HBO: Brand Management and Subscriber Aggregation: 1972-2007
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1 HBO: Brand Management and Subscriber Aggregation: 1972-2007 Submitted by Gareth Andrew James to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, January 2011. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. ........................................ 2 Abstract The thesis offers a revised institutional history of US cable network Home Box Office that expands on its under-examined identity as a monthly subscriber service from 1972 to 1994. This is used to better explain extensive discussions of HBO‟s rebranding from 1995 to 2007 around high-quality original content and experimentation with new media platforms. The first half of the thesis particularly expands on HBO‟s origins and early identity as part of publisher Time Inc. from 1972 to 1988, before examining how this affected the network‟s programming strategies as part of global conglomerate Time Warner from 1989 to 1994. Within this, evidence of ongoing processes for aggregating subscribers, or packaging multiple entertainment attractions around stable production cycles, are identified as defining HBO‟s promotion of general monthly value over rivals. Arguing that these specific exhibition and production strategies are glossed over in existing HBO scholarship as a result of an over-valuing of post-1995 examples of „quality‟ television, their ongoing importance to the network‟s contemporary management of its brand across media platforms is mapped over distinctions from rivals to 2007. Suggesting much longer institutional continuities and influences for understanding HBO‟s success, the thesis outlines the development and influence of these strategies through a critical chronology of the network‟s history. In doing so, the thesis aligns with trends for rigorous media histories that consider the origins, long-term precedent and cyclical institutional strategies that govern contemporary industry practices. 3 HBO: Brand Management and Subscriber Aggregation: 1972-2007 Contents Abstract ......................................................... 2 Table of Contents ......................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ......................................................... 4 Introduction ......................................................... 5 - 40 Chapter One: 1972-1979 ......................................................... 41 - 66 Chapter Two: 1980-1988 ......................................................... 67 - 111 Chapter Three: 1989-1994 ......................................................... 112 - 149 Chapter Four: 1995-1999 ......................................................... 150 - 197 Chapter Five: 2000-2002 ......................................................... 198 - 232 Chapter Six: 2003-2007 ......................................................... 233 - 279 Conclusion ......................................................... 280 - 289 Works Cited ......................................................... 290 – 334 Filmography ......................................................... 335 - 377 4 Acknowledgements Bringing the thesis to completion has been a long and difficult process, and there are many people to thank. The Arts and Humanities Research Council, for funding the project in its second and third year, provided invaluable support for allowing me to keep on schedule (and financially stable). Many thanks must also go to my supervisor Dr. James Lyons, for his guidance and patience across the three years, while advice from Professor Steve Neale on plans during the course of writing-up also proved invaluable for the final push. Fellow PhD colleagues within the department, including Andrew Nelson, Lisa Stead, Jennifer Barnes, Nick Hall and Lee Durbin also provided sounding boards and sympathy during the process, mostly for putting up with my obsessing over details. Most of all I‟d like to thank my family, brothers David and Ben, sisters Rhiannon and Nia, my grandparents and my parents Peter and Deborah for motivating me to keep on with the thesis, even when it seemed that it would never be finished. 5 Introduction Home Box Office‟s success as a leading US cable network and global brand is undisputed. First achieving distinction as a subscription channel with uncut movies, sports and entertainment programming, in the mid-1990s HBO re-branded itself around very high-quality films and miniseries such as The Sopranos (1999-2007), Sex and the City (1998-2004), The Wire (2002-2008) and Band of Brothers (2001). Reflecting contemporary demands for managing television brands across digital broadcast and cable markets, HBO and its slogan „It‟s Not TV‟ has carried quality associations across television, DVDs and the internet. Most accounts explain HBO‟s success as the result of a process of institutional reinvention. This involved a gradual transition from an innovative cable „movie channel that simply exhibited Hollywood features into a cultural phenomenon‟ (Anderson 2008: 34). Histories broadly cite a move away from an eclectic range of programs as part of a „utility brand‟ subscription service in the 1972 to 1994 period to the branding strength of quality series from 1995. This is subsequently used as the starting point for debating the complexity of individual HBO programs and the extent to which a „not TV‟ quality identity illustrates wider cultural tensions over corporate marketing. In this way, HBO‟s ongoing management of branded content across new media platforms has been used to define ongoing interest in the network as the „prototypical media corporation of the 21st century‟ (Edgerton 2008a: 18). My thesis however aims to provide an alternative history of HBO. Returning to HBO‟s development from 1972 to 1994, I argue that hitherto overlooked influences from Time Inc. helped shape distinctions over rivals as a monthly subscriber service beyond „utility brand‟ accounts. As a result, HBO‟s increasing attempts to produce high-quality programs and to manage its band name across digital markets from the 1990s to the 200s can be recontextualised as protecting a core subscriber identity. Used to better explain innovations in series such as The Sopranos, this account is designed to caution against uses of HBO as a prototype for industry change. Contextualised as part of the need for more rigorous institutional histories to better understand contemporary industrial strategies, the thesis therefore offers to deepen standard discussions of HBO as a network and brand. 6 Literature Review Initial histories of HBO aimed to contextualise its identity as a film-driven cable subscription service from the 1970s to the mid-1990s that added to the diversification and consolidation of the post-war media industries. These histories were produced from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, and began with an anecdotal overview of HBO‟s success from 1972 to 1988 by journalist George Mair (1988). In the early 1990s HBO was more specifically contextualised as a case study for media historians studying post- war overlaps between Hollywood, broadcasting and cable television (Hilmes 1990; Gomery 1992; Hillier 1992; Schatz 1993; Wasko 1994). This has also been echoed by later histories of the film industry by David Cook (2000), Stephen Prince (2002) and others. More recent scholarship on HBO, produced from approximately 2002, has however significantly built on these early accounts. Focusing on HBO‟s 1995 rebranding around quality programming, this work generally considers the network as a leading case study for televisual innovation. The most common approach here has been to analyse HBO programs as examples of „quality‟ television, notably represented by anthologies on The Sopranos (Lavery ed 2002; 2006), as well as Sex and the City (McCabe, Akass eds 2004), Six Feet Under (McCabe, Akass eds 2005), and Deadwood (Lavery ed 2006). A wide range of individual articles and book chapters have also been produced on these and other key series. These anthologies mix close series analysis with historical overviews of HBO‟s brand identity (Rogers et al 2002; Rogers et al 2006). Outlining how marginal original programming experiments from the 1970s to the early 1990s were translated into a stronger brand identity for HBO, this is focused through the success of key series like The Sopranos and Sex and the City. Some added depth has been provided for earlier HBO programming experiments by Megan Mullen (2003),1 who includes the network as part of a more general history of the cable industry and its programming reliance on specialist exhibition from 1946 to 1995. Article-length discussions of HBO‟s pre-1995 programming by Karen Backstein (2001) and David Andrews (2007) also identify some limited precedents for later success. 1 For an abridged and revised version, see Megan Mullen (2008) Television in the Multichannel Age: A Brief History of Cable Television, London: Wiley-Blackwell. 7 Catherine Johnson (2007) also uses HBO as a case study for television branding in the 1990s and 2000s. Other scholars such as Deborah Jaramillo (2002) have extended analysis of HBO‟s brand identity to wider questions over corporate ownership. HBO has been used in this way to debate exchanges between quality and niche