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| Name | Home Box Office (HBO) |
|---|---|
| Logofile | HBO logo.svg |
| Logosize | 210px |
| Launch | November 8, 1972 |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV) |
| Owner | Home Box Office Inc. (Time Warner) |
| Slogan | It's More Than You Imagined. It's HBO. |
| Country | United States |
| Broadcast area | Nationwide |
| Headquarters | New York, NY |
| Sister names | Cinemax |
| Web | HBO.com HBO Latino HBO Family |
| Sat serv 1 | DirecTV |
| Sat chan 1 | 501 HBO East (SD/HD) 502 HBO2 East (SD/HD) 503 HBO Signature 504 HBO West (SD/HD) 505 HBO2 (west) 507 HBO Family (east) 508 HBO Family (west) 509 HBO Zone (HD only) 511 HBO Latino |
| Sat serv 2 | Dish Network |
| Sat chan 2 | 300 HBO (east) HD 301 HBO2 (east) HD 302 HBO Signature HD 303 HBO (west) HD 304 HBO2 (west) 305 HBO Family HD 307 HBO Comedy HD 308 HBO Zone HD 309 HBO Latino HD|cable serv 1 = Available on all cable systems |
| Cable chan 1 | Check local listings for channels |
| Cable serv 2 | Verizon FIOS |
| Cable chan 2 | See List of Verizon FiOS channels |
| Adsl serv 2 | AT&T; U-verse |
| Adsl chan 2 | See AT&T; U-verse channel lineup |
HBO (the common name for Home Box Office), is an American premium cable television network that broadcasts in over 150 countries.
Dolan presented his "Green Channel" idea to Time Life management, and though satellite distribution seemed only a distant possibility at the time, he persuaded Time Life to back him. Soon afterwards, on November 8, 1972, "The Green Channel" became "Home Box Office". HBO began using a network of microwave relay towers to distribute its programming. The first program and film broadcast on HBO, Sometimes a Great Notion, starred Paul Newman and Henry Fonda. It transmitted with a CATV system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (a plaque commemorating this event is found in Wilkes-Barre's downtown Public Square).
The network broadcast only nine hours a day for its first nine years on air, from 3PM to midnight ET. In September 1981, HBO began broadcasting a 24-hour schedule on weekends, until midnight ET on Sunday nights. On December 28, 1981, HBO expanded its programming schedule to 24 hours a day, seven days per week (Cinemax had a 24-hour schedule from its August 1980 sign-on, and Showtime and The Movie Channel went to a 24-hour schedule earlier).
In 1983, HBO's first original movie and the first made-for-pay-TV movie The Terry Fox Story premiered. That year also saw the premiere of the first kids' show broadcast on the channel: Fraggle Rock; HBO continued to air various original programs aimed at children until 2001, when such programs were almost completely moved over to HBO Family. HBO became involved in several legal suits during the 1980s; these involved cable systems and legal statutes imposed by state and city laws that would have censored some programming on HBO and other pay-TV networks.
In January 1986, HBO also became the first satellite network to encrypt its signal from unauthorized viewing by way of the Videocipher II System. Four months later, HBO became a victim of broadcast signal intrusion when a man calling himself "Captain Midnight" intercepted the network's signal during a movie presentation of The Falcon and the Snowman. The Federal Communications Commission subsequently prosecuted the man.
In 1987, HBO launched a short-lived channel, Festival. Festival featured classic movies and recent hit movies, along with specials and documentaries from HBO. Distinctively, Festival's programmers aimed to provide family-friendly fare. R-rated movies were edited for broadcast and no low-quality series, specials and/or movies were shown. Also, the pricing for subscribing to the channel was cheaper than HBO and Cinemax. Only a few cable systems carried Festival and the channel shut down in late 1988.
In 1988, HBO's userbase expanded greatly on account of the Writers Guild of America going on strike; HBO had new programming while standard television channels could only broadcast reruns. In 1989, HBO compared programming against pay-television network Showtime, with the slogan "Nobody Brings it Home Like HBO", using the Tina Turner single "The Best".
