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It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

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Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#41

Post by [deleted] »

nottathrowaway3 wrote: post #36
roldie wrote: post #32

I don't see how HBO can maintain their reputation and prestige with the way Zaslav is running things. Canceling niche, creative, and risk-taking shows and removing accesses to back catalog shows like Westworld entirely. Flooding HBO with cheap Discovery reality shows, and now forcing HBO Max to merge apps with Discovery. All of these are great ways to dilute the HBO brand and make it insignificant.

The article talks about how great the HBO gritty depressing character dramas like The Wire , The Last of Us , etc., were. That kind of content was interesting and fresh in the 90s and 00s. Personally though, whose life is so great today that they need to escape by watching something depressing? Most people I know (and knew) were generally feeling beat down, afraid for the future, tired of not being able to say what t…

[deleted]

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#42

Post by l2silver »

roldie wrote: post #32

I don't see how HBO can maintain their reputation and prestige with the way Zaslav is running things. Canceling niche, creative, and risk-taking shows and removing accesses to back catalog shows like Westworld entirely. Flooding HBO with cheap Discovery reality shows, and now forcing HBO Max to merge apps with Discovery. All of these are great ways to dilute the HBO brand and make it insignificant.

What shows did they cancel?

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#43

Post by majormajor »

barkerja wrote: post #40
nottathrowaway3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about how great the HBO gritty depressing character dramas like The Wire , The Last of Us , etc., were. That kind of content was interesting and fresh in the 90s and 00s. Personally though, whose life is so great today that they need to escape by watching something depressing? Most people I know (and knew) were generally feeling beat down, afraid for the future, tired of not being able to say what t…

Isn’t The Last of Us currently one of the most popular shows on television right now? Its live viewership has continued to grow with each episode. Episode 1: 0.588 million Episode 7: 1.083 million For comparison, House of the Dragon ended the season with 1.855 million. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/03/03/the-last-o... The ratings are also worth looking at: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/the…

Live viewership for everything is way down ("spread out" is probably much more accurate, there's just more options).

The Sopranos started with 2+M 18-49 viewers per episode in season 1 and was doing 4+M by its second season, and then went up to 6-7 for a few. http://www.ratingsryan.com/2020/12/the-sopranos-hbo-ratings-...

Looks like their newer shows do a lot of cumulative views over time with streaming, but a lot less live (that's that 1M/ep number you linked, it seems like).

5+M live viewers weekly 20-25 years ago was a LOT for a premium-premium-cable network. Friends was in the 20Ms, broadcast, for comparison.

But in the streaming model era, the cumulative viewership is probably more important to the total revenue and sustainability, with one big caveat: if people sign up one or two months at a time to binge (like I do!) you're spending a LOT to make a show to get just 20 bucks or so.

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#44

Post by edgyquant »

skydhash wrote: post #24
WalterBright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Last of Us I watched an episode and a half of that and gave up. Had enough of zombie movies. They're all the same.

You miss out a lot. There is barely any zombies in the show. It deals mostly with things that would occur between human in the context of apocalypse. Distrust and love, losing a loved one in an instant and the following despair, not giving up and loneliness when no one can afford to care, and revenge and other stuff. It’s mostly a character story, and there are barely action scenes.

I like the show but

> deals mostly with things that would occur between human in the context of apocalypse

Is a trope that has been played out. The walking dead (a show I did not like) had a dozen seasons of it.

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#45

Post by majormajor »

echelon wrote: post #5
game_the0ry wrote: post #3

I am a fan of hbo, and have been for a long time, but I do miss the adult content: sexo urbano, showgirls: glitz and angst, taxicab confessions, etc. I vote to bring that back.

Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless. The American WASP prudishness needs to die. We love our violence in film and drama. We should love our sexuality too. Game of Thrones was better for it.

"WASP prudishness" doesn't explain why there's less "purely sexual" TV and film content now than in the 90s.

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#46

Post by remote_phone »

HBO is the only streaming service I am willing to pay $15/month for. I feel like the quality of their shoes are better than any of the rest especially compared to Netflix. Netflix content is very hit or miss but the last bunch of shows and especially the movies were terrible.

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#47

Post by manishsharan »

roldie wrote: post #32

I don't see how HBO can maintain their reputation and prestige with the way Zaslav is running things. Canceling niche, creative, and risk-taking shows and removing accesses to back catalog shows like Westworld entirely. Flooding HBO with cheap Discovery reality shows, and now forcing HBO Max to merge apps with Discovery. All of these are great ways to dilute the HBO brand and make it insignificant.

