The final season of 'Game of Thrones' just started, but HBO has its eye on what's next.
Last Updated Monday, April 15, 2019 1:37PM EDT
Keeping subscribers on board means more than another hit, even one as globally dazzling as "Game of Thrones" proved to be. But it's where HBO can start to protect its brand and position, observers say, an effort both demanded and compounded by an increasingly congested small-screen landscape and the expectations of the channel's corporate owner since 2016, AT&T.
"We have high hopes" for the pilot, he said. "But I want to be clear, nobody is going into this thinking that we're going to do a prequel and all of a sudden everybody who automatically watched 'Game of Thrones' is going to watch this. ... It'll have a different feel and different rhythm. We're not trying to do the same show again."
HBO, which launched in 1972 and whose cachet has long justified the boastful slogan, "It's not TV. It's HBO," has reached this crossroads before. At the turn of the century, pop-culture sensations "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" boosted the channel's visibility and subscribers and made it a serious player for prestige awards -- including cable's first-ever Emmys for best drama and comedy series.
With AT&T's resources, HBO has stepped up production and will see a 50% increase in the number of original program hours this year, Bloys said, arguing that volume doesn't preclude high quality: "There's nothing in 2019 that we're putting on the air because we're trying to hit an hour count. ... We haven't lowered any of our standards to reach a certain level of programming" and there is no pressure to do otherwise from WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey, he said.
HBO "cannot rely on the old ways of doing things and hope that being a premium channel will bail you out," he said.
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