In 1993 HBO became the world's first digitally transmitted television service. HBO.com, subsequently well-known for its online web shows, launched in 1995. In 1999, HBO became the first national cable-TV network to broadcast a high-definition version of its channel. In July 2001, HBO launched the first premium subscription video-on-demand enhancement in the United States of America, called HBO on Demand, to Time Warner Cable subscribers in Columbia, South Carolina. , despite the V-chip, the primary HBO channel still does not run unedited R-rated films or TV-MA rated programming before 8 p.m./ET, continuing a long-held policy. HBO's multiplex channels will do so (excluding HBO Family, which does not run R-rated films at all).
Beginning in 1997 with its first one-hour dramatic narrative series Oz, HBO started a trend that became commonplace with premium cable providers. But it wasn't until 1999, when their second one-hour narrative series The Sopranos premiered, that the network achieved both critical and Emmy success. In its seven-season run, The Sopranos received 111 Emmy nominations, resulting in 21 wins - two of them for the Emmy for Best Drama.
HBO subscribers generally pay for an extra "tier" of service even before paying for the channel itself (though HBO often prices all of its channels together in a single package). However, federal law requires that a cable system allow a person to get just basic cable (local broadcast channels and public, educational, and governmental (PEG) channels) and HBO, without subscribing to expanded service. Cable systems can require the use of a converter box (usually digital) to receive HBO.
Other networks and local syndication have re-aired several HBO programs (usually after some editing), and a number of HBO works have become available on DVD. Since HBO's more successful series, most notably Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under, go to air on non-cable networks in other countries, such as in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and much of Europe, HBO programming has the potential of exposure to a higher percentage of the population of those countries as compared to the U.S. Because of the high cost of HBO, many Americans only view HBO programs on DVDs or in basic cable or broadcast syndication, months or even years after the network has first broadcast the programs, and with editing for advertising time and content, although several series have filmed alternate 'clean' scenes meant for syndication runs.
*HBO: The flagship service. Popular feature films, first-run films, boxing events and sports specials, original movies, original series, comedy specials and documentaries; debuts new movies on Saturday nights. This channel will only air R-rated films and TV-MA rated programming after 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, but does air PG-13 rated films during the daytime hours.
In 1995, HBO3 launched, and a year later HBO Family launched, becoming the first family-oriented multiplex service of a premium channel (Showtime, Starz and Encore have similar family-oriented multiplex channels). In April 1998 the HBO multiplex channels became collectively known as "HBO The Works", and the Cinemax channels became known as "MultiMax". Also, HBO2 and HBO3 underwent major rebrands: HBO2 was renamed HBO Plus, and HBO3 became HBO Signature (a network aimed at women). In May of the following year, HBO Comedy & HBO Zone (a network aimed at young adults) were launched and in 2000, HBO Latino, a Latino-themed channel of HBO launched (HBO also offered a Spanish-language enhancement called HBO En Espanol, airing select HBO programs in Spanish via second audio programming (SAP), that launched in 1988). Finally in 2002, HBO Plus reverted back to its original HBO2 name.
The HBO Multiplex became collectively known under the name "HBO The Works" for several years starting in 1998, while the Cinemax channels became known as "MultiMax". the HBO multiplex, individually, has no "official" name. However, HBO and Cinemax's respective multiplex packages are referred collectively as the "HBO/MAX Pak". Subscribers of DirecTV, DISH Network and some cable providers can get the Cinemax networks without subscribing to HBO, though most cable providers offer the two services and their respective multiplexes as a package.
HBO Family's on-air look is different from HBO's other multiplexed channels. Between programs, HBO Family provides viewers with previews and previously added graphic text at the end of the spot with the date and time for the next airdate of that program. This was something that the original HBO had done, but now is no longer provided in this format, except for HBO Family which also ended providing the date and time graphic at the end of 2007 and now only references most programs as airing this month or the following month with typically no reference to a specific air date and time. Also during the interstitial programming, viewers of HBO Family are shown family-themed short programs and a "HBO Family Feature Presentation"-themed spot before a movie. HBO's primary channel and HBO Family are the only two HBO channels that feature voice-over descriptions during the "coming up next" and "tonight on.." segments. HBO Family is also the only HBO multiplex channel not to use HBO's current feature presentation bumper at the beginning of all movies, instead using a customized feature presentation bumper that HBO Family has used at least since the late 1990s.
HBO Family, along with HBO Latino, have the distinction of being the only HBO spin-offs with their own websites; all the others are integrated within the main HBO site. The site includes schedules and more.
