HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based at Warner Bros. Discovery's corporate headquarters inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district. Programming featured on the network consists primarily of theatrically released motion pictures and original television programs as well as made-for-cable movies, documentaries, occasional comedy, and concert specials, and periodic interstitial programs (consisting of short films and making-of documentaries).
This article is about the U.S. pay television channel. For HBO in other countries, see List of HBO international channels. For other uses, see HBO (disambiguation).Type
National
English,
Spanish (HBO Latino; also as SAP option on all other channels)
- Casey Bloys (CEO/Chairman)
- Amy Gravitt (Co-EVP, Programming)
- Francesca Orsi (Co-EVP, Programming)
- Nina Rosenstein (Co-EVP, Programming)
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- Cinemax
- Adult Swim
- American Heroes Channel
- Animal Planet
- AT&T SportsNet
- Boomerang
- Cartoon Network
- Cartoonito
- CNN
- Cooking Channel
- Food Network
- The CW
- Destination America
- Discovery Channel
- Discovery en Español
- Discovery Family
- Discovery Familia
- Discovery Life
- HGTV
- HLN
- Investigation Discovery
- Magnolia Network
- Motor Trend
- Oprah Winfrey Network
- Science Channel
- TBS
- TLC
- TNT
- Travel Channel
- TruTV
- Turner Classic Movies
November 8, 1972
Sterling Cable Network (proposed; 1972)
- (U.S. cable internet subscribers only; requires subscription, trial, or television provider login to access content)
- (subscription of add-on with either its base or Hulu + Live TV tiers required to access linear feeds and VOD content)
- (subscription to its Max add-on required to access linear feeds and VOD content)[note 1]
(subscription to Max add-on required to access linear feeds and VOD content)[note 2]
HBO is the oldest subscription television service in the United States still in operation.[2] HBO pioneered modern pay television upon its launch on November 8, 1972: it was the first television service to be directly transmitted and distributed to individual cable television systems, and was the conceptual blueprint for the "premium channel", pay television services sold to subscribers for an extra monthly fee that do not accept traditional advertising and present their programming without editing for objectionable material. It eventually became the first television channel in the world to begin transmitting via satellite—expanding the growing regional pay service, originally available to cable and multipoint distribution service (MDS) providers in the northern Mid-Atlantic and southern New England, into a national television network—in September 1975, and, alongside sister channel Cinemax, was among the first two American pay television services to offer complimentary multiplexed channels in August 1991.
The network operates seven 24-hour, linear multiplex channels as well as a traditional subscription video on demand platform (HBO On Demand) and its content is the centerpiece of Max (previously HBO Max from 2020 to 2023), an expanded streaming platform operated separately from but sharing management with Home Box Office, Inc., which also includes original programming produced exclusively for the service and content from other Warner Bros. Discovery properties. Livestreams of the network's linear East and West Coast feeds are not presently accessible on the Max streaming app, but are available via its a la carte add-ons sold through Prime Video Channels, YouTube Primetime Channels and virtual pay television providers Hulu and YouTube TV (both of which sell their HBO/Max add-ons independently of their respective live TV tiers).[3][4]
As of September 2018, HBO's programming was available to approximately 35.656 million U.S. households that had a subscription to a multichannel television provider (34.939 million of which receive HBO's primary channel at minimum),[5] giving it the largest subscriber total of any American premium channel. (From 2006 to 2018, this distinction was held by Starz Encore—currently owned by Lionsgate subsidiary Starz Inc.—which, according to February 2015 Nielsen estimates, had 40.54 million pay subscribers vs. the 35.8 million subscribers that HBO had at the time.)[6][7] In addition to its U.S. subscriber base, HBO distributes its programming content in at least 151 countries worldwide too, as of 2018, an estimated 140 million cumulative subscribers.[8][9]
Channels[edit]
Background[edit]
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 then-CEO Michael Fuchs to equate the programming choices that would be provided to subscribers of the channel tier to that offered by multi-screen movie theaters), each available at no extra charge to subscribers of one or both networks. (The three prior premium services that HBO launched between 1979 and 1987, Cinemax and the now-defunct Take 2 and Festival, were developed as standalone services that could be purchased separately from and optionally packaged with HBO.) 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 two additional HBO channels or a secondary channel of Cinemax. HBO2 (later renamed HBO Plus, then reverted to its original name), HBO3 (now HBO Signature), and Cinemax 2 (now MoreMax) 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. (Cinemax was originally scheduled to launch a tertiary channel, Cinemax 3, on November 1, 1991, but these plans were shelved until 1996.)[24][25][26][27][28] While most cable providers collectively offered the HBO and Cinemax multiplex channels in individual tiers, some providers had sold their secondary or tertiary channels as optional add-ons to expanded basic subscribers; this practice was discontinued when HBO and Cinemax began migrating to digital cable in the early 2000s, as the respective multiplex channels were being packaged in each tier mandatorily.
