NOT LIKE NETFLIX
If HBO focuses on quantity rather than quality, we won’t get shows like The Sopranos.
Say it ain’t so, HBO.
Your new corporate overlord, AT&T, wants you to be more like Netflix, churning out a lot more programming to attract a lot more subscribers, in a short time. This week the New York Times reported on a June town hall meeting where John Stankey, a longtime AT&T executive who now oversees HBO in his new role as chief executive of Warner Media, told Richard Plepler, HBO’s chief executive, and 150 employees, that they’ll have to radically step up production this year.
“We need hours a day” of engagement, Stankey said. “It’s not hours a week and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.”
But the thing is, Mr. Stankey, they’re not. The great — nay, miraculous — thing about HBO’s smaller, highly curated slate, is that it’s an antidote to those devices. In this age of Too Much TV, HBO has built a priceless alternative: a brand so reliable that people will try anything the service puts out, because they have that much faith in the network’s taste.
Some of their shows work immediately ( Big Little Lies); some get better as they go along ( Divorce); some are well-intentioned but unsuccessful ( Here and Now). But they all have a stamp, an ineffable something, that will get diluted if the company is forced to push out product not for its quality, but for quantity.
What HBO offers is richness rather than volume. A Season 6 episode of The Sopranos made me gasp out loud, because it made me see Tony’s mother, and therefore Tony and Tony’s entire family dynamic, in a new light, after thinking I knew everything about her/him/it. You can only do that with the most careful attention and consideration. Ditto for The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Leftovers, Westworld, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep. Of course we want more of those kinds of series. But you can’t force them into being simply by your new boss demanding a “dog year” of work.
Netflix has a generous, throwit-at-the-wall-and-see-whatsticks attitude and they’ve produced some greats ( Orange Is the New Black, the first two seasons of House of Cards, Stranger Things). But much of their stuff is pleasantly good, not loyalty-oath-pledging fantastic.
It’s worth remembering that many of our favourite Peak TV series came from small homes — The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, Breaking Bad on AMC, The Americans and Atlanta on FX — that are also highly curated. HBO has won more Emmys than anyone and it’s profitable, earning $6 billion (U.S.) per year from $2 billion in in- vestment. So why does Stankey want more?
“Because you get more data and information about a customer that then allows you to do things like monetize through alternate models of advertising as well as subscriptions,” he says. Translation: Greed.
If HBO starts pumping out stuff that is less great than people have come to rely on, well, people will stop relying on it. The brand will be undermined — worth less, not more.
HBO has built a priceless alternative: a brand so reliable that people will try anything the service puts out