HBO also shows sub-runs (runs of films that have already received broadcast network/syndicated television releases) of theatrical films from Paramount Pictures (usually up until 1997), Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox (select films from all five studios are shared with Starz and Encore), MGM, and Lionsgate. HBO also has exclusive pay-cable rights to its own in-house theatrical films made through HBO Films.
Usually films which HBO has pay-cable rights will also run on Cinemax during its time of license.
In 1973, HBO aired a World Wide Wrestling Federation event from Madison Square Garden, headlined by George Steele facing Pedro Morales. The event recently showed up as part of the WWE 24/7 on-demand service. During the mid-1970s, HBO aired several NBA and ABA basketball games (notably, the last ABA Final in 1976, between the New York Nets and Denver Nuggets) as well as some NHL hockey games. HBO Sports also aired PBA Bowling events during the 1970s. Dick Stockton was the play by play announcer and Skee Foremsky was the color commentator.
In 1977, HBO launched Inside the NFL, the channel's longest-running program, but cancelled it in February 2008, with rival pay TV network Showtime picking up the series starting in September 2008. HBO launched Boxing After Dark in 1996, showcasing some of boxing's newest talents. HBO currently operates HBO PPV (formerly TVKO) to broadcast boxing matches to pay-per-view subscribers.
In 2001, HBO hired Bob Costas to host a 12-episode sports show called On the Record with Bob Costas. A revamped version of On the Record began in 2005, Costas Now, hosted by Costas, which ended its run in 2009. Both shows are very similar to another HBO sports show called Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that currently runs on the network. The channel debuted another sports show Joe Buck Live, hosted by longtime baseball commentator Joe Buck in 2009. HBO and NFL Films have also jointly produced Hard Knocks, which follows a team in training camp and their preparations for the upcoming NFL season. The series, which first premiered in 2001, returned in August 2009 to document the Cincinnati Bengals.
HBO Sports has been headed by several well-known television executives over the years, including Steve Powell (later head of Programming at ESPN), Dave Meister (later head of The Tennis Channel), Seth Abraham (later head of Madison Square Garden Sports) and current President, Ross Greenburg.
In 2004, guided by human rights activist Ansar Burney, an HBO team for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel used a hidden camera to document slavery and torture in secret desert camps where boys under the age of five were trained to race camels, a national sport in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This half-hour investigative report exposed a carefully hidden child slavery ring that bought or kidnapped hundreds of young boys in Pakistan and Bangladesh. These boys were then forced to become camel jockeys in the UAE. The report also questioned the sincerity of U.S. diplomacy in pressuring an ally, the UAE, to comply with its own stated policy of banning the use of children under 15 from camel racing.
The documentary won a Sports Emmy Award in 2004 for "Outstanding Sports Journalism" and the 2006 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for outstanding broadcast journalism. It also brought world attention to the plight of child camel jockeys in the Middle East and helped Ansar Burney Trust to convince the governments of Qatar and the UAE to end the use of children in this sport.
HBO is also noted for its "Sports of the 20th century" documentary brand. One of its most recent documentaries was "Dare to Dream" about the U.S. Women's Soccer Team and their effort to make a difference. This documentary featured Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett, and Julie Foudy.
In 2006, film director Spike Lee made a four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina called , which was broken up into two parts. Also in 2006, documentary artist Lauren Greenfield directed a feature length film about four young women struggling with eating disorders in the Renfrew Clinic in Florida, called Thin. 2008 saw the US television premiere of the documentary film Baghdad High, which depicted the lives of four boys attending a high school in Baghdad, Iraq, over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project.
In November 2008, HBO paid low seven figures for U.S. TV rights to Amy Rice and Alicia Sams's documentary, "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama". It covers Obama's 2006 trip to Africa, his presidential primary campaign, the 2008 general election and his inauguration. The documentary has been released to theatres in New York and Los Angeles and aired in November 2009.
The logo became iconic due to what is perhaps the network's most famous program introduction "HBO in Space," used from 1982 until 1999, and was produced by Liberty Studios of New York City in 1982 and debuted on the network later that year. The original full version begins with a look in a window at a family (sometimes only a husband and wife) sitting down to watch TV (that part was later replaced with a cloudscape). It then pans and flies through a cityscape and into the countryside and then moves up into outer space, where a starburst appears and the HBO logo (in starship form) appears and rotates toward the camera before multi-colored beams move around the "O" and take the camera inside it, where the type of program is revealed (generally the feature presentation). Several versions of the intro appear on YouTube, including one posted by HBO's official YouTube channel. The accompanying fanfare, originally composed by Ferdinand Jay Smith III for Score Productions, has become a musical logo for the network with numerous re-orchestrations of this fanfare being used, varying from the traditional horns to piano. The current feature presentation bumper uses a re-orchestrated (and slightly warped) version of this theme.