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 HBO and Cinemax to twelve channels (counting time zone-based feeds), encompassing a fourth HBO channel and two additional Cinemax channels, originally projected for a Spring 1997 launch.[29] The HBO multiplex expanded to include a fourth channel on December 1, 1996, with the launch of HBO Family, focusing on family-oriented feature films and television series aimed at younger children. (HBO Family's launch coincided with the launch of Mountain Time Zone feeds of HBO, HBO2, Cinemax, and Cinemax 2, which were the first sub-feeds ever offered by a subscription television service to specifically serve that time zone.)[30][31]
Home Box Office, Inc. began marketing the HBO channel suite and related coastal feeds under the umbrella brand "MultiChannel HBO" in September 1994; the package was rebranded as "HBO The Works", now exclusively classified to the four HBO multiplex channels (and later applied to the three thematic channels that were launched afterward), in April 1998. (The Cinemax tier was accordingly marketed as "MultiChannel Cinemax" and then "MultiMax" at the respective times.) Concurrent with the adoption of "The Works" package brand, two of the channels changed their names and formats: HBO2 was rebranded as HBO Plus, and HBO3 was relaunched as HBO Signature—incorporating content catering toward a female audience, alongside theatrical films aimed at broader audiences and content from HBO's original made-for-cable movie and documentary libraries. (HBO Plus would revert to the "HBO2" moniker in September 2002. The "HBO Plus" brand—modified in 2019 to "HBO+"—remains in use on a multiplex channel of HBO Latin America featuring mainly theatrical movies previously carried on its parent feed; HBO Latin America also operates a separate channel sharing the "HBO2" name with the shared U.S. namesake of both services.)[32]
On May 6, 1999, the HBO multiplex expanded to include two new thematic channels: HBO Comedy—featuring comedic feature films, comedy series from HBO's original programming library, and recent and archived HBO comedy specials—and HBO Zone—aimed at young adults between the ages of 18 and 34, offering theatrical movies; comedy and alternative series, and documentaries from HBO's original programming library; and music videos.[33] Rounding out the HBO multiplex expansion was HBO Latino, a Spanish language network launched on November 1, 2000, featuring a mix of dubbed simulcasts of programming from the primary HBO channel as well as exclusive Spanish-originated programs.[34][35]
List of HBO channels[edit]
Depending on the service provider, HBO provides up to seven 24-hour multiplex channels—all of which are simulcast in both standard definition and high definition, and available as time zone-based regional feeds—as well as a subscription video-on-demand service (HBO On Demand). Off-the-air maintenance periods of anywhere from a half-hour up to two hours occur at varied overnight/early morning time slots (usually preceding the 6:00 a.m. ET/PT start of the defined broadcast day) once per month on each channel.
HBO transmits feeds of its primary and multiplex channels on both Eastern and Pacific Time Zone schedules. The respective coastal feeds of each channel are usually packaged together, resulting in the difference in local airtimes for a particular movie or program between two geographic locations being three hours at most; the opposite-region feed (i.e., the Pacific Time feeds in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, and the Eastern Time feeds in the Pacific, Mountain and Alaska Time Zones) serves as a timeshift channel, allowing viewers who may have missed a particular program at its original local airtime to watch it three hours after its initial airing or allowing them to watch a program up to four hours, depending on the applicable time zone, in advance of their local airtime on their corresponding primary coastal feed. (Most cable, satellite, and IPTV providers, as well as its Amazon Prime Video and Roku OTT channels, only offer the East and West Coast feeds of the main HBO channel; some conventional television providers may include coastal feeds of HBO2 in certain areas, while wider availability of coastal feeds for the other five multiplex channels is limited to subscribers of DirecTV, YouTube TV and the Hulu live TV service.)
HBO maintains a separate feed for the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone—the only American cable-originated television network to offer a timeshift feed for Hawaii viewers—operating a three-hour-delayed version of the primary channel's Pacific Time feed for subscribers of Oceanic Spectrum, which otherwise transmits Pacific Time feeds for the six other HBO multiplex channels. (The state's other major cable provider, Hawaiian Telcom, offers the Pacific Time Zone feed of all seven channels.)