Home Box Office Inc.

1100 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036
U.S.A.
Telephone: (212) 512-1000
Fax: (212) 512-1182
Web site: http://www.hbo.com

Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Time Warner Inc.
Incorporated: 1972
Employees: 2,000
Sales: $3 billion (2004)
NAIC: 513210 Cable Networks; 512110 Motion Picture & Video Production

Home Box Office Inc. is the leading pay-TV network in the United States. With both HBO and Cinemax in its coffers, the company has a subscriber base of approximately 39 million and sales of more than $3 billion. As a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., HBO's programming includes original series, HBO Films presentations, Hollywood movies, documentaries, concerts, and championship boxing. More than 16 million subscribers in 50 countries outside the United States watch HBO programming, including the hit series The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Entourage.

1970s Formation

Home Box Office was founded by Time Inc. in 1972 to offer cable television service. As a subsidiary of Time, HBO bought the rights to recent films and transmitted them to local systems via satellite and microwave relays. Its service was distributed by the local cable operators, typically costing subscribers $6 a month, of which HBO received $3.50. HBO management initially regarded the company as an editorial marketer, selling its programming the way Time sold magazines.

HBO grew slowly in its first years, as the nascent cable industry struggled to get off the ground. Cable was hampered by market fragmentation, lack of infrastructure, and tough federal regulations, some of them sponsored by the major television networks, which feared that cable could eventually steal much of their audience and revenue.

During the mid-1970s the cable industry laid the groundwork for rapid growth: It expanded its infrastructure through such populous areas as New York City and the suburbs of Boston, won a series of court victories that removed many federal restrictions, and won rate increases from local governments. Pay-TV customers, those buying additional cable services such as HBO, grew from 50,000 in 1974 to about l.5 million in 1978. HBO won greater latitude in pursuing customers in 1977 when a federal ruling lifted restrictions on the choice of movies and sports available on pay-TV. HBO quickly became one of the primary engines driving the growth of the cable industry. Cable systems operators hooked up thousands of people for basic services who were primarily interested in getting HBO.

HBO made its first profit in 1977. It lost tens of thousands of customers in 1978, however, as a result of a move by its chief rival, Showtime, which was challenging HBO head-on for the cable film audience. During this time, Showtime's parent, Viacom, had struck a deal with Teleprompter, the largest cable systems operator in the United States, which resulted in Teleprompter's customers receiving Showtime instead of HBO.

Nevertheless, HBO worked diligently on its programming, lining up enough films to make it the premiere pay-TV outlet for commercial films. It also began its On Location comedy series and The Young Comedians Show, one of the first television forums for comedians such as Robin Williams and Paul Ruebens (Pee-Wee Herman).

In 1978 Time spent $145 million to buy American Television & Communications Corp., then the second largest cable systems operator in the United States, hoping a large number of its 675,000 customers would subscribe to HBO. HBO continued to expand, and as it did it was able to pay higher prices per film than its competitors, winning better films and more subscribers. In fact, its financial resources allowed it to purchase a block of 40 MGM/United Artists films all at once, paying about $35 million. HBO also began investing in the preproduction financing of movies in exchange for exclusive pay-TV rights. This prebuying was risky; HBO was paying in advance for the rights to movies that might prove unpopular. Moreover, the practice angered movie studios, which felt that HBO was intruding on their turf, and some of them began looking for a way into the cable TV industry. Some studios warned that HBO would drive many film studios out of business and control the film industry. Although such fears eventually proved unfounded, they demonstrated the depth of concern attached to a new medium whose ultimate potential remained a mystery.

In 1980 HBO introduced a second channel called Cinemax. This channel was priced lower than HBO and was geared to compete with Viacom's Showtime. Viacom would later charge that Cinemax was priced below cost as a way to drive Showtime out of business.

The Competitive 1980s

By 1982 HBO had 9.8 million subscribers, nearly 50 percent of all pay-TV subscribers, and earned $100 million on sales of $440 million. In fact, HBO was about three times as big as its nearest competitor, Showtime. This size advantage contributed to HBO's bottom line. For example, it paid about $1.4 million for the hit film Raging Bull, or about 15 cents per subscriber. Although Showtime paid less for the film, $l million, that figure worked out to more than 30 cents per subscriber. When Star Wars went on the block in 1982, HBO matched a Showtime offer of $l per subscriber, but insisted on price concessions on less popular films made by Twentieth-Century Fox.

At the end of 1982 HBO worked out a deal with Columbia Pictures and CBS to create Tri-Star Pictures, the first major new U.S. film studio in 40 years. Each company was to contribute up to $100 million to the venture, and HBO received the pay-TV rights. By 1983 HBO, with 13.4 million subscribers, was producing made-for-television movies and working on its own original comedy programs. While some industry observers wondered if HBO would become the fourth major noncable television network, the growth of the cable industry as a whole slowed dramatically beginning in 1984. Part of the cause was lingering infrastructure problems. New cable systems had not yet been built in major markets such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore. Other causes for the cable slowdown were rising cable rates at a time when more and more consumers owned videocassette recorders and could rent their own films. Finally, HBO had also become complacent in negotiating contracts, while competitors moved quickly. As a result, HBO's share of the pay-TV market slipped from 50.4 percent in June 1983 to 48.1 percent in June 1984, while its profit margins began eroding.

Parent company Time Inc. responded by forcing out HBO chairman Frank J. Biondi, replacing him with Michael J. Fuchs. Fuchs cut HBO's staff by 125 employees and embarked on a $20 million advertising campaign, overseen by the New York firm Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn, to polish HBO's image. He also renegotiated contracts with Columbia Pictures and TriStar for the broadcasting of films and cut expense accounts and other costs.

As a result of the contract renegotiations, HBO gave up exclusive rights to many films. Rival Showtime, meanwhile, was trumpeting its new policy of showing films exclusively or not showing them at all. Previously, both the two firms had shown some films exclusively, but shared many others. As a result of its new policy, Showtime won exclusive rights to several popular films. HBO management was angered, feeling that they already had learned that exclusive rights cost more than they were worth and that Showtime's move had increased the prices of acquiring even limited rights. Showtime's strategy also pushed HBO into negotiating for exclusive rights for more films than it otherwise would have done. Some industry analysts felt that the price of buying films for pay-TV should be decreasing, since the popularity of videocassette recorders had lowered their worth.

Despite the cable television slump, HBO had 14.6 million subscribers in 1985 and sales of about $800 million. Early the following year it began to scramble the signals it used to broadcast its programming to cable-system operators. Until then anyone with a satellite dish could tune in HBO for free.

Continuing to stock its film library, HBO bought the rights to 125 Warner Brothers films for five years for $600 million in 1986, also buying the rights to 72 films by MGM/UA Entertainment for four years. The following year, it bought the rights to 85 Paramount Pictures films over a five-year period.

In 1989 Viacom filed a $2.4 billion antitrust lawsuit against HBO. Viacom's Showtime subsidiary alleged that HBO was trying to put it out of business by intimidating cable systems that carried Showtime, as well as by trying to corner the market on Hollywood films to prevent rivals from showing any. The suit attracted wide attention, generating negative publicity for the cable industry at a time when the U.S. Congress was considering the re-regulation of cable. Part of the reason the antitrust charges attracted so much attention was because they were being delivered by former top HBO employees; Frank J. Biondi had gone on to become Viacom's president and chief executive officer, while Showtime's president, Winston H. Cox, was also a former HBO executive. The lawsuit would not be settled until the early 1990s.

Company Perspectives:

Home Box Office continues its strategy of investing in original programming, interweaving it with theatrical films from its existing long-term studio output agreements. It aims to increase subscription revenues as well as maximizing content sales, including syndication and DVDs.

