HBO made prestige content for decades, they made bold social commentary and pushed new boundaries for televised drama others copied. That was their role, to make the content viewers didn’t even know they wanted yet, rather than development by focus group like the networks, they invested in exciting visions by creators. That HBO is over and gone.
The merger was the end of HBO. The second it was approved, the Warner-Discovery CEO gushed about filling the streaming platform with cheap to produce (like that was a feature viewers would appreciate) reality show garbage. They delisted shows artists count on for reputation for tax breaks so no one can watch them. They canceled shows with established visions that viewers were waiting to return to help pay for the cost of the merger.
They basically bought it to remove superior competition and try to sucker idiots into valuing their shit content as if it were good content. It’ll probably work for some. I had HBO in some form since I was a child, but I cancelled my annual subscription a little over a year ago right after the takeover when they started boasting about all the destruction they were doing to impress shareholders.
When capitalism runs out of places to grow/metastasize, it will eat itself, and it has been at this point for years with entire industries consuming themselves to get away with duopolies/monopolies that make inferior products but have merged their way out of having meaningful competition. Big media is a good, public example of that collapse, but it’s happening in every sector of our rigged economy. This is the meaning of late stage capitalism. A race to the bottom by the mega corporations that already won the game, who see no more opportunity to grow profit from improving quality, and so try to squeeze more blood from their existing profit machines through draconian efficiency.
“Lets just film some people that want to be famous in a house talking to a camera, call it content, and charge double!”
HBO is a corpse.
HBO made prestige content for decades, they made bold social commentary and pushed new boundaries for televised drama others copied. That was their role, to make the content viewers didn’t even know they wanted yet, rather than development by focus group like the networks, they invested in exciting visions by creators. That HBO is over and gone.
The merger was the end of HBO. The second it was approved, the Warner-Discovery CEO gushed about filling the streaming platform with cheap to produce (like that was a feature viewers would appreciate) reality show garbage. They delisted shows artists count on for reputation for tax breaks so no one can watch them. They canceled shows with established visions that viewers were waiting to return to help pay for the cost of the merger.
They basically bought it to remove superior competition and try to sucker idiots into valuing their shit content as if it were good content. It’ll probably work for some. I had HBO in some form since I was a child, but I cancelled my annual subscription a little over a year ago right after the takeover when they started boasting about all the destruction they were doing to impress shareholders.
When capitalism runs out of places to grow/metastasize, it will eat itself, and it has been at this point for years with entire industries consuming themselves to get away with duopolies/monopolies that make inferior products but have merged their way out of having meaningful competition. Big media is a good, public example of that collapse, but it’s happening in every sector of our rigged economy. This is the meaning of late stage capitalism. A race to the bottom by the mega corporations that already won the game, who see no more opportunity to grow profit from improving quality, and so try to squeeze more blood from their existing profit machines through draconian efficiency.
“Lets just film some people that want to be famous in a house talking to a camera, call it content, and charge double!”