why why you come on? Look, you gotta pay to 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:27.760 get out of Jersey. Why would you have to You 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:29.360 know that that was the way they got you. You 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.440 have to pay to get out. So then you're like, well, 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:33.440 I get better TV over here. Anyway, I'll just stay 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.320 in Jersey. I apologize everyone for starting Jonathan on that. 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.080 I promise I won't I won't continue. I apologize as 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.600 well that at any rate, this is exactly the case. 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:47.160 So what Dolan thought was, why don't I bring cable 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:50.040 into the city. That way we can have the same 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.880 single over cable and even if you live right behind 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.640 a skyscraper, you're still going to have great reception. Sure. 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:57.800 The thing is that it's really I mean, it was 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.040 and still is really expensive to late this cave. We 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.160 we're talking copper cable at the time. By the way, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.320 fiber optics wouldn't come into the picturing until the nineteen eighties. Yeah. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.160 And not only that, but it was in New York. 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.680 They had had a blizzard several decades earlier that had 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.200 wiped out a lot of the power lines and and 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:18.200 telephone lines, and as a result, city officials said, hey, 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.160 you guys, you're gonna have to bury this. Everything has 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:23.080 to be buried so that way we will never have 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.680 an outage on this scale ever again, which meant that 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.160 the cable that Dolan was gonna lay would have to 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.719 be underground. Two. This meant that per mile of cable minimum, 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:37.760 you'd have to spend ten thousand dollars per mile. Now 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.920 in New York to get those uh apartment buildings, those 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.960 high rise apartment buildings wired, you have to build a 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.760 cable through the apartment building to eat with a branch 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:50.320 to each unit, right, that's the only way you could 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.960 do it. That made it go up to around three 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.600 hundred thousand dollars per mile. And this is in nineteen 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.840 sixties dollars. We're not talking about adjusting for inflation here, 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:03.679 so this is really expensive stuff. And Dolan, you know, 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.400 this was a very ambitious plan. And Dolan saw the 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.720 long tail, right, He saw that this could be profitable, 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:12.160 but it was going to require a lot of work, 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.800 and it perhaps more work than he anticipated when he 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:18.160 first got into the business. Yeah, Sterling almost certainly would 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.800 have gone bankrupt if it hadn't been for times investment 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.319 in them at that at that time. Exactly, So you're 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.040 gonna say the word time as many times. There's no 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.880 way of avoiding it. Uh, just wait till Warner gets 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:30.360 in there, because I use that word all the time. 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:35.640 Nineteen seventy one. So, still trying to make Sterling Communications 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.240 a profitable company, Dolan begins to brainstorm ideas that would 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.880 convince subscribers to join on to this, to to actually 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.640 willingly become a customer of cable, because again you have 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.040 to convince people, Hey, I know you could get this 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.640 free over the air on your antenna, but the reception 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:54.920 is lousy. Pay for it on cable, you'll get it. 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:57.600 You'll get a great experience. And the people who they 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.040 were contacting we're saying, but why would I Why what 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.560 I do that? Yeah? I mean yeah, the stuff I 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:04.200 get over the air is lousy. But if it's going 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.960 to be the same thing, just better quality on cable, 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:09.840 I feel like I'm getting the rough end of the 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.000 deal here if I have to pay for it. So 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.240 he says, what what can I do to differentiate cable 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:20.240 to make it more more attractive? Ah? What if we 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:23.400 made a special channel just for cable. It's not for 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.360 over the air, Only people who are subscribers to the 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.280 cable will get it. And it has to be something 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.079 that's really really compelling, something maybe that carries a lot 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.440 of sports with it. That was his first approach, and 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:38.240 he called this idea the Green Channel. He he referred 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:41.640 to it and as the Macy's of television. And this 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.559 was not an entirely new idea. Actually, our CIA had 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.960 created a radio network specifically to give people a reason 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.839 to go out and buy our Cia radios. So why 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.520 would you buy something where there's no content? This is 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.319 sort of the argument people have about four K televisions 0:10:57.400 --> 0:10:59.160 right now. Why would you go out and get a 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.600 four K TV? No? Same argument. That argument has been 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.480 around ever since we started making this kind of tech. 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.360 Oh yeah, and and understand that at the time there 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.800 was some programming on cable stations, but most of it 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.680 was either extremely load budget or or very local, like 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:18.160 a clock streaming the local Time, or just weather reports 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.319 or at the very best public access, although that didn't 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.120 become a mandatory thing, uh, you know, branching into the 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:26.080 Wayne's World kind of kind of end of the deal 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:31.520 until after the FCCS Telecommunications Act of two, wherein they 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.880 said that any station that had more than subscribers had 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.880 to have public access content. Yeah at this time, but 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:41.000 but not even that. I mean we did not even 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:43.640 have Wayne's World, so that it was not Party Time, 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:46.800 It was not excellent, it was not and nor Anton jessp. 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.360 We had no doctor Anton Jessip. That's no. I don't 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:51.520 want to imagine a world where there's no Anton Jessip. 