In the meantime, hoping to branch out, HBO announced plans for a 24-hour all-comedy channel. Stand-up comedy was experiencing a popularity boom in the United States, and polls of cable subscribers showed enthusiasm for the idea. HBO's The Comedy Channel began with six million subscribers in November 1989, though industry analysts felt it would need 20 million to attract enough advertising to survive. Some critics offered harsh appraisals of The Comedy Channel's fare, citing in particular the way HBO strung together excerpts from standup routines, sitcoms, and movie clips rather than longer, more substantial comedic pieces, and many cable operators were resistant to offering Comedy Channel at all. HBO moved quickly to entice them into buying ownership stakes as incen-tive to get the new channel wider availability. Comedy Channel suffered another setback when Viacom's HA! began broadcasting old sitcoms in their entirety, eschewing Comedy Channel's practice of showing excerpts. Most industry analysts believed that only one of the channels would survive. Many cable operators did not sign up for either, waiting to see which would get more support.

HBO invested heavily in advertising to win subscribers to its new and existing services, spending about $38 million in 1990 alone. Both Comedy Channel and HA! were struggling, however, and in a surprise move, HBO and Viacom agreed to merge them into Comedy Central late in 1990. This shared channel, Comedy Central, would eventually go on to experience great success, producing several popular original comedy shows of its own.

HBO's legal challenges were not over, however. During this time, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), a performance-rights society, sued HBO over the rates it was paying for the use of BMI-protected music. The suit was settled in January 1991 when HBO agreed to raise the rate it paid for its blanket license to 15 cents per subscriber per year, up from 12 cents.

One of the most common complaints subscribers had about pay-TV channels was that they all tended to show the same films at the same time; once a person had seen the film, there was nothing on TV to watch. As the cancellation rate for HBO was about 4 percent a month, or about 850,000 of its 17 million subscribers per year, this lack of options was believed to be an important factor. To hang on to subscribers, HBO announced in 1991 that it would convert HBO and Cinemax to multichannel services. Each network would broadcast different programming simultaneously on three different channels. Many cable systems had no extra channels to offer, but HBO management hoped new technologies would expand the number of channels available. Because the company had to wait for fiber-optic lines to be installed and data-compression techniques to become more widely available, however, some industry observers estimated that it would be three to five years before these multiple channels were widely available.

In August 1992 the Viacom suit was finally settled out of court, having cost both sides tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Time Warner, HBO's parent company, agreed to pay Viacom $75 million and to buy a Viacom cable system in Milwaukee for $95 million, $10 million more than it was worth at the time, according to the Wall Street Journal. Time Warner agreed to more widely distribute Showtime and The Movie Channel on Time Warner's cable systems, the second largest in the United States. The two sides also agreed to a joint marketing campaign to try to revive the image of cable, which was again in a slump; HBO had lost about 300,000 subscribers in 1991, leaving it with a total of 17.3 million.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s many analysts predicted the end of pay-TV. Competition from advertiser-supported basic cable channels and pay-per-view options threatened an HBO already weakened by the popularity of home video rentals. HBO, however, fought back on several fronts. CEO Michael Fuchs began an aggressive marketing campaign and continued to expand the availability of multiplexing around the country. He expanded the company's ventures outside its traditional enterprises, taking on sports licensing, such as the licensing of the World Cup logo. In addition, HBO moved into foreign pay TV markets and began selling original HBO productions for foreign theatrical and home video distribution.

An Early 1990s Turnaround

Several of these strategies soon showed results for HBO. The company's foreign pay TV ventures proved highly successful and helped maintain profits. Foreign distributions were booming by the mid-1990s. Outside ventures, such as sports licensing, grew quickly, accounting for 28 percent of revenues in 1993, up from 1 percent in 1982. On the home front, aggressive marketing and multiplexing were apparently behind the mild boost in subscribership in 1992. Membership continued to rise; in 1993 the subscriber base increased by one million to 24.7 million.

Competition for exclusive rights to Hollywood films subsided in the early 1990s, bringing down licensing costs by 20 percent. The end of the bidding wars helped raise HBO's profits: In 1992 operating profits were up by 10 percent, to $215 million, and they rose the next year as well, to $230 million. The tides had begun to turn for HBO, which in 1993 provided 8 percent of Time Warner's pretax profit.

Key Dates:

1972:

Time Inc. creates HBO.

1980:

HBO introduces a second channel called Cinemax.

1982:

HBO works out a deal with Columbia Pictures and CBS to create Tri-Star Pictures, the first major new U.S. film studio in 40 years.

1989:

Viacom files a $2.4 billion antitrust lawsuit against HBO.

1990:

HBO and Viacom merge The Comedy Channel and HA! to form the Comedy Central channel.

1991:

The company announces that it will convert HBO and Cinemax to multichannel services.

1992:

The Viacom lawsuit is settled out of court.

1997:

HBO receives 90 nominations for Emmys—the first time a cable network has garnered more nominations than any broadcast network.

1999:

The Sopranos debuts.

2002:

Chris Albrecht is named chairman and CEO.

2004:

HBO wins a record 32 Emmy awards.

Having rebounded somewhat from its slump in the late 1980s, HBO needed to maintain its momentum. In 1994 Jolie Solomon of Newsweek assessed the situation, noting that CEO Fuchs "must stay ahead of the multimedia revolution, especially the technology that will create home-video jukeboxes. His strategy is to make HBO a powerful brand name, signaling high quality on the cutting edge." To that end, Fuchs upped the company's advertising and focused increasing amounts of HBO's time and budget on original productions, including movies, specials, and series. Because HBO did not need to attract and keep advertisers, it could take on subjects in its original productions that networks would not touch, such as Barbarians at the Gate, a 1993 movie critical of R.J.R. Nabisco.

Fuchs's competitive, aggressive, and some said antagonistic management style, however, was not popular among all board members and shareholders, and he was replaced as CEO in 1995 by Jeffrey L. Bewkes. Having served HBO for years as an executive, Bewkes moved into the top position smoothly. With a more cooperative managerial style, especially with fellow subsidiary Warner Brothers, Bewkes continued Fuchs's general strategy of creating original programming and promoting HBO as a high-quality brand. In fact, in 1997 he spent an impressive $25 million to promote that brand, a figure that did not include the advertising budget for specific programs.

The company's efforts at original programming gained momentum in the late 1990s. In 1997 HBO received 90 nominations for Emmys, marking the first time a cable network had garnered more nominations than any broadcast network. Moreover, HBO was only narrowly beaten by NBC for the most Emmy awards won. Praise from critics was on the rise as well, particularly for the channel's original series, such as the comedy The Larry Sanders Show and the drama Oz. In 1999, HBO inked a deal with Twentieth-Century Fox and secured exclusive rights to its films for another ten years.

By the late 1990s, HBO had held its own against those threats to pay-TV against which other top competitors were still struggling. The Starz! and Showtime movie networks were both trailing HBO with fewer than half their subscribers. The satellite market had matured by 1998, however, and HBO could no longer rely on that market boom for increasing its subscriber base. Thus, although HBO had long outlasted predictions of its demise, it still faced many challenges as it approached a new century.

Success in the New Millennium

HBO entered the new millennium on solid ground thanks to its original programming efforts. More than $1 billion was spent on its programming budget at this time, and nearly half of that was allocated toward original programming. This budget strategy had catapulted HBO well ahead of its competitors. In fact, over the past few years several HBO shows had exploded, reaching iconic status. The hit series, The Sopranos, was considered to be the most successful series in cable television history. Other shows, including Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, were also highly popular. HBO won 20 Primetime Emmy awards in 2000, and the company was adding new subscribers to its base at a steady clip. By now, HBO was seen in 90 percent of the United States' 27 million premium television households.

