Cinemax
Cinemax (alternatively shortened to Max) is an American pay television, cable, and satellite television network owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Developed as a companion "maxi-pay" service complementing the offerings shown on parent network Home Box Office (HBO) and initially focusing on recent and classic films upon its launch on August 1, 1980. Programming featured on Cinemax currently consists primarily of recent and older theatrically released motion pictures, and original action series, as well as documentaries and special behind-the-scenes featurettes.
This article is about the American premium channel. For other uses, see Cinemax (disambiguation).Type
Nationwide
1080i (HDTV)
(downscaled to letterboxed 480i for the network's SDTV channel feeds)
- Casey Bloys (President/Head of Programming, HBO/Cinemax)
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August 1, 1980
- max
.com - (subscription required to access content)
Over-the-top TV
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- Cinemax (East)
- Cinemax (West)
Over-the-top TV
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- Cinemax (East/West)
- MoreMax (East)
- ActionMax (East)
- ThrillerMax (East)
- MovieMax (East)
- 5StarMax (East)
- OuterMax (East)
- Cinemáx (East)
Over-the-top TV
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- Cinemax (East)
- Cinemax (West)
Cinemax—which, in conjunction with HBO, was among the first two American pay television services to offer complementary multiplexed channels in August 1991—operates eight 24-hour, linear multiplex channels; a traditional subscription video-on-demand platform (Cinemax On Demand); and formerly a TV Everywhere streaming platform for Cinemax's linear television subscribers (Cinemax Go). On digital platforms, the Cinemax linear channels were not accessible on Cinemax Go in its final years, but were available to subscribers of over-the-top multichannel video programming distributors, and as live streams included in a la carte subscription channels sold through Apple TV Channels, Amazon Video Channels and Roku, which primarily feature VOD library content. (The live feeds on the OTT subscription channels consist of the primary channel's East and West Coast feeds and, for Amazon Video customers, the East Coast feeds of its seven multiplex channels.)[2][3]
Cinemax's operations are based alongside HBO inside Warner Bros. Discovery's secondary corporate headquarters at 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district.
History[edit]
1980–1989[edit]
In an effort to capitalize on the swift national growth that Home Box Office (HBO) had experienced since it began transmitting via satellite in September 1975, Home Box Office, Inc.—then owned by the Time-Life Broadcasting unit of Time Inc.—experimented with a companion pay service to sell to prospective subscribers—including existing HBO customers—with Take 2, a movie-centered premium channel marketed at a family audience that launched on April 1, 1979. The "mini-pay" service (a smaller-scale pay television channel sold at a discounted rate) tried to cater to cable subscribers reluctant to subscribe to HBO because of its cost and potentially objectionable content in some programs. Take 2, however, was hampered by a slow subscriber and carriage growth throughout its just-under-two-year history.[4] By the Spring of 1980, HBO executives began developing plans for a tertiary, lower-cost "maxi-pay" service (a full-service pay channel sold at a premium or slightly lower rate) to better complement HBO. On May 18 of that year, during the 1980 National Cable Television Association Convention, Home Box Office announced that it would launch a companion movie channel, to be named Cinemax. Billed as the cable industry's "first true tier",[5] Cinemax was designed to complement HBO (designated as a higher-tier "foundation [premium] service"), and avoid difficulties associated with bundling multiple "foundation" pay services; it was also intended to act as a direct competitor to The Movie Channel (then owned by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, operated as a joint venture between Warner Bros. Discovery predecessor Warner Communications and American Express), and Home Theater Network (a now-defunct service owned by Group W Satellite Communications, which focused on G- and PG-rated films and was accordingly marketed toward families), maintaining a movie selection format chosen for their appeal to select audience demographics.[6]
Cinemax launched on August 1, 1980, over 56 cable systems in the Eastern and Central Time Zones; a West Coast feed for the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones launched on September 1.[7][8] Initially airing nightly on an open-ended schedule dependent on the length of the evening's programs (usually from 1:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. ET/PT), Cinemax's programming centered on theatrical feature films, emphasized by on-air spokesman Robert Culp, who told viewers that Cinemax would be about movies and nothing but movies. Movie classics were a mainstay of Cinemax at its birth, presented "all uncut and commercial-free" (as Culp said on-air), focusing mainly on movies released between the 1930s and the 1960s, mixed with films from the 1970s and up to eight recent titles per month that were chosen to limit programming duplication with HBO. (At the time, HBO featured a wider range of programming, including some entertainment news interstitials, documentaries, children's programming, sporting events and television specials consisting of Broadway plays, stand-up comedy acts and concerts.)