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.760 But so so it was considered a very commercially unviable 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.199 space exactly. Yeah, this was really again just an alternative 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:01.160 to deliver broadcast over the air TV. It wasn't thought 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.760 of as a way to create new types of content, 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:08.280 and also very regionalized, very much spread out and separated. 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.240 Like we didn't have these massive cable companies that had 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.640 enormous networks. You had all these different, smaller regional companies 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:18.720 that serviced little rural areas. And so even if you 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.480 wanted to launch a big idea like a big program. 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:24.600 Let's say that it's a company that's out in the 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.000 middle of nowhere, in the in the middle of a 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.440 state where there's hardly anything else, and they think, we've 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.720 got a great idea of our show. We're gonna produce 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:33.880 a show. They might only be able to deliver that 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:36.240 show to a very small audience because it wasn't a 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.760 nationwide network. So very different world than the one we 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:44.200 live in now. So how do you make the Green 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.160 Channel a must buy product? You know, we had a 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.280 lot of these attempts to make pay television channels before, 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.000 but they had failed. And again that over the air 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:57.080 for free model was very compelling. Well, nineteen seventy two, 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:01.440 Dolan decides to pitch this idea to Time, which had 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.880 invested in Sterling Communications. Right. He wound up talking with 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.600 one of their lawyers, a man named Jerry Levin, and 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.120 the two convinced the company to take on the idea. Yeah, 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.080 and so, fifty years after the founding of Time Incorporated, 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.640 remember those back in ninety two. Now we're in nineteen 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:21.800 seventy two, Time Incorporated launches a new cable television channel. 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.440 They had taken the Green Channel idea. They renamed it 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.560 after a series of long and arduous meetings, and they 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:29.760 figured that this name wouldn't really stick for that long 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:31.800 because it was pretty lame. Yeah, this was supposed to 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.560 just be a temporary kind of placeholder home box office. 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.600 That was the name HBO for short. They thought, will 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.280 will home box office until we figure out something better. 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.120 They never figured out anything better, and they went with it. 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.800 Uh So this was again the idea originally was a 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.839 paid television premium channel that would carry uncut, uncensored movies 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.600 that you wouldn't find on broadcast television, plus a few 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:57.160 live sports events from Madison Square Gardener Right, So again 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.480 very new thing. The cable television itself did not have 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.120 that many subscribers, and they in time, was not ready 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.160 to commit full on with this, you know, and so 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.120 they said, well, let's find a test market. Let's look 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.280 around and see if we can figure out what we can, 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:14.360 you know, how to develop the strategy to make sure 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:18.000 it works before we really throw in. And they did 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.400 have on their side the fact that TV execs were 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.200 eager for a way to make television unfree. I mean, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:24.840 you know, if if you can turn a profit on 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:27.120 something that's always better than giving it away for free 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:29.720 and UM and stealing cable is a lot harder than 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:32.400 it is to steal signals out of thin air, right, Yeah, 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:34.640 if you were just broadcasting this over the air, then 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.080 obviously anyone with an antenna could get at it. There'd 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.280 have to be some other kind of scrambling thing. And 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.320 we'll talk about scrambling later on in another episode. Sure, 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.760 But okay, So, so this test market wound up being 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.720 UM in Pennsylvania and New York. Yeah, so the very 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:54.600 first one was just Wilkes bar Pennsylvania, tiny community like people. Yeah, yeah, 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.640 we're talking. I mean, I think they had four hundred 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.960 subscribers at first. I think three five was the estimate, 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.760 and I saw a title so even even fewer than that. 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.600 But the reason for that, uh, well, they wanted to 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:08.400 do Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania mainly because one of the big 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.360 partnerships that Time had struck was with the NBA, and 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.760 the idea was to be able to cover NBA games 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.760 live so that people who wouldn't have access to that 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:19.880 kind of programming could actually watch it live and that 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:21.880 would be really exciting and be a good reason to 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.320 subscribe to the service. However, the NBA, like a lot 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:30.840 of different sporting organizations, has blackout rules where where they 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:35.240 don't want you to uh to publish too broadcast, broadcast 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:37.600 a game within a certain radius of the stadium where 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:40.480 it's being played exactly. And so if they had launched 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:44.000 in say Alan Town or Philadelphia, that would have been 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:48.400 in the radius for all the Philadelphia teams. So they said, well, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.280 why don't we do Wilkes Bar. It's just outside that radius. 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.680 We're not going to be hit by any blackout dates. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.080 It'll be the best possible experience and that will give 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.320 us the test that we need that can be used 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:04.520 as word of mouth. So subscriptions six dollars per month 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.920 for HBO. So uh it goes live on November eighth, 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.720 ninety two. And the very first movie carried on HBO 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:21.600 was titled Sometimes a Great Notion, A fantastic film about logging. Yeah, 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.280 Henry Fondo was in it and Paul Newman was in it, 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:27.800 and it was really a story about individualism and being 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.600 able to strike out on your own and to survive 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:34.640 against odds both from nature and man. And I'm making 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:36.920 it sound way more exciting than what it really was. 