While HBO was cranking out popular shows and miniseries, including Band of Brothers, its parent company was working on a blockbuster deal of its own. In 2001, America Online joined forces with Time Warner in a hotly contested, highly publicized $106 billion mega-merger. The new company was named AOL Time Warner (Time Warner dropped AOL from its name in 2003).

In 2002, HBO chairman Bewkes was tapped to head up Time Warner along with Don Logan. HBO veteran Chris Albrecht was named his successor. HBO's good fortune continued under Albrecht's leadership. The company was one of the most profitable units in the Time Warner empire and in 2004 sales surpassed $3 billion for the first time. HBO hit a brief snag in 2003 when Sopranos lead actor James Gandolfini sued the company, attempting to break his contract. In a highly publicized battle, Albrecht threatened to pull The Sopranos off the air. In the end, Gandolfini returned to work during his contract negotiations and the show was broadcast as planned.

In 2003, HBO reigned above all other networks at the annual Emmy ceremony, receiving 18 awards. It won a record 32 Emmys the following year. The trend continued in 2005 when it took home 27 awards. Along with its lineup of original series, HBO's Film business segment continued to produce highly acclaimed original movies, including My House in Umbria, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Iron Jawed Angels. In 2005, the company partnered with New Line Cinema to acquire Newmarket Entertainment's distribution business.

Several new shows were slated to debut in 2005, including The Comeback, Rome, and Unscripted. Cable channel A&E signed a contract with HBO that year, paying $2.5 million per episode to air The Sopranos starting in 2006. The company also partnered with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in a deal that allowed PBS to air three original HBO films.

By now, HBO stood as the most-watched pay-service in the United States. It held an enviable position among its competitors but realized that fickle U.S. consumers could quickly change its fortunes. In the years to come, the company would have to create unique original programming to rival its hit shows like Sex and the City and The Sopranos (which was rumored to be ending in 2006/2007). HBO management was confident, however, that its strategy would continue to pay off and that its programming would entertain subscribers for years to come.

Principal Competitors

The NBC Television Network; Showtime Networks Inc.; Starz Entertainment Group LLC.

Further Reading

"AOL Time Warner: End of a New Era," Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2002.

Beatty, Sally, "HBO Marches into Battle," Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2001.

――――, "Pay TV: Unconventional HBO Finds Its Own Success Is a Hard Act to Follow," Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2000.

Berger, Warren, "At 25, Excellence and Big Budgets for a Late Bloomer," New York Times, November 9, 1997.

Block, Alex Ben, "Shoot-Out Time in Pay TV," Forbes, September 22, 1986.

"Cable-TV Dangles New Lures," Business Week, December 1, 1973.

"Can a New Chief Change the Picture at HBO?," Business Week, October 29, 1984.

Carter, Bill, "HBO to Give 3 New Films for Viewing on Public TV," New York Times, January 10, 2005.

Cox, Meg, "Time Warner's HBO, Broadcast Music Settle Suit Over Performance Rights," Wall Street Journal, January 11, 1991.

Gubernick, Lisa, "Time Heals All," Forbes, May 23, 1994, p. 241.

"HBO's Boss of Bosses," Broadcast, July 4, 2003.

"How HBO Dominates Pay-TV," Business Week, September 20, 1982.

King, Thomas R., "HBO to Offer Multiple Choice for Tuning In," Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1991.

Kneale, Dennis, "HBO Vows to Stick with Comedy Channel and Seek Operators Willing to Buy Stake," Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1990.

Lindsey, Robert, "Home Box Office Moves in on Hollywood," New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1983.

"A New Shooter in Tinseltown," Newsweek, December 13, 1982.

"Pay-TV: Even HBO's Growth Is Slowing," Business Week, July 9, 1984.

"Pay-TV: Is It a Viable Alternative?," Forbes, May 1, 1978.

"Pay TV's Lazarus Act," Forbes, March 1, 1993, pp. 14-15.

"The Race to Dominate the Pay-TV Market," Business Week, October 2, 1978.

Roberts, Johnnie L., "Time Warner, Viacom Settle HBO Suit, Clearing a Cloud from Cable's Horizon," Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1992.

Solomon, Jolie, "What Michael Fuchs Wants You to Know," Newsweek, May 30, 1994, pp. 60-61.

Stevens, Elizabeth Lesly, "Call It Home Buzz Office," Business Week, December 8, 1997, pp. 77, 80.

Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A., "Changing Reels," Forbes, May 20, 1985.

――――, "Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa," Forbes, December 16, 1985.

Waters, Harry F., "Can HBO Change the Show?," Newsweek, May 23, 1983.

――――, "Talk About a Running Gag," Newsweek, May 29, 1989.

                                     —Scott M. Lewis

                     —updates: Susan Windisch Brown, Christina M. Stansell

Home Box Office Inc.

1100 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036
U.S.A.
(212) 512-1000
Fax: (212) 512-5517
Web site: http://www.hbo.com

Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
Incorporated: 1972
Employees: 2,100
Sales: $1.7 billion
Stock Exchanges: Boston Midwest New York Philadelphia
SICs: 4841 Cable & Other Pay Television Services; 7812 Motion Picture & Video Production

Home Box Office Inc. (HBO) is the largest pay-TV channel in the United States, with a subscriber base of about 33 million and earnings of approximately $400 million. As a subsidiary of Time Warner Entertainment Co., L.P., 63 percent of which is owned by Time Warner Inc., HBO’s programming includes sports events, comedy offerings, Hollywood films, and self-produced films.

1970s Formation

Home Box Office was founded by Time Inc. in 1972 to offer cable television service. As a subsidiary of Time, HBO bought the rights to recent films and transmitted them to local systems via satellite and microwave relays. Its service was distributed by the local cable operators, typically costing subscribers $6 a month, of which HBO received $3.50. HBO management initially regarded the company as an editorial marketer, selling its programming the way Time sold magazines.

HBO grew slowly in its first years, as the nascent cable industry struggled to get off the ground. Cable was hampered by market fragmentation, lack of infrastructure, and tough federal regulations, some of them sponsored by the major television networks, which feared that cable could eventually steal much of their audience and revenue.

During the mid-1970s the cable industry laid the groundwork for rapid growth: it expanded its infrastructure through such populous areas as New York City and the suburbs of Boston, won a series of court victories that removed many federal restrictions, and won rate increases from local governments. Pay-TV customers, those buying additional cable services such as HBO, grew from 50,000 in 1974 to about 1.5 million in 1978. HBO won greater latitude in pursuing customers in 1977 when a federal ruling lifted restrictions on the choice of movies and sports available on pay-TV. HBO quickly became one of the primary engines driving the growth of the cable industry. Cable systems operators hooked up thousands of people for basic services who were primarily interested in getting HBO.

HBO made its first profit in 1977. It lost tens of thousands of customers in 1978, however, as a result of a move by its chief rival, Showtime, which was challenging HBO head-on for the cable film audience. During this time, Showtime’s parent, Viacom, had struck a deal with Teleprompter, the largest cable systems operator in the United States, which resulted in Teleprompter’s customers receiving Showtime instead of HBO.

Nevertheless, HBO worked diligently on its programming, lining up enough films to make it the premiere pay-TV outlet for commercial films. It also began its On Location comedy series and The Young Comedians Show, one of the first television forums for such comedians as Robin Williams and Paul Ruebens (Pee-Wee Herman).

In 1978 Time spent $145 million to buy American Television & Communications Corp., then the second-largest cable systems operator in the United States, hoping a large number of its 675,000 customers would subscribe to HBO. HBO continued to expand, and as it did it was able to pay higher prices per film than its competitors, winning better films and more subscribers. In fact, its financial resources allowed it to purchase a block of 40 MGM/United Artists films all at once, paying about $35 million. HBO also began investing in the preproduction financing of movies in exchange for exclusive pay-TV rights. This prebuying was risky; HBO was paying in advance for the rights to movies that might prove unpopular. Moreover, the practice angered movie studios, which felt that HBO was intruding on their turf, and some of them began looking for a way into the cable TV industry. Some studios warned that HBO would drive many film studios out of business and control the film industry. Though such fears eventually proved unfounded, they demonstrated the depth of concern attached to a new medium whose ultimate potential remained a mystery.