Cinemax would go on to experience far greater success in its early years than Take 2 (which Time-Life shut down in February 1981). Cable television subscribers typically had access to only about three dozen channels because of limited channel capacity offered at the time by cable headend systems. Partly because of HBO, its national competitors (Showtime and The Movie Channel), and regional pay services in certain markets, customer demand for uncut broadcasts of theatrical movies was also high among cable subscribers at the time; this made Cinemax a palatable offering for cable systems with the necessary space to offer four premium channels and an attractive add-on for HBO subscribers, as it would show classic films without commercial interruptions and editing for time and content. HBO traditionally marketed Cinemax to cable operators for sale to subscribers as part of a singular premium bundle with the former, available at a discount for subscribers that elected to subscribe to both channels. (The typical pricing for a monthly subscription to HBO in the early 1980s was US$12.95 per month, while Cinemax typically could be added for between US$7 and $10 extra per month.) In many areas, cable providers declined to offer Cinemax to customers who did not already have an HBO subscription.
On August 28, 1980, Time-Life announced that Cinemax would transition to a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week programming schedule at the start of 1981. (The Movie Channel was the only national premium service at the time to offer a 24-hour-a-day schedule, doing so on December 1, 1979, following its transition from a timeshare service on Nickelodeon's transponder to operating on a standalone transponder as an independent service.)[9][10] On January 1, 1981, Cinemax began offering a full 168-hour weekly schedule (except for occasional interruptions for scheduled early-morning technical maintenance), adding programming full-time from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET/PT. (HBO ran only twelve hours of programming a day from 1:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. ET/PT until September 1981, when it adopted a weekend-only, 24-hour schedule that ran from Friday afternoon until late Sunday night/early Monday morning; Cinemax and rival Showtime [on July 4]'s transitions to such a schedule and The Movie Channel's existing 24-hour offerings resulted in HBO going forward with implementing a 24-hour schedule week-round as well on December 28, 1981.)[9][11]
On October 18, 1983, Tulsa 23 Limited Partnership—then the locally based owners of Tulsa, Oklahoma independent station KOKI-TV (now a Fox affiliate)—filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against Home Box Office, Inc. and Time-Life Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma; the lawsuit sought $4 million in damages (totaling more than $1 million in personal, and $3 million in exemplary damages) and a permanent injunction against Cinemax's use of "We Are Your Movie Star" as its promotional slogan, which, in similar fashion, had been used by KOKI at the time (billing itself as "The Movie Star" or "Oklahoma's Movie Star" to highlight the nightly movie presentations that the station had been offering since it signed on in October 1980).[12] Attorneys with Tulsa 23, L.P. stated that they had issued a cease and desist request to Home Box Office, Inc., asking it to stop using the Cinemax promotional campaign—which launched nationally on June 9—on August 16. On November 22, 1980, U.S. District Court Judge James O. Ellison ruled in favor of Tulsa 23, issuing a preliminary injunction ordering Cinemax to discontinue the campaign slogan on grounds that it infringed on the KOKI campaign.[13] HBO/Time-Life appealed the lawsuit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which on December 5, upheld Ellison's order enjoining Cinemax from continuing to use the slogan.[14]
As additional movie-oriented channels launched on cable television, Cinemax began to change its programming philosophy in order to maintain its subscriber base. First, the channel opted to schedule R-rated movies during daytime slots, whereas HBO would only show R-rated movies during the nighttime hours. Cinemax then decided it could compete by airing more adult-oriented movies that contained nudity and depictions of sexual intercourse, launching the weekly "Friday After Dark" late-night block in 1984 (which also featured the short-lived adult drama Scandals, and a series of anthology specials under the Eros America and Eros International banners). During the network's first decade on the air, Cinemax had also aired some original music programming: during the mid-to-late 1980s, upon the meteoric rise in popularity of MTV, Cinemax began airing music videos in the form of an interstitial that ran during extended breaks between films called MaxTrax; it also ran music specials under the banner Cinemax Sessions[15] as well as the music interview and performance series Album Flash during that same time period.