I subscribed to Discovery plus for a few months mistakenly thinking there were edutainment shows I could watch with my kid. There weren't. Also shockingly,they only a few episodes of Mythbusters. This Discovery plus is not the Discovery channel of my childhood. What a shame!

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#48

Post by [deleted] »

barkerja wrote: post #40
nottathrowaway3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about how great the HBO gritty depressing character dramas like The Wire , The Last of Us , etc., were. That kind of content was interesting and fresh in the 90s and 00s. Personally though, whose life is so great today that they need to escape by watching something depressing? Most people I know (and knew) were generally feeling beat down, afraid for the future, tired of not being able to say what t…

Isn’t The Last of Us currently one of the most popular shows on television right now? Its live viewership has continued to grow with each episode. Episode 1: 0.588 million Episode 7: 1.083 million For comparison, House of the Dragon ended the season with 1.855 million. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/03/03/the-last-o... The ratings are also worth looking at: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/the…

[deleted]

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#49

Post by rhino369 »

roldie wrote: post #32

I don't see how HBO can maintain their reputation and prestige with the way Zaslav is running things. Canceling niche, creative, and risk-taking shows and removing accesses to back catalog shows like Westworld entirely. Flooding HBO with cheap Discovery reality shows, and now forcing HBO Max to merge apps with Discovery. All of these are great ways to dilute the HBO brand and make it insignificant.

Zaslav isn’t really taking creative control. Casey Bloys—longtime HBO Exec—is in charge of HBOMax programming.

Zaslav is making big picture moves like deciding how much budget there is for new content. But he’s not picking which shows to make.

I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s killing HBO because he’s largely left it alone. It’s the MAX half that got butchered—but that part isn’t really HBO and the overall service isn’t profitable.

The brand dilution is a real problem but that was done under ATT when they started HBOMax in the first place.

Re: It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

#50

Post by echelon »

searealist wrote: post #20
wkat4242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent was suggesting putting hardcore porn in general content. They were just referring to a time with less strict morals and mentioned some mainstream entertainment titles of the era. I was just using pornography to illustrate the even stricter morals outside the western world. But like the parent comment I'd also wish we'd loosen up a bit.

The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.

> The parent comment originally advocated putting hardcore porn into all content, but was edited.

That's a mischaracterization if I've ever seen one. My comment was originally written as this:

> Twitter and Reddit have shown that the population doesn't care if porn is mixed in with everything else. [Including hardcore porn.] It's fine, it's fun, and it's harmless.

I originally stated that Twitter and Reddit include hardcore porn as well. My intention was to demonstrate that nobody gives a fuck that that these websites depict humans having sex (because they don't). Reddit nor Twitter makes any attempt to scrub sexual content because that would be suicide. Tumblr is an excellent example of how prudishness sucks the life out of the things it latches onto.

These are major platforms people use at work and school and include as a normal part of day to day conversation. Journalists and academics use these platforms. Brands use them. Nobody gives a damn that they feature nudity or porn, or even (gasp) nude bodies moving in pleasurable ways.

HBO and Netflix already show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Recently, Netflix's "Sex/Life" showed a CG enhanced 10-inch prosthetic penis that blew up on social media [1]. Again, nobody cares. (Actually, they do care -- they love it, and they love to talk about it. My wife and all of her friends were talking about it all week.) It's a natural and normal part of human interest and entertainment.

The point of my comment was to show only a small percentage of the country gets wound up about this. People were thrilled that Game of Thrones was edgy and racy and sexy. That it wasn't just more violence.

It's time for those of us that aren't offended by basic human anatomy to move on from the prudishness and push our art forward. We're limited and held back when we can't invoke that dimension of humanity.

In any case, I edited my comment after I saw yours. You latched onto a three word sentence ("Including hardcore porn") and spun a wholly different argument. I didn't want the thread to get derailed further, and this simple observation didn't contribute at all to the substance of my argument.

"Hardcore", for the uninformed, does not equal "fetish". It's just intercourse.

Let me make my argument simple: it's okay for social media and films to show boobs, penises, and vaginas. Very few people care, and it's not going to kill anybody.

[1] https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/sex-life-shower-scene-going-...

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