In 1980 HBO introduced a second channel called Cinemax. This channel was priced lower than HBO and was geared to compete with Viacom’s Showtime. Viacom would later charge that Cinemax was priced below cost as a way to drive Showtime out of business.

The Competitive 1980s

By 1982 HBO had 9.8 million subscribers, nearly 50 percent of all pay-TV subscribers, and earned $100 million on sales of $440 million. In fact, HBO was about three times as big as its nearest competitor, Showtime. This size advantage contributed to HBO’s bottom line. For example, it paid about $1.4 million for the hit film Raging Bull, or about 15 cents per subscriber. Although Showtime paid less for the film, $1 million, that figure worked out to more than 30 cents per subscriber. When Star Wars went on the block in 1982, HBO matched a Showtime offer of $1 per subscriber, but insisted on price concessions on less popular films made by Twentieth-Century Fox.

At the end of 1982 HBO worked out a deal with Columbia Pictures and CBS to create Tri-Star Pictures, the first major new U.S. film studio in 40 years. Each company was to contribute up to $100 million to the venture, and HBO received the pay-TV rights. By 1983 HBO, with 13.4 million subscribers, was producing made-for-television movies and working on its own original comedy programs. While some industry observers wondered if HBO would become the fourth major non-cable television network, the growth of the cable industry as a whole slowed dramatically beginning in 1984. Part of the cause was lingering infrastructure problems. New cable systems had not yet been built in such major markets as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore. Other causes for the cable slowdown were rising cable rates at a time when more and more consumers owned video cassette recorders and could rent their own films. Finally, HBO had also become complacent in negotiating contracts, while competitors moved quickly. As a result, HBO’s share of the pay-TV market slipped from 50.4 percent in June 1983 to 48.1 percent in June 1984, while its profit margins began eroding.

Parent company Time Inc. responded by forcing out HBO chairman Frank J. Biondi, replacing him with Michael J. Fuchs. Fuchs cut HBO’s staff by 125 employees and embarked on a $20 million advertising campaign, overseen by the New York firm Batten Barton Durstine & Osborn, to polish HBO’s image. He also renegotiated contracts with Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star for the broadcasting of films and cut expense accounts and other costs.

As a result of the contract renegotiations, HBO gave up exclusive rights to many films. Rival Showtime, meanwhile, was trumpeting its new policy of showing films exclusively or not showing them at all. Previously the two firms had both showed some films exclusively, but shared many others. As a result of its new policy, Showtime won exclusive rights to several popular films. HBO management was angered, feeling that they had already learned that exclusive rights cost more than they were worth and that Showtime’s move had increased the prices of acquiring even limited rights. Showtime’s strategy also pushed HBO into negotiating for exclusive rights for more films than it otherwise would have done. Some industry analysts felt that the price of buying films for pay-TV should be decreasing, since the popularity of video cassette recorders had lowered their worth.

Despite the cable television slump, HBO had 14.6 million subscribers in 1985 and sales of about $800 million. Early the following year it began to scramble the signals it used to broadcast its programming to cable-system operators. Until then anyone with a satellite dish could tune in HBO for free.

Continuing to stock its film library, HBO bought the rights to 125 Warner Brothers films for five years for $600 million in 1986, also buying the rights to 72 films by MGM/UA Entertainment for four years. The following year, it bought the rights to 85 Paramount Pictures films over a five-year period.

In 1989 Viacom filed a $2.4 billion antitrust lawsuit against HBO. Viacom’s Showtime subsidiary alleged that HBO was trying to put it out of business by intimidating cable systems that carried Showtime, as well as by trying to corner the market on Hollywood films to prevent rivals from showing any. The suit attracted wide attention, generating negative publicity for the cable industry at a time when the U.S. Congress was considering the re-regulation of cable. Part of the reason the anti-trust charges attracted so much attention was because they were being delivered by former top HBO employees; Frank J. Biondi had gone on to become Viacom’s president and chief executive officer, while Showtime’s president, Winston H. Cox, was also a former HBO executive. The lawsuit would not be settled until the early 1990s.

Company Perspectives:

HBO’s aim is to continue to provide subscribers with the highest quality, award-winning new entertainment specials, original movies, comedy, documentaries, series, music specials, family shows, sports specials, and championship boxing available anywhere on television.

In the meantime, hoping to branch out, HBO announced plans for a 24-hour all-comedy channel. Stand-up comedy was experiencing a popularity boom in the United States, and polls of cable subscribers showed enthusiasm for the idea. HBO’s The Comedy Channel began with six million subscribers in November 1989, though industry analysts felt it would need 20 million to attract enough advertising to survive. Some critics offered harsh appraisals of The Comedy Channel’s fare, citing in particular the way HBO strung together excerpts from stand-up routines, sitcoms, and movie clips rather than longer, more substantial comedic pieces, and many cable operators were resistant to offering Comedy Channel at all. HBO moved quickly to entice them into buying ownership stakes as incentive to get the new channel wider availability. In April 1991 Comedy Channel suffered another setback when Viacom’s HA! began broadcasting old sitcoms in their entirety, eschewing Comedy Channel’s practice of showing excerpts. Most industry analysts believed that only one of the channels would survive. Many cable operators did not sign up for either, waiting to see which would get more support.

HBO invested heavily in advertising to win subscribers to its new and existing services, spending about $38 million in 1990 alone. However, both Comedy Channel and HA! were struggling, and in a surprise move, HBO and Viacom agreed to merge them into Comedy Central late in 1990. This shared channel, Comedy Central, would eventually go on to experience great success, producing several popular original comedy shows of its own.

HBO’s legal challenges weren’t over, however. During this time, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), a performance-rights society, sued HBO over the rates it was paying for the use of BMI-protected music. The suit was settled in January 1991 when HBO agreed to raise the rate it paid for its blanket license to 15 cents per subscriber per year, up from 12 cents.

One of the most common complaints subscribers had about pay-TV channels was that they all tended to show the same films at the same time; once a person had seen the film, there was nothing on TV to watch. As the cancellation rate for HBO was about four percent a month, or about 850,000 of its 17 million subscribers per year, this lack of options was believed to be an important factor. To hang on to subscribers, HBO announced in 1991 that it would convert HBO and Cinemax to multichannel services. Each network would broadcast different programming simultaneously on three different channels. Many cable systems had no extra channels to offer, but HBO management hoped new technologies would expand the number of channels available. Because the company had to wait for fiberoptic lines to be installed and data-compression techniques to become more widely available, however, some industry observers estimated it would be three to five years before these multiple channels were widely available.

In August 1992 the Viacom suit was finally settled out of court, having cost both sides tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Time Warner, HBO’s parent company, agreed to pay Viacom $75 million and to buy a Viacom cable system in Milwaukee for $95 million, $10 million more than it was worth at the time according to the Wall Street Journal. Time Warner agreed to more widely distribute Showtime and The Movie Channel on Time Warner’s cable systems, the second-largest in the United States. The two sides also agreed to a joint marketing campaign to try and revive the image of cable, which was again in a slump; HBO had lost about 300,000 subscribers in 1991, leaving it with a total of 17.3 million.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s many analysts predicted the end of pay TV. Competition from advertiser-supported basic cable channels and pay-per-view options threatened an HBO already weakened by the popularity of home video rentals. However, HBO fought back on several fronts. CEO Michael Fuchs began an aggressive marketing campaign and continued to expand the availability of multiplexing around the country. He expanded the company’s ventures outside its traditional enterprises, taking on sports licensing, such as the licensing of the World Cup logo. In addition, HBO moved into foreign pay TV markets and began selling original HBO production for foreign theatrical and home video distribution.

