After all the successes, 1984 was a failure for HBO. To begin with, the construction of new cable systems in important cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore slowed down. Another reason for the unfortunate year was that more and more people were buying VCRs, and the number of video rentals in the country had risen sharply. As the number of subscribers decreased, so did the company's revenues.
All this has led to a change of management. Michael J. Fuchs, the new chairman of the board of directors, fired 125 employees of the company, invested $20 million in the new advertising campaign of the channel and revised the terms of the deal with Columbia Pictures. As a result, HBO lost exclusive rights to some of its films.
At the same time, Showtime's main competitor introduced a new rule - the channel received exclusive rights to the film or did not show it at all (before that, both channels could buy the rights to broadcast). Film prices have risen. However, in 1986, HBO acquired the rights to 125 Warner Brothers films for $600 million for a period of five years, as well as 72 MGM films for four years. The following year, the company bought 85 Paramount Pictures films for five years or more.
In the late 80's, HBO announced the appearance of a new 24-hour comedy channel. At that time, in the U.S., the genre of stand-up comedy was gaining popularity and polls showed that viewers were willing to pay for such content. In November 1989, Comedy Channel began broadcasting for six million subscribers. However, analysts claimed that at least twenty million subscribers were needed to survive. In 1990, HBO invested $38 million in the new channel's advertising campaign.
In the early 1990s, analysts predicted the end of the pay-TV era. However, HBO did not give up - the management bought new licenses for sports broadcasts and launched an active offensive on the foreign market. All this led to an increase in the number of subscribers - in 1993 they became 24.7 million.
In the mid-90s HBO TV channel was actively investing in film and TV series shooting. In 1997, the channel received ninety nominations for Emmy, and for the first time in the history of television, the cable network was nominated for more than a broadcast network. HBO was only slightly behind NBC in the number of awards it won. However, the channel received high praise from critics, in particular for its comedy series "Larry Sanders Show" and the dramatic "Prison of Oz". All this meant for HBO the final recognition from colleagues, critics, and viewers.
HBO's rating series
In 1998 HBO showed a pilot series "Sex and the City". The film was based on the idea of the author of the book of the same name, Candace Bushnell, from whom the channel acquired the rights to screen for $50 thousand. In the center of the plot are four single women aged 30+ living in New York? In each new episode, the main characters face issues of relationships, love, friendship, and sex, while discussing them with each other.
If at the beginning of the fee of actresses was equal and amounted to about $ 160 thousand, by the fifth season, this amount doubled - $325 thousand per episode. In addition, actress Sarah Jessica Parker produced the show, according to some estimates her fee for the episode reached $3 million.
Over the course of six seasons, the series has been nominated 54 times for "Emmy" - won seven awards, 24 times for "Golden Globe" - became eight times the leader in its categories and three times out of 11 nominations of the series received an award from the Guild of Actors. Everything that touched the series - where it was filmed, that the heroines were worn, what they ate, what equipment used - became popular in a flash. The HBO TV channel itself believes that the series opened for the audience shoes Manolo Blahnik, cappuccinos and vibrators. The final episode of "Sex in the big city", released on HBO in 2004, gathered a record number of viewers for the series - 10.6 million.
In 2008, HBO commissioned the production of the feature film "Sex and the City". With a budget of $65 million for the first weekend, the film managed to raise $55.7 million. The total box office receipts amounted to about $415 million.
The next drama TV series after "Oz Prison", shot for HBO, was "Soprano Clan". The series, which appeared on the air in 1999, became one of the most successful and rated in the history of the channel. According to HBO, the average episode of "Soprano Clan" was watched by 18.2 million viewers, the record was broken only by the fourth season of the TV series "Game of Thrones" - 18.4 million viewers.
Six seasons, 86 episodes, 21 Emmy Awards, five Golden Globes, $2 million for the series - "Soprano Clan" was recognized as one of the best TV shows in the U.S. (lost only to the "Simpsons"). The main character - Tony Soprano - almighty godfather, the head of the mafia clan of Italian origin, who faces the usual life situations and tries to overcome them with the help of a psychiatrist.
The series not only raised numerous problems - the integration of the Italian community, the difficulties of the American family, a new view of the mafia. "Soprano Clan", according to analysts, forced to take more seriously the genre of television series, raising it to the level of a feature film or theatrical performance. In 2013, the Guild of American Writers called the script "Soprano Clan" the best ever, TV Guide put it in first place as the best TV series of all time. In 2007, the last episode of "The Soprano Clan" was released on HBO TV.
In 2011, HBO presented a new and currently the most rated TV series for the channel - "Game of Thrones". Based on novels by George Martin, a TV series in the genre of fantasy about the fictional world, where the struggle between clans for the throne of the kingdom, aired for six seasons. In total, as promised on the channel, it will be filmed eight seasons, so the record for viewing the episode may still be broken.
Each episode of the first season cost HBO $6 million, season two $7 million, season six $10 million. Northern Ireland is also investing in the budget of the Game of Thrones, where most of the filming takes place. By investing about $15 million, the country's treasury has received about $100 million in profits from tourists who visited Northern Ireland after the show's release.
However, the most expensive for HBO were two miniseries about the Second World War. Launched in 2001, Brothers in Arms cost the channel $125 million - $12.5 million per episode. Another $15 million was spent on the blotting campaign. Co-producers of the series were Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. In 2010, they also presented another miniseries - "Pacific Ocean", whose budget began at $100 million, but as a result, it cost $200 million. Each episode cost between $18 million and $27 million, making it the most expensive miniseries in television history.
In addition to the abovementioned series, the HBO TV channel released "The Client is Always Dead", "The Tale of the Tomb", "The Wiretap", "Rome", "The Girls" and many others. One of the last serials on the channel is "Young Dad" about Cardinal Lenny Belardo - the youngest Pope in history.
The first ten episodes of the season were filmed for three years with money from three TV channels HBO, Sky Atlantic and Canal+, each of which invested 40 million euros, and part of the money came from the European Regional Development Fund. The "Young Dad" was extended for the second season.
HBO today
Today HBO company includes eight channels, it is broadcasted in more than 50 countries, products of the channel - films, programs, serials - are purchased by more than 150 countries. The subscriber base in the U.S. exceeds 50 million people, in the world - more than 80 million subscribers, in 2015, the income of HBO was $1.9 billion.
One of the drivers of audience growth and viewing is its own production. HBO has long established itself as a producer of quality content. It is exactly what is in demand all over the world.
To produce quality products, services need money. All over the world, for example, to watch sports broadcasts of important matches, people connect cable television, as it is there that the most popular content is presented.