Home Box Office research

Home Box Office

Home Box Office is an American premium cable and satellite television network that is owned by Home Box Office Incorporated.

Home Box Office is also known as HBO. HBO has a history which is tied to the history of cable television. This is the same as satellite. HBO was originally cable TV, this is how they started. In November 8^th, 1972. Over time their subscribers grew from 225 upwards and they developed to more interactive and a greater number of subscribers.

Initially HBO started to grow their customers. This was by their attractive methods. They included a wide variety of different channels to suit all ages and preferences. There initially were sports, films and comedies. Some for adults and others for children which included suitable cartoons. They learnt to use channels which included live sports. This attracted a lot of customers. People enjoy watching live sport when there is matches on. This is so that they can feel more interactive and keep in touch with what is happening as soon as scores change. It also saved a lot of people needing to go and buy tickets to watch the game in person.

HBO gained a foothold in the film market. It began when In 1980 Cinimax created their own film company. Other companies also started to open. Prices went up and the qualities of film in HBO became more successful. The increased quality and amount of viewers kept the cost down. The start up cost was very expensive. But, overall the people’s subscriptions grew. Therefore, the expensive start up cost was worth it by long term values.

The main competitors for HBO were Show Time. Home Box Office were competing with their main competitors Show Time in the 1980’s.  The measures they took to become the leading role in the market was done by producing more cables out. Also, they spent more on the films which was attractive to customers. The bigger expense on the films typically meant the films would be better which would make more people want to go view HBO films than Show Time.

On the other hand, HBO and their road to success wasn’t as smooth as people thought. They have encountered a few problems along the way. People who wanted to watch the shows who didn’t want to pay for subscription were illegally hacking into the channel. In addition, a lot of hacking was done done by someone called Captain midnight were he was hacking and ruining HBO and their signal. People were also installing cables around where they wanted to watch the shows so that they didn’t have to install HBO cables. This would be a cheaper way.

HBO scrambled their broadcasting signals. This allowed satellite customers for free viewing. This was a marketing ploy. This promoted their service globally. The free viewing allowed people to watch their shows for no cost. This would get a lot of viewers more interested and involved within the shows. Possibly this could be for a later date long term positivity where they start charging again. The difference would be that the viewers would be hooked to quit watching HBO channels etc.

On a negative aspect, there was some customer dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction was with both the film and comedy coverage. Customers were noticing that the films kept on looping repeating a lot of the time on a loop. Not many new films were being introduced. The new films were not being produced regularly because HBO would have spent a lot of money on each film and to keep making new ones wasn’t financially impossible, only if they lessened on the film quality could this have worked. Also, the comedy side of HBO was a bigger problem. People watch comedy to hear new jokes. You only should watch a comedy once or if you view it a second time the humor becomes non existent as you will already recognize the joke. This ruins the role of comedy. HBO were also repeating the comedies very often.

Home Box Office introduced strategies to combat the rise of home videos and advertising sponsored TV. They did this by joining up with their biggest competitor, ‘ShowTime’. This was beneficial because HBO could then share costs with ShowTime which then would result in making the new videos and documents with better quality possible. This is an example of how synergy was used with HBO. The merging with Show Time is a great example of synergy. Synergy is when two or more parts work together to create something better.

Home Box Office didn’t have advertisers. This was a great advantage as it allowed the company to not have to worry about their sponsors and their opinions, requests and restrictions. In addition, many people and viewers of television nowadays generally find a lot of adverts a waste of time which bring annoyance. They can interrupt the main show and make viewers easily lose interest and wish to change to another channel. However, not having advertisers can also have a negative impact in the industry. Firstly, advertising is used for communication throughout society for services and products. It is used to persuade people. In HBO’S situation, advertising would be used to persuade people to start viewing their package. It is usually the main contributing factor for growth within typical industries as it makes people aware of services and products which they may not hear by word or mouth from other people in society.

HBO make their own programs, this package comes with many advantages but also some downfalls. HBO can find out their target audience and then produce programs which tailor their audience. This is what others haven’t really ever done in the market. However, making these programs to fit specific people will come at a cost. Therefore, if the viewers don’t increase it may be a waste of money if viewers don’t enjoy what they are watching.

Critical success is something which helps a business or industry to maintain and achieve their mission. This is a type of management which would have been more important to HBO when making their own programs rather than commercial success. Critical success is what gave HBO their reputation of quality and particular audience. This is why they found critical success from individuals more important. This is so that they could make improvements and so on. However, commercial success is when they would post adverts about themselves winning awards to persuade people to want to be in their products. This isn’t a real perspective from people to help them in the future.

The most influential TV drama HBO have been a part of is called 'The Sopranos'. It was a ground breaking piece of TV. This show was one which is a great significant part of HBO because the realism involved makes the audience to be able to connect with the TV. The realism of the show was done by the greatest acting of all time. But, it wasn’t all down to the actors being successful. But,the directors! The realism was mainly from the extended story line which was produced. When a story line gets extended it is more realistic like normal life. Viewers will find this engaging over the years to watch. As their lives progress so will the TV show. Home Box Office have such a high success rate which has grown over the years that modern audiences have high expectations of their shows. Now viewers expect more violent and mature content etc because they expect HBO to be able to provide for all genres, ages and preferences. People expect HBO to have more freedom in which type of programs they wish to show with their great quality footage. This shows that their big success has allowed them to expand and rally develop and become one of the best in this industry to suit everyone.

I decided to make some research about Home Box Office. This was because my teacher had made several references to it and i really wasn't quite sure what it was all about. Doing this broadened my knowledge about something which has changed peoples lives and been part of many movies that I had watched.