An Early 1990s Turnaround

Several of these strategies soon showed results for HBO. The company’s foreign pay TV ventures proved highly successful and helped maintain profits. Foreign distributions were booming by the mid-1990s. Outside ventures, such as the sports licensing, grew quickly, accounting for 28 percent of revenues in 1993, up from one percent in 1982. On the home front, aggressive marketing and multiplexing were apparently behind the mild boost in subscribership in 1992. Membership continued to rise; in 1993 the subscriber base increased by one million to 24.7 million.

Competition for exclusive rights to Hollywood films subsided in the early 1990s, bringing down licensing costs by 20 percent. The end of the bidding wars helped raise HBO’s profits: in 1992 operating profits were up by ten percent, to $215 million, and they rose the next year as well, to $230 million. The tides had begun to turn for HBO, which in 1993 provided eight percent of Time Warner’s pretax profit.

Having rebounded somewhat from its slump in the late 1980s, HBO needed to maintain its momentum. In 1994 Jolie Solomon of News week assessed the situation, noting that CEO Fuchs “must stay ahead of the multimedia revolution, especially the technology that will create home-video jukeboxes. His strategy is to make HBO a powerful brand name, signaling high quality on the cutting edge.” To that end, Fuchs upped the company’s advertising and focused increasing amounts of HBO’s time and budget on original productions, including movies, specials, and series. Because HBO did not need to attract and keep advertisers, its could take on subjects in its original productions that networks wouldn’t touch, such as “Barbarians at the Gate,” a 1993 movie critical of R.J.R. Nabisco.

Fuchs’s competitive, aggressive, and some said antagonistic management style, however, was not popular among all board members and shareholders, and he was replaced as CEO in 1995 by Jeffrey L. Bewkes. Having served HBO for years as an executive, Bewkes moved into the top position smoothly. With a more cooperative managerial style, especially with fellow subsidiary Warner Brothers, Bewkes continued Fuchs general strategy of creating original programming and promoting HBO as high-quality brand. In fact, in 1997 he spent an impressive $25 million to promote that brand, a figure that did not include the advertising budget for specific programs.

The company’s efforts at original programming gained momentum in the late 1990s. In 1997 HBO received 90 nominations for Emmys, marking the first time a cable network had garnered more nominations than any broadcast network. Moreover, HBO was only narrowly beaten by NBC for the most Emmy awards won. Praise from critics was on the rise also, particularly for the channel’s original series, such as the comedy The Larry Sanders Show and the drama Oz.

By the late 1990s, HBO had held its own against those threats to pay-TV that other top competitors were still struggling against. The Starz! and Showtime movie networks were both trailing HBO with fewer than half their subscribers. However, the satellite market had matured by 1998, and HBO could no longer rely on that market boom for increasing its subscriber base. Thus, although HBO had long outlasted predictions of its demise, it still faced many challenges at it approached a new century.

Further Reading

Berger, Warren, “At 25, Excellence and Big Budgets for a Late Bloomer,” The New York Times, November 9, 1997, pp. AR23–AR24.

Block, Alex Ben, “Shoot-Out Time in Pay TV,” Forbes, September 22, 1986.

“Cable-TV Dangles New Lures,” Business Week, December 1, 1973.

“Can a New Chief Change the Picture at HBO?” Business Week, October 29, 1984.

Cox, Meg, “Time Warner’s HBO, Broadcast Music Settle Suit over Performance Rights,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 1991.

Gubernick, Lisa, “Time Heals All,” Forbes, May 23, 1994, p. 241.

“How HBO Dominates Pay-TV,” Business Week, September 20, 1982.

King, Thomas R., “HBO to Offer Multiple Choice for Tuning In,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1991.

Kneale, Dennis, “HBO Vows to Stick with Comedy Channel and Seek Operators Willing to Buy Stake,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1990.

Lindsey, Robert, “Home Box Office Moves in on Hollywood,” New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1983.

“A New Shooter in Tinseltown,” News week, December 13, 1982.

“Pay-TV: Even HBO’s Growth Is Slowing,” Business Week, July 9, 1984.

“Pay-TV: Is It a Viable Alternative?” Forbes, May 1, 1978.

“Pay TV’s Lazarus Act,” Forbes, March 1, 1993, pp. 14–15.

“The Race to Dominate the Pay-TV Market,” Business Week, October 2, 1978.

Roberts, Johnnie L., “Time Warner, Viacom Settle HBO Suit, Clearing a Cloud from Cable’s Horizon,” Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1992.

Solomon, Jolie, “What Michael Fuchs Wants You to Know,” News week, May 30, 1994, pp. 60–61.

Stevens, Elizabeth Lesly, “Call It Home Buzz Office,” Business Week, December 8, 1997, pp. 77, 80.

Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A., “Changing Reels,” Forbes, May 20, 1985.

——, “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa,” Forbes, December 16, 1985.

Waters, Harry F., “Can HBO Change the Show?,” News week, May 23, 1983.

——, “Talk about a Running Gag,” News week, May 29, 1989.

—Scott M. Lewis
—updated by Susan Windisch Brown

Home Box Office Inc.

1100 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036
U.S.A.
(212) 512-1000
Fax: (212) 512-5517

Public Company
Incorporated: 1972
Employees: 1,500
Sales: $800 million
Stock Exchanges: Boston Midwest New York Philadelphia-Baltimore
SICs: 4841 Cable & Other Pay Television Services; 7812 Motion Picture & Video Production

Home Box Office Inc. (HBO) is the largest pay-TV channel in the United States, with a subscriber base of about 17 million and programming that includes sports events, comedy, Hollywood films, and self-produced films. It is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc.

Home Box Office was founded by Time Inc. in 1972 to offer cable television service. HBO bought the rights to recent films and transmitted them to local systems via satellite and microwave relays. Its service was distributed by the local cable operators, typically costing subscribers $6 a month, of which HBO received $3.50. HBO management thought of themselves as editorial marketers, selling its programming the way Time sold magazines.

HBO grew slowly in its first years, as the nascent cable industry struggled to get off the ground. Cable was hampered by market fragmentation, lack of infrastructure, and tough federal regulations, some of them sponsored by the major television networks, which feared that cable could eventually steal much of their audience and revenue.

During the mid-1970s the cable industry laid the groundwork for rapid growth: it expanded its infrastructure through such populous areas as New York City and the suburbs of Boston, won a series of court victories that removed many Federal restrictions, and won rate increases from local governments. Pay-TV customers, those buying additional cable services such as HBO, grew from 50,000 in 1974 to about 1.5 million in 1978. HBO won greater latitude in pursuing customers in 1977 when a federal ruling lifted restrictions on the choice of movies and sports available on pay-TV. HBO quickly became one of the primary engines driving the growth of the cable industry. Cable systems operators hooked up thousands of people for basic services who were primarily interested in getting HBO.

HBO made its first profit in 1977. It lost tens of thousands of customers in 1978, however, as a result of a move by its chief rival, Showtime, which was challenging HBO head on for the cable film audience. Showtime struck a deal with Teleprompter, the largest cable systems operator in the United States, which resulted in Teleprompter’s customers receiving Showtime instead of HBO.

HBO worked hard on its programming, lining up enough films to make it the premiere pay-TV outlet for commercial films. It also began its On Location comedy series and The Young Comedians Show, one of the first television spots for comedians such as Robin Williams and Pee-wee Herman.