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.120 But yes, that's that was the movie. And then the 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.600 other thing that they aired was a hockey game, not 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.120 an NBA after all that travel. Yeah, the NBA does 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.560 not tend to play in hockey games. Uh. This was 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:50.680 a game featuring the Rangers against the Canucks. And I 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.160 know you're all dying to know who won, Rangers five 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.560 to ALRIGHTMG spoilers. Yeah, well, you know, for those other 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:00.640 people who are using way back machineans of their own 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:02.840 to go back into nineteen seventy two and watch all 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:06.320 those games, forget I said that. So back in these 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.800 early years, the service would only be on the air 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:10.840 for a few hours each day. It was not a 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:13.440 twenty four hour channel, all right. They would sign off 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.639 at a certain point. Yeah. I actually watched the little 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:17.680 cartoon that used to play at the very end. It's 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:21.720 very cute. This is it's actually like several minutes long. 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.120 It wasn't like a little twenty second thing. But it's 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.560 a cartoon showing, you know, lights going out in the 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.919 city and setting an alarm clock and fluffing a pillow. 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.359 And this is all cartoonish, right, all cartoons. It was 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:35.960 essentially saying good night, good night. Yeah, it was at 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.760 almost had a night veil moment again there. Boy, it 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.200 just creeps in, doesn't it. So meanwhile, on the back 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.880 on the corporate side of things, so so that's what's 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.720 going on on the actual television. On the corporate side 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.200 of things, you have Time Incorporated, and they had to 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:56.800 carve out space for this new uh, this new enterprise HBO. 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.679 So originally they started making space in their own office 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.840 building and Time Incorporated headquarters in New York, which was 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.200 already a bustling office. Yeah. So that meant that as 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.600 HBO began to grow, and it grew pretty quickly, Uh, 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.320 it meant that they had to start getting creative finding 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.440 places to stick people. So departments wouldn't necessarily be all 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.000 set together. You might have a department head who's on 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.960 a different floor from the rest of the office. Uh. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.760 There were stories about people having to find an office 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.720 space in an old broom closet, or or four or 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:31.360 five people all sharing a common office area that used 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.480 to be a meeting room. That kind of stuff, things 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:36.239 that we can kind of identify with here at how 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.720 stuff works. But the interesting thing was that this actually 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.719 promoted a kind of camaraderie among the office workers. They 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.439 had a closeness and kind of a party atmosphere too. 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.360 Is this idea that we're all in it together, We're 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.520 doing this exciting thing. A lot of the people who 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.159 were working there were very young. It was. It was 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.399 a very happening, very startup kind of vibe in despite 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.760 the fact that it was being owned operated by this 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.199 very large company exactly that had been in business for 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.359 fifty years, and yet it had a very start up feel. 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.080 That's a very good way of putting it. We've got 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:11.800 so much more to say about HBO, but before we 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:22.240 get to that, let's take a quick break. All right, 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:26.359 we're back and it's nine. This was the year that 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.920 Time bought HBO outright from Chuck Dolan and the rest 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.840 of the Sterling investors. And poor Chuck Dolan, he must 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.240 have I mean, he must have really missed out on everything, 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:39.920 right that just uh yeah, no, no not but the 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.479 the the opposite of that. In fact, if we can 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:44.320 set the way back machine to be the way forward 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:46.919 machine for just a second, I'll just get on in 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:48.919 here and you just you keep going, I'm gonna I'm 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.880 gonna work on this, okay, okay. So Dolan would would 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.680 use this buyout money to found Cable Vision, which would 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.680 make him billions. Today, it is the largest cable provider 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:01.560 in the New York metro area, along with its spinoffs 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.520 like AMC and i f C, the two very popular 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.239 channels which you might know from everything from using your 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:14.240 remote control. Yeah, well, walking Dead and etcetera. Madman Um 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.639 and his resulting properties like Madison Square Garden and the 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.280 New York Nixon Rangers. This from a guy who had 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:25.200 a little business out of his kitchen right in Cleveland. Cleveland. Boy, 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:28.680 So he's he's still kicking as at this podcast. He's 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.360 worth some three point six billion. He has six children 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.480 who um more or less run a lot of his empire. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.679 And it's a huge success story. And someday he's a 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:41.959 very interesting person and I would really like to do 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:45.240 more on him and or Cablevision and or all of that. Yeah, 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.320 but okay, back in, I just got this thing fixed 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:53.640 to go for Oh forget it, We'll just stay here, Okay, alright, So, 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:58.600 uh seventy three, Jerry Levin continues working with the HBO brand, 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.280 but it only has about eight thousand subscribers, and uh 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:06.200 that's spread across maybe fourteen different cable operating systems, all 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.000 of which are still in Pennsylvania. Yeah, it still hasn't 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.960 moved into New York yet. So the big, the big 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.080 irony here is that it was possible because of the 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.240 stake in Sterling Communications, but that was based solely in 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.080 New York, and Sterling Communications did not yet carry HBO. 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.280 It was all still in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, that same year, 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.200 nineteen seventy three, you saw several other pay television channels launch. 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.879 They had names like Star Channel from Warner Cable, Theater 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.960 Vision and Channel one. And if you're asking yourself, okay, 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:39.920