It’s Not TV
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Golden Age: Part 1
“Every winning streak will have to end sometime.” Jahinger Khan In recognition of the job HBO CEO Michael Fuchs had done growing HBO and diversifying its business, he was invited uptown in 1995 to take over Warner Music while still keeping HBO as part of his new, expanded dominion. Assuming Fuchs’ top exec slot at […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Expanding The Brand (Part 2)
Farmer Gray is tooling down the road one fine day in 1981, and there ahead of him he sees Sam’s Appliance Store. Farmer Gray has had a heck of a wheat crop this year and he’s got $40,000 burning a hole in his pocket. On a whim, he goes into Sam’s. He’s worked hard […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Expanding The Brand (Part 1)
If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe. John Maxwell By the end of the 1980s, HBO’s nightmarish headlong collision with The Wall in 1984 was just that; a bad dream fading over time. Even during the tough days, the company had remained a money-maker, and although it […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: An Original Voice
An Original Voice “We didn’t get mad, we got smart,” HBO CEO Michael Fuchs said about hitting The Wall, looking back at HBO stalling in 1984 from the vantage of the early 1990s. Actually, a lot of the rank and file didn’t get mad or smart; we’d seen 125 of our friends and colleagues get […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: The Wall
15) The Wall “I used to say this to the staff, ‘We’re all working very hard, but pause and reflect, because not many people in their professional lives ever get the chance that we’re having.” Tony Cox It’s New York, the early 1980s, and if you were young, still relatively new to The City, […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: The Movie Duels
14) The Movie Duels Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something. Thomas Edison There’s a story that on the November night in 1972 when HBO went on the air for the very first time to a few hundred subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Gerald Levin – then HBO’s top programmer and […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Title Fights: The King of Pay-TV
13) Title Fights: The King of Pay-TV In 1977, Jeff Bewkes was an affable 25-year-old MBA graduate out of Stanford, one of a number of similarly young grads in the trainee program of Citibank of New York, doing whatever bank trainees do in a nest of cubicles at Citibank’s training center in a drab Long […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: The Skies, Junior Birdmen!
12) Into The Skies, Junior Birdmen! Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down. Charles F. Kettering Home Box Office debuted to a handful of subscribers on a single cable system in Wilkes-Barre, […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: The Green Channel
10) The Green Channel Let’s say it’s the 1960s, and you live in New York City, some place in downtown Manhattan. You’re cool, you’re with it, so maybe it’s a nifty loft in the Chelsea district. That puts you maybe twenty blocks from the Empire State Building, the transmission source for all over-the-air TV signals […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Walson’s Mountain
9) Walson’s Mountain The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: Greener Grass
Greener Grass The two leading recipes for success are building a better mousetrap and finding a bigger loophole. Edgar A. Shoaff For the first few decades of broadcast television, the then three major networks held a near-monopoly on the national audience. More often than not, on any given night it was likely nine out of […] More
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It’s Not TV: HBO, The Company That Changed Television: The Wasteland
The Wasteland: Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs; and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar. Lee Loevinger When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials […] More
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