Inside Hbo: The Billion Dollar War Between Hbo, Hollywood, and the Home Video Revolution

by George Mair

Presents a behind-the-scenes look at Home Box Office, the cable TV company and movie producer that challenged the power of the Hollywood studios to become the biggest entertainment giant in the world within the past fifteen years

204 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Hbombme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful to understand the first 15 years of HBO -- "an almost accidental business." The book does get fairly repetitive, especially toward the end. Having said that, some good insights. Interestingly, "no one in top management, incidentally, had ever made a movie, produced a program or TV show, or done anything comparable before coming to HBO."
- HBO needed Time Inc. to fund its early ambitions, and especially to fund the satellite streaming to turn HBO into a national network. Jerry Levin was instrumental to making that a reality.
- Pay TV and HBO had a disconnect rate of 3.5-4% and 4% a month, respectively, in the 80's (not too dissimilar from the churn rates of leading streaming services today)... eventually the churn improved, but not in the period covered by this book.
- Movie studios really did come to fear HBO, since it became a dominant source of content demand on cable, and over time evolved to compete with studios themselves. For example, in 1983, HBO had the exclusive TV rights to 60% of the one hundred-plus films coming out of the major studios. Luckily for studios, introduction of VHS helped diversify studios' source of funds. Estimated industry revenue mix in 1987 was: $5.5B basic pay cable; $4.3B premium cable; $4.0B domestic box office; $6.0B home video.
- Frank Biondi seems like the real MVP who was paramount to HBO's ascendancy, because he changed the company's focus "from being only a middleman for movie producers and cable systems operators to being a diversified entertainment conglomerate into most facets of television and motion pictures." He taught the executives at HBO that "they were not in the cable television business, they were in the entertainment business." He offered to finance movies in exchange for "exclusivity," formed Tri-Star Pictures JV with Columbia and CBS, and working with E.F. Hutton helped develop a new public company, Silver Screen Partners to produce films for HBO.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used mostly to get a history of HBO (before "Essential HBO Reader" came out) for this paper about The Wire being syndicated on BET. It's informative and was useful to me, but I don't see any real reason why anyone who wasn't writing about HBO or something would want to read it.

[Michele Beacham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Useful to get some early corporate history of HBO (up to about 1988) but not exactly riveting.