The mid- and late-1980s also saw the addition of a limited amount of series programming onto Cinemax's schedule including the sketch comedy series Second City Television (whose U.S. broadcast rights were acquired by the channel from NBC in 1983) and the science fiction series The Max Headroom Show (another series, Max Headroom aired on ABC from 1987 to 1988). Comedy specials were also occasionally broadcast on the channel during the late 1980s, under the Cinemax Comedy Experiment banner, featuring free-form sketch and improvisational styles from various rising and established stand-up comics (such as Howie Mandel, Chris Elliott and Eric Bogosian). Although its programming had diversified, Cinemax had foremost remained a movie channel. In February 1988, the network premiere broadcast of the 1987 action-comedy Lethal Weapon became the highest rated telecast in Cinemax's history at that time, averaging a 16.9 rating and 26 share.[16]
1989–2016[edit]
On March 4, 1989, Warner Communications announced its intent to merge with HBO parent Time Inc. for $14.9 billion in cash and stock. Following two failed attempts by Paramount Communications to legally block the merger, as Paramount was seeking to acquire Time in a hostile takeover bid, the merger was completed on January 10, 1990, resulting in the consolidated entity creating Time Warner (later WarnerMedia, now known as Warner Bros. Discovery), which as of 2018, remains the parent company of Cinemax and HBO.[17][18]
By 1990, Cinemax limited its programming lineup mainly to movies. However starting in 1992, Cinemax re-entered into television series development with the addition of adult-oriented scripted series similar in content to the softcore pornographic films featured on the channel in late night (such as the network's first original adult series Erotic Confessions, and later series entries such as Hot Line, Passion Cove, Lingerie and Co-Ed Confidential), marking a return to adult series for the channel.
From 1992 to 1997, Cinemax aired daily movie showcases in set timeslots, centering on a certain genre which differed each day of the week; with the introduction of a new on-air presentation package in 1993, the genre of a given showcase was represented by various pictograms that usually appeared within a specialized feature presentation bumper before the start of the movie;[19] the symbols included: "Comedy" (represented by an abstract face made up of various movie props, with an open mouth made to appear like it is laughing),[20] "Suspense" (represented by a running man silhouette within a jagged film strip), "Premiere" (represented by an exclamation mark immersed in spotlights), "Horror" (represented by a skull augmented with a devil horn and a gear-shaped eye, overlaid in front on a casket), "Drama" (represented by abstract comedy and tragedy masks),[21] "Vanguard" (represented by a globe overlaid on a film strip), "Action" (represented by a machine gun and an explosion) and "Classic" (represented by a classic movie-era couple embracing and kissing). The particular film genre that played on the specific day (and time) varied by country.
International versions[edit]
In Latin America, Cinemax was launched on September 5, 1993. It broadcasts classic and recent movies, television series and miniseries. From June 1, 2010, it became an ad-supported basic cable movie channel for the region only. Cinemax's original series aired on the HBO premium suit in the region.
In Asia, Cinemax was launched in 1996. It broadcasts action, comedy, science-fiction, and western movies. It was named Max from 2009 until 2012.
In Central Europe, Cinemax was launched in February 2005 broadcasting mainly festival, indie, European and classics movies. Cinemax and Cinemax 2 are available in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. From 2009, these channels are also available in certain Balkan countries. The channels are focused on streaming independent independent movies. Initially Cinemax 2 was a timeshift channel with a time delay of 24 hours, but since 2016 the channel have different schedule.