In 1978 Time spent $145 million to buy American Television & Communications Corp., the second-largest cable systems operator in the United States, hoping a large number of its 675,000 customers would subscribe to HBO. HBO continued to expand, and as it did it was able to pay higher prices per film than its competitors, winning better films and more subscribers. Its financial resources allowed it to purchase a block of 40 MGM/ United Artists films all at once, for instance, paying about $35 million. It also began investing in the preproduction financing of movies in exchange for exclusive pay-TV rights. This pre-buying was risky; HBO was paying in advance for the rights to movies that might prove unpopular. Nonetheless, the practice angered movie studios, which felt that HBO was intruding on their turf, and some of them began looking for a way into the cable TV industry. Some studios warned that HBO would drive many film studios out of business and control the film industry. Though such fears later proved unfounded, they demonstrated the depth of concern attached to a new medium whose ultimate potential remained a mystery.

In 1980 HBO introduced a second channel called Cinemax. It was priced lower than HBO and was geared to compete with Showtime. Viacom, Showtime’s parent company, later charged that Cinemax was priced below cost as a way to drive Showtime out of business.

By 1982 HBO had 9.8 million subscribers, nearly 50 percent of all pay-TV subscribers, and earned $100 million on sales of $440 million. It was about three times as big as its nearest competitor, Showtime. This size advantage contributed to HBO’s bottom line. For example, it paid about $1.4 million for the hit film Raging Bull, or about 15 cents per subscriber. Although Showtime paid less for the film, $1 million, that worked out to more than 30 cents per subscriber. When Star Wars went on the block in 1982, it matched a Showtime offer of $1 per subscriber, but insisted on price concessions on less popular films made by Twentieth-Century Fox.

At the end of 1982 HBO worked out a deal with Columbia Pictures and CBS to create Tri-Star Pictures, the first major new U.S. film studio in 40 years. Each company was to contribute up to $100 million to the venture and HBO received the pay-TV rights. By 1983 HBO was producing made-for-television movies and working on its own comedy programs, and had 13.4 million subscribers. Some observers wondered if it was becoming a fourth television network. But at the beginning of 1984, the growth of the cable industry as a whole slowed dramatically. Part of the cause was lingering infrastructure problems. New cable systems had not yet been built in such major markets as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore. Other causes cited were rising cable rates at a time when more and more consumers owned video cassette recorders and could rent their own films. HBO had also become complacent in negotiating contracts, while competitors moved quickly. As a result, HBO’s share of the pay-TV market slipped from 50.4 percent in June 1983 to 48.1 percent in June 1984, while its profit margins began eroding.

Parent Time Inc. responded by forcing out HBO chairman Frank J. Biondi, replacing him with Michael J. Fuchs. Fuchs cut HBO’s staff by 125 employees and embarked on a $20 million advertising campaign by BBOO, New York, to polish HBO’s image. He also renegotiated contracts with Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star for the broadcasting of films and cut expense accounts and other costs.

As a result of the contract renegotiations, HBO gave up exclusive rights to many films. Rival Showtime, meanwhile, was trumpeting its new policy of showing films exclusively or not showing them at all. Previously the two firms had both showed some films exclusively, but shared many others. As a result of this policy, Showtime won exclusive rights to several popular films. HBO management was angered, feeling that they had already learned that exclusive rights cost more than they were worth and that Showtime’s move had increased the prices of acquiring even limited rights. Showtime’s strategy also pushed HBO into negotiating for exclusive rights for more films than it otherwise would have done. Some industry analysts felt that the price of buying films for pay-TV should be decreasing, since the popularity of video cassette recorders had lowered their worth.

Despite the cable television slump, HBO had 14.6 million subscribers in 1985 and sales of about $800 million. Early the following year it began to scramble the signals it used to broadcast its programming to cable-system operators. Until then anyone with a satellite dish could tune in HBO for free.

Continuing to stock its film library, HBO bought the rights to 125 Warner Brothers films for five years for $600 million in 1986, also buying the rights to 72 films by MGM/UA Entertainment for four years. In 1987 it bought the rights to 85 Paramount Pictures films over a five-year period.

In 1989 Viacom filed a $2.4 billion antitrust lawsuit against HBO. Viacom’s Showtime alleged that HBO was trying to put it out of business by intimidating cable systems that carried Showtime and trying to corner the market on Hollywood films to prevent rivals from showing any. The suit attracted wide attention, generating negative publicity for the cable industry at a time when the U.S. Congress was considering the re-regulation of cable. Part of the reason the anti-trust charges attracted so much attention was because they were being delivered by former top HBO employees. Frank J. Biondi had gone on to become Viacom’s president and chief executive officer, while Showtime’s president, Winston H. Cox, was also a former HBO executive.

In 1989, hoping to branch out, HBO announced plans for a 24-hour all-comedy channel. Comedy was experiencing a popularity boom in the United States, and polls of cable subscribers showed enthusiasm for the idea. The Comedy Channel began with 6 million subscribers in November 1989, though industry analysts felt it would need 20 million to attract enough advertising to survive. Critics offered harsh appraisals of Comedy Channel’s fare, citing in particular the way HBO strung together excerpts from stand-up routines, sitcoms and movie clips. Many cable operators were resistant to offering Comedy Channel at all. HBO moved quickly to entice them into buying ownership stakes as incentive to get the new channel wider availability. In April 1991 Comedy Channel suffered another setback when Viacom’s HA! began broadcasting old sitcoms in their entirety, eschewing Comedy Channel’s practice of showing excerpts. Most industry analysts believed that only one of the channels would survive. Many cable operators did not sign up for either, waiting to see which would get more support.

HBO invested heavily in advertising to win subscribers to its new and existing services, spending about $38 million in 1990 alone. However, both Comedy Channel and HA! were struggling, and in a surprise move, HBO and Viacom agreed to merge them into Comedy Central late in 1990.

In the meantime, Broadcast Music Incorporated, a performance-rights society, sued HBO over the rates it was paying for the use of BMI-protected music. The suit was settled in January 1991 when HBO agreed to raise the rate it paid for its blanket license to 15 cents per subscriber per year, up from 12 cents.

One of the most common complaints subscribers had about pay-TV channels was that they only showed one film at a time, so that if one had already seen it, one had nothing to watch. The cancellation rate for HBO was about four percent a month, or about 850,000 of its 17 million subscribers per year, and this lack of options was believed to be an important factor. To hang on to subscribers, HBO announced in 1991 that it would convert HBO and Cinemax to multichannel services. Each network would broadcast different programming simultaneously on three different channels. Many cable systems had no extra channels to offer, but HBO management hoped new technologies would expand the number of channels available. Because it had to wait for fiber-optic lines to be installed and data-compression techniques to become more widely available, however, some industry observers estimated it would be three to five years before these multiple channels were widely available.

In August 1992 the Viacom suit was finally settled out of court, having cost both sides tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Time Warner, HBO’s parent company, agreed to pay Viacom $75 million and buy a Viacom cable system in Milwaukee for $95 million, $10 million more than it was worth at the time according to the Wall Street Journal. Time Warner agreed to more widely distribute Showtime and the Movie Channel on Time Warner’s cable systems, the second-largest in the United States. The two sides also agreed to a joint marketing campaign to try and revive the image of cable, which was again in a slump. HBO lost about 300,000 subscribers in 1991, leaving it with a total of 17.3 million. Cinemax had 6.3 million subscribers.