Another famous HBO ID, "Neon Lights", designated non-primetime movies airing from 7AM-8PM from 1987 to 1999. Unlike its "Space" counterpart, this ID was entirely CGI. The sequence, set to an electric guitar theme, begins with a purple HBO logo on a vertical filmstrip as light rays shoot through it, the camera then pans around several CG slots glowing in blue, green and pink until a light flash hits several spheres glowing in various rainbow colors. The spheres zoom out forming the HBO logo in light purple with "Movie" written in cursive in a raspberry-like color with the rainbow spheres on a black background behind the words.
The current HBO "Feature Presentation" bumper used since 1999 also uses CGI graphics. The version seen every day features the camera flying over ground as spotlights rapidly turn on, one by one. The camera suddenly slows, begins to face the "ground" and reveals a HBO logo-shaped lake, and the words "Feature Presentation" appear one by one, in 3D. The full version only seen during Saturday night movie premieres, begins on a city street, showing a movie theatre marquee which reads "HBO FEATURE PRESENTATION" in all caps. The camera zooms into a box office booth and then flashes, changes scenery and zooms through a country road passing under a "H"-shaped tower, then a snowy mountain road jumping over a drop-down cliff, and goes through a "B"-shaped tunnel on the other side, then rapidly coming upon a desert road catching up to a "O"-shaped tanker truck. It then appears in a urban neighborhood with skyscrapers visible in the background passing by houses and stores, and a city bus. The road becomes a bridge, coming upon the downtown of the city, bypassing the buildings seen eariler. The same animation that is seen in the more common shorter version then plays as usual.
HBO bucks the general trend in pay-TV networks (including the themed networks of sister channel Cinemax) and does not brand programming with digital on-screen graphic logos of the main network and each respective theme channel.
*1972-1975: "This is HBO, the Home Box Office"
In 1990, HBO launched HBO Independent Productions, a production company that produced mainly sitcoms for broadcast and basic cable television, including Martin and Everybody Loves Raymond. HBO Downtown Productions launched a year later, producing comedy specials for the network as well as content for Comedy Central (which HBO formerly co-owned).
HBO also operates HBO Films, established in 1999 as a reconfiguration and consolidation of its former movie divisions, HBO NYC Productions and HBO Pictures. HBO also operated another film-division called HBO Showcase, which ceased in 1996 to become HBO NYC Productions.
HBO has participated in a number of joint ventures: TriStar Pictures: In 1982, HBO joint-ventured with Columbia Pictures and CBS to form a motion picture studio: Tri-Star (the hyphen disappeared later). HBO, CBS and Columbia decided to pool resources to split the ever-growing costs of making movies. Their first production, The Natural, was released in 1984. CBS sold its stake in the studio in 1985. In April 1987, Tri-Star entered into the television business as Tri-Star Television. In December 1987, HBO dropped out of the Tri-Star venture and Columbia Pictures bought their venture shares and merged Columbia and Tri-Star into Columbia Pictures Entertainment. Sony Pictures Entertainment continues to use the name "TriStar".
In 2005, a version of the DVD interactive game Scene It was released by Mattel, tailored to the HBO network itself; it features trivia on various HBO series.
In 1987, HBO launched a short-lived channel called "Festival". But only a few cable systems carried Festival and the channel went dark in 1988. DirecTV finally launched HBO2 (east) HD, and HBO Zone HD on June 23, 2010; but the rest of the claim has yet to be completely fulfilled. DirecTV also does not carry HBO Comedy or most of the Cinemax channels.
DirecTV and HBO have reportedly been in negotiations for the rest of the channels for several months, with the main issue being DirecTV refusing to offer free previews and introductory discounts for the suite to attract potential subscribers.
Category:Companies established in 1972 Category:American television networks Category:Commercial-free television networks Category:Television channels and stations established in 1972 Category:Time Warner Category:Movie channels Category:Companies based in New York City Category:Cable television in the United States
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