Today, parent company Time Warner said HBO and its sister channel Cinemax added more than seven million subscribers in the last six months. At the end of last year, the two channels had 92.9 million subs, and today Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said the total was more than 100 million; Bewkes wouldn’t break out HBO-specific numbers, but said HBO would end 2012 with more domestic subscribers than it had in 2011.
Maybe we should stop hoping for the liberated streaming HBO app things now.
Distin Curtis:
Basically, HBO has to differentiate at a further abstracted plane than the distribution aggregators, because it doesn't have the existing business infrastructure that normal networks have.
SplatF:
The real losers, of course, are the subscribers — you and me. This silliness about “owning the entire customer experience” is just not productive or sustainable for the long-term. Maybe most of the same shows are available from both sources, but as long as we’re still paying for cable TV, why not give us the choice to pick which interface we want?
Surprised?