Further Reading

“Cable-TV Dangles New Lures,” Business Week, December 1, 1973; “Pay-TV: Is It a Viable Alternative?” Forbes, May 1, 1978; “The Race to Dominate the Pay-TV Market,” Business Week, October 2, 1978; “How HBO Dominates Pay-TV,” Business Week, September 20, 1982; “A New Shooter in Tinseltown,” Newsweek, December 13, 1982; Waters, Harry R, “Can HBO Change the Show?” Newsweek, May 23, 1983; Lindsey, Robert, “Home Box Office Moves in on Hollywood,” New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1983; “Pay-TV: Even HBO’s Growth Is Slowing,” Business Week, July 9, 1984; “Can a New Chief Change the Picture at HBO?” Business Week, October 29, 1984; Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A., “Changing Reels,” Forbes, May 20, 1985; Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A., “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa,” Forbes, December 16, 1985; Block, Alex Ben, “Shoot-Out Time in Pay TV,” Forbes, September 22, 1986; Waters, Harry R, “Talk about a Running Gag,” Newsweek, May 29, 1989; Kneale, Dennis, “HBO Vows to Stick with Comedy Channel and Seek Operators Willing to Buy Stake,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1990; Cox, Meg, “Time Warner’s HBO, Broadcast Music Settle Suit over Performance Rights,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 1991; King, Thomas R., “HBO to Offer Multiple Choice for Tuning In,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1991; Roberts, Johnnie L., “Time Warner, Viacom Settle HBO Suit, Clearing a Cloud from Cable’s Horizon,” Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1992.

—Scott M. Lewis

Home Box Office Inc.

also known as: hbo founded: 1972

Contact Information:

headquarters: 1100 avenue of the americas
new york, ny 10036 phone: (212)512-1000 fax: (212)515-5517 url: http://www.hbo.com

OVERVIEW

Home Box Office Inc. (HBO) earns applause as the first and by far the most successful pay-television network. The company's core channels, HBO and Cinemax, reach more than 32 million subscribers 24-hours-a-day. Programming includes concerts, hit movies, sporting events, comedy specials, and documentaries. The company also owns a share of Comedy Central. Founded by Time Inc. in 1972, HBO helped pioneer a new field of home entertainment by offering cable television services. HBO reports weekly viewership rose almost 20 percent from 1994 to 1997, however, subscriber growth showed signs of slowing in 1998.

In response to the growing home video market, the network started producing a greater number of original programs and has earned a multitude of awards for its content and programming. HBO produces more than 15 original programs a year, such as the $60-million space exploration series, From the Earth to the Moon, and the $14-million Vietnam memoir, A Bright Shining Lie. In 1997 HBO won 19 Emmy Awards, beating 3 out of the 4 major broadcast networks.

While the network's schedule of commercially uninterrupted programming features mostly Hollywood motion pictures, HBO refuses to show X-rated films and airs R-rated films only at night. Success stems partly from the company's ability to keep up with entertainment and cable industry trends and technology. In 1997, HBO announced it would begin broadcasting programs in the new high-definition television format beginning in 1998, becoming the first cable service to commit to the new technology that is set to become the standard for broadcast television by 2006.

COMPANY FINANCES

Throughout the mid-1990s HBO's revenues showed steady growth. In 1994 HBO reported sales of $1.51 billion, compared with 1993's $1.44 billion. In 1996 HBO posted revenues of $1.76 million, up from 1995 sales of $1.60 billion. In 1997 HBO reported operating income of $391 million on sales of $1.92 billion.

ANALYSTS' OPINIONS

Although HBO had a considerable lead in the mid-1990s, industry analysts such as Paul Kagan and Associates contend that HBO's control of the market could continue to erode little by little. The media analysis firm predicted that HBO's share may drop below 70 percent in the late 1990s. Showtime started to run more original movies in the mid-1990s, thereby expanding its popularity and revenues. Observers expect that if Showtime can continue producing quality original movies, it could succeed in stealing large numbers of HBO's subscribers—in 1997 Showtime offered twice as many original movies as HBO.

On the other hand, according to a December 1997 article in Business Week, "HBO has become the most efficient profit machine in the Time Warner Inc. empire, with a return on invested capital of about 55 percent. It generates cash flow of well over $400 million a year on revenues of $2 billion and has an asset value of more than $4 billion. 'It just goes from strength to strength,' says Montgomery Securities' John Tinker. 'They cut through the clutter. They create events. They have the best brand. They win'."

HISTORY

Publishing giant Time Inc. started a cable television service called Home Box Office in 1972. The first HBO presentation, a National Hockey League game from Madison Square Garden, went out to 365 cable TV subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on November 8, 1972. HBO's first championship boxing match, featuring George Foreman vs. Joe Frazier, was broadcast live from Kingston, Jamaica. In March 1973 HBO produced the first original pay-television special, the Pennsylvania Polka Festival, from the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Fair-grounds.

HBO's original strategy included purchasing the rights of recently released movies and transmitting them to local cable operators via satellite. The local cable operators would then deliver the programs to their subscribers. In the early to mid-1970s cable subscriptions ran about $6.00 per month with HBO receiving a little over half of this subscription fee, or $3.50. Although stringent federal regulations and the lack of infrastructure—such as cables, satellites, and other equipment needed to provide cable services—plagued the cable industry in the early and mid-1970s, by the end of the decade companies such as HBO had established enough infrastructure to amass sizable customer bases. The number of HBO customers increased from 50,000 in 1974 to 1.5 million in 1978. Aided by more conducive federal policies, HBO posted its first profit in 1977 and started to prosper by the end of the 1970s.

FAST FACTS: About Home Box Office Inc.

Ownership: Home Box Office (HBO) is the pay-television programming and marketing division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. (TWE), which is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. TWE is a publicly traded entity on the New York Stock Exchange.

Ticker symbol: TWX

Officers: Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Chmn. & CEO

Employees: 1,500

Principal Subsidiary Companies: Time Warner Inc. is the largest entertainment and information company in the world, with operations in more than 100 countries. Working completely under the Time Warner umbrella, Home Box Office Inc. has two feature film production units, HBO Pictures and HBO NYC Productions. Other HBO business units include: HBO Direct, Inc.; HBO Downtown Productions; HBO Independent Productions; Time Warner Sports; and HBO Home Video.

Chief Competitors: As the most successful pay-TV network in the country, HBO controls some 70 percent of the market. HBO programming also competes against the major broadcast networks for viewers and awards. Its primary competitors include: CBS; DirecTV; GE; Showtime Networks, Inc.; Sony; TCI. and Walt Disney.

In August 1980 the company launched Cinemax, an all-movie channel that would become the second most watched service after HBO. The company continued to diversify throughout the 1980s. In 1983, with 13.4 million customers, HBO began producing made-for-TV movies and original comedy shows after reaching an agreement with Columbia Motion Pictures and CBS to create a new movie studio, Tri-Star Pictures. The deal also gave HBO the cable-TV rights to all movies produced by the new studio. The following year, HBO also launched another successful division, HBO Home Video, that released its made-for-TV movies as well as movies from Orion Pictures, Miramax Films, and Samuel Gold-wyn. In 1987 HBO became the first pay-cable network to win an Academy Award and, in 1989 HBO launched the advertising-supported Comedy Channel.

The 1990s brought even more change, growth, and honors when The Madonna - Live! Blond Ambition World Tour '90 grabbed the title of highest-rated original entertainment program in HBO history. To pump up the subscriber list, in 1991, HBO started offering customers additional HBO channels at no extra cost. (Researchers would later conclude the move brought greater satisfaction and perceived value for customers and a higher retention rate for HBO.) The company also expanded internationally, adding Hungary and Latin America in 1991 and Asia in 1992. Also that year, HBO worked out an agreement with General Instrument Corporation to begin transmitting digital compressed television in the United States. Original programming on HBO continued to address TV-sensitive subjects, such as AIDS and abortion. The ground-breaking network also continued to win industry accolades, including 17 primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, 34 Cable Ace Awards in 1994, and 4 Golden Globe Awards in 1997. In 1998 the company aired the most expensive original programming venture in HBO history, the $60 million space exploration series From the Earth to the Moon.

STRATEGY

HBO continued to dominate the cable television market in the mid-1990s. HBO increased its hold on the market with a simple plan of providing a mix of popular movies, original movies, specialty series, comedy weeklies, and sports shows. In addition, HBO obtained the exclusive television rights from many major movie studios, including a 1995 contract with DreamWorks SKG—the joint venture of Stephen Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenberg, and David Geffen—which extends through 2006. This programming strategy allowed HBO to capture an enormous share of the premium cable channel market. HBO controlled 71.6 percent of the market in 1996, down 0.5 percent from 1995, whereas Showtime held 28.4 percent in 1996, up from 27.9 percent in 1995, according to Jon Schlosser in Broadcasting & Cable. Furthermore, HBO's number of subscribers rose to 32.4 million in 1996, while Showtime reported only 9.5 million.

HBO sells no commercials and makes money only by selling its programming services, but the company spends more than $25 million a year to advertise the HBO brand via print, radio, and television.

INFLUENCES

Throughout its history, HBO has faced a number of challenges that have helped to shape the company and make it a stronger player. HBO encountered accelerated competition in the late 1970s and in the 1980s as federal policies made the industry more accessible to other cable service providers. With its offerings and marketing strategy focusing solely on movies, Showtime began to win HBO customers over to its cable channel during this period. In response, HBO stepped up its efforts to secure more movies. HBO started paying higher prices to gain the rights to popular movies and, in 1980, launched its second channel, Cinemax, to compete directly with Showtime. Devoted exclusively to movies, Cinemax was strategically priced lower than Showtime. HBO's strategy paid off, and by 1982 the company's subscribers rose to 9.2 million, or about 50 percent of all cable subscribers. In addition, HBO reported sales of $400 million, and by this time had dwarfed its most significant rival, Show-time, with almost three times as many customers.

CHRONOLOGY: Key Dates for Home Box Office, Inc.

1972:

Company is founded by Time, Inc.

1973:

Produces first original pay-television special

1977:

Posts first profit

1980:

Launches Cinemax

1983:

Begins producing made-for-TV movies and original comedy specials

1984:

Launches HBO Home Video

1987:

Becomes first pay-cable network to win an Academy Award

1988:

Launches Comedy Channel

1991:

Begins offering additional HBO channels at no additional cost

1992:

Negotiates agreement to begin transmitting digital compressed television in the United States

1998:

Airs most expensive original programming venture in HBO history, the $60 million space exploration series From the Earth to the Moon

HBO's fortunes started to shift again in 1984 because of competition caused by video rentals and the rising cost of cable service. Consequently, HBO watched its share of the market slip from 50.4 percent in 1983 to 48.1 percent in 1984. Nonetheless, by 1985, HBO had 14.6 million subscribers and posted $800 million in revenues. HBO continued to expand its offerings in 1989 by introducing the Comedy Channel. The Comedy Channel faced problems almost immediately because of its somewhat fragmented programming mix and because competitor Viacom, owner of Showtime, had launched a competing comedy channel called HA! Analysts correctly predicted that demand was not strong enough to support two cable comedy stations, so the two channels were merged in 1990, becoming Comedy Central. Also at this time, HBO started to offer multichannel programming to hold on to customers who may have already seen one of the movies the cable service was showing. The company also began to diversify its selections as cable channels became more specialized, targeting smaller segments of the market.

CURRENT TRENDS

HBO intends to increase its focus on original movies and home video sales and rentals. As cable service providers such as Showtime expanded their original movie offerings, HBO responded by following suit in order to maintain its dominance of the industry. HBO's specialty programming remained unparalleled in the mid-1990s and promises to be another key area the company will emphasize in the future to distinguish itself from the competition. Furthermore, HBO anticipates that home video will play an increasingly important role in the company's revenues. HBO experienced heightened growth in its video sales and video rentals in the 1990s. According to research by Warner Home Video, HBO's home video sales may have amounted to as much as $1 billion in 1997.

Moreover, with an array of specialized cable channels, HBO realized it must present a diverse selection of shows, movies, and programs in order to retain its control of the industry. Therefore, HBO introduced sports shows to compete with ESPN, music shows to put pressure on MTV and VH1, women's shows to keep up with Lifetime, and African-American shows to stave off customer losses to BET in addition to its new movie offerings.

PRODUCTS

HBO's core products include numerous hit movies as well as the company's own made-for-cable productions. Moreover, the cable service delivers a variety of shows covering an assortment of sports, including professional football, boxing, and basketball. HBO also recruited veteran comedians such as Dennis Miller, Chris Rock, and Janeane Garofalo to host weekly comedy shows. For music fans, HBO launched programs such as "Reverb," which features appearances of popular rock artists, and simulcasts of live performances by headliners such as country singer Garth Brooks. The cable service also added shows targeted toward children, including "The Inventors' Specials" and "Happily Ever After." Besides these shows, HBO airs programs dealing with social issues such as drug addiction and AIDS. Since its 1987 airing of Mandela, HBO has striven to include programming aimed at African Americans, who as of 1997, constituted 22 percent of HBO's subscribers.

CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP

Home Box Office has earned a well-deserved reputation for responsible programming, devoting a segment of its schedule to programs designed to help make the world a better place. A good example of such programming was HBO's November 1996 family special, Smoke Alarm: The Unfiltered Truth About Cigarettes, produced in collaboration with Consumer Reports Television. The documentary, aired in conjunction with 1996's Great American Smokeout, offered a revealing look at the hazards of tobacco, the teenage smoking epidemic, and efforts by the tobacco industry to market their products to children.

HBO's annual all-star Comic Relief benefit has raised millions of dollars for Health Care for the Homeless Projects in a number of American cities. All of the money raised through Comic Relief is allocated to health care and related services that, thus far, provided help to more than a million homeless Americans.

GLOBAL PRESENCE

Not only has HBO led the cable industry in the United States but also throughout the world. In 1997 HBO provided service to more than 40 countries. More than 10 million viewers watch HBO offerings from television sets in Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. HBO's Ole, which began in 1991, provides HBO features and Cinemax offerings to South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. HBO Asia delivers HBO programming, including exclusive Disney releases, to nine countries in Asia, including Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. HBO started doing business in eastern Europe in 1991 with HBO Hungary, which offers American, European, and Hungarian films to subscribers. HBO added HBO Poland in 1997 to tap into the developing market for pay-TV services there. The international division of HBO also oversees Time Warner's investment in a regional broadcast station in Hamburg, Germany.

EMPLOYMENT

HBO is looking for bright and committed people to join its team. The company offers opportunities in a variety of fields, including general management, legal, finance, sales and marketing, network programming, and technology and operations. Interested parties are encouraged to check out current job openings at the company's Job Opportunities web site at http://www.homeboxoffice.com/cmp/career.html. Applicants for jobs posted on the web site may send their resume online to HBO.

Resumes and cover letters may also be sent to HBO, Human Resources, 1100 6th Ave., New York, NY 10036; HBO, Human Resources, 2049 Century Park E, Ste. 4100, Los Angeles, CA; or HBO, Human Resources, The Lenox Bldg., Ste. 1600, 3399 Peachtree Rd. NE, Atlanta, GA 30326.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Bibliography

hbo home page. may 1998. available at http://www.hbo.com.

lewis, scott m. "home box office inc." international directory of company histories. vol 7. detroit, mi: st. james press, 1993.

schlosser, jon. "showtime fights for screen time." broadcasting & cable, 14 april 1997.

stevens, elisabeth lesly. "call it home buzz office."business week, 8 december 1997.

For an annual report:

on the internet at: http://www.pathfinder.com/@@dqkzowqasq59hnn6/corp/hbo/index.html

For additional industry research:

investigate companies by their standard industrial classification codes, also known as sics. hbo's primary sics are:

4841 cable and other pay television services

7812 motion picture and video production