Channels[edit]
Background[edit]
In an effort to reduce subscriber churn by offering extra programming choices to subscribers, on May 8, 1991, Home Box Office Inc. announced plans to launch two additional channels of HBO and Cinemax, becoming the first subscription television services to launch "multiplexed" companion channels (a term coined by Michael Fuchs, then-CEO of Home Box Office, Inc., to equate the channel tier to a multi-screen movie theater), each available at no extra charge to subscribers of one or both networks. On August 1, 1991, through a test launch of the three channels over those systems, TeleCable customers in Overland Park, Kansas, Racine, Wisconsin and suburban Dallas (Richardson and Plano, Texas) that subscribed to either service began receiving a secondary channel of Cinemax and/or two additional HBO channels. Cinemax 2, HBO2 and HBO3 (now HBO Signature) each offered distinct schedules of programs culled from HBO and Cinemax's movie and original programming libraries separate from offerings shown concurrently on their respective parent primary channels.[35][36][37][38][39][40]
At the time the multiplex test was announced, HBO's then-executive vice president of marketing, John K. Billock, cited internal research that indicated HBO and Cinemax subscribers were prone to cancelling their subscriptions because they either believed that neither tended to have "anything on worth watching" or, when presented with a full monthly schedule, felt that programs they wanted to watch did not air at preferable times. A November 1991 ACNielsen survey of 550 TeleCable subscribers in the three launch markets determined that HBO and Cinemax's multiplex offerings created positive impacts on subscriber usage and attitudes that factored into whether a subscriber elected to cancel their HBO and/or Cinemax service, with declines in negative opinions on pricing (from 30% to 22%) and the perception of too many repeat program showings each month (from 52% to 35%), and increases in overall usage (rising by 11%) and favorability ratings among home media (from 30% to 50%).[41][42]
In February 1996, in anticipation of the adoption of MPEG-2 digital compression codecs that would allow cable providers to offer digital cable service, Home Box Office, Inc. announced plans to expand its multiplex services across Cinemax and HBO to twelve channels, encompassing a two additional Cinemax channels and fourth HBO channel, originally projected for a Spring 1997 launch.[43] The Cinemax multiplex expanded on December 1, 1996, with the launch of a third channel, Cinemax 3, featuring additional programming from Cinemax's content distributors. (Cinemax 3's launch coincided with the launch of Mountain Time Zone feeds of HBO, HBO2, Cinemax and Cinemax 2, which were the first subfeeds ever offered by a subscription television service to specifically serve that time zone.)[44]
Home Box Office, Inc. began marketing the Cinemax channel suite and timeshifted feeds under the umbrella brand "MultiChannel Cinemax" in September 1994; the package was rebranded as "MultiMax", now exclusively classified to the expanded four-channel Cinemax multiplex package (and later applied to the three thematic channels that were launched afterward), in April 1998. (The HBO tier was accordingly marketed as "MultiChannel HBO" and then "HBO The Works" at the respective times.)[45] Concurrent with the adoption of the "MultiMax" package brand, the first major expansion to the multiplex took place with two of the channels changing their names and formats and a fourth genre-based channel being added: Cinemax 2 was rebranded as MoreMax, and Cinemax 3 was relaunched as ActionMax—maintaining a focus on action and adventure films. A fourth channel, ThrillerMax, also launched, focusing on mystery, suspense and horror films.[46]
Four additional themed channels were launched on May 17, 2001: OuterMax (which carried films dealing with the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres), WMax (films with women), @Max (films for a younger adult audience) and 5StarMax (focusing on critically acclaimed and classic feature films).[47][48] On June 1, 2013, WMax and @Max were respectively relaunched as MovieMax and Max Latino. Max Latino – which dropped its distinct branding and was renamed Cinemáx on April 1, 2015 – mirrors the schedule of the flagship Cinemax channel (similar to the format of HBO Latino, which simulcasts most of the HBO schedule except for certain differing programs), featuring Spanish-language dubs of feature films and original series broadcast by the main channel. MovieMax started out as a family-oriented channel which did not broadcast R-rated films, and focuses on recent and classic hit movies.[49][50]
Programming[edit]
Movies[edit]
On average, movies occupy between 20 and 24 hours of the daily schedule on Cinemax and MoreMax, and 24 hours per day on its six thematic multiplex channels. Since June 2000, Cinemax has offered weekly pay television premieres of recent theatrical and original made-for-cable movies every Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. Until May 2008, the premiere presentations were marketed as "See It Saturday", later renamed "See It Sunday" after the network moved its premiere night to Sundays in January 2002. Before settling on Sundays as its anchor premiere night, Cinemax's prime time film premieres varied in scheduling between Friday, Saturday and Wednesday, depending on network preference. First-run theatrical films debut on average from ten months to one year after the conclusion of their initial theatrical run, and no more than six months after their DVD or digital VOD download release.[68][69][70]
As of July 2023, Cinemax – through HBO – maintains exclusive licensing agreements to first-run and library film content from Warner Bros. Pictures Group and their following subsidiaries: