
AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages - dosy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-07/at-t-is-dragging-hbo-s-streaming-strategy-out-of-the-dark-ages
======
sharkweek
My problem with this is as follows:

HBO has led the way in making some of the highest quality television of the
last 20 years. Competition has gotten stiffer, but I still view HBO as the
premier place for TV (Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Curb, Veep,
Leftovers, True Detective, Deadwood... and of course GoT, the list goes on and
on). I would argue many of our favorite broadcast/cable shows would simply not
exist if HBO hadn't gone there first.

They've had some duds, and certainly have a lot of small-audience niche TV,
but for the most part it's a premium quality that I'm willing to pay for.

I'm reading through the lines a bit and here is what I see in the article:

"More content, faster, cheaper."

This isn't about an outdated streaming strategy, HBO Go/Now are fine.

If they race to compete with Netflix (dropping price, increasing output), who
is quite literally shitting out content every day, the overall quality of HBO
will decline greatly. Netflix started with premiere TV (House of Cards) but
has evolved into a massive mess of content, rarely of which any really
captures my attention anymore.

Unfortunately, as the money machine needs to be fed, I 100% see HBO slowly
turning into a content factory, and quality is going to fall off.

I hope in 3-5 years to come back to this comment and laugh at how wrong I was,
but I feel pretty certain about an upcoming quality drop from what was once
the bellwether of high quality entertainment.

~~~
tptacek
We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing
high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a
Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as
Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well.

HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole
show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire).
Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but
True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom
would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix.

More importantly than what Netflix itself creates is the fact that everyone
else is creating great TV, and Netflix can just license it. The Americans is
better than anything HBO ever produced except The Wire, and it's an FX show.
So are Atlanta and Better Things, both better than any HBO comedy series other
than Veep. AMC has Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which arguably are the
best thing ever done on TV.

The Deuce is great, but if I have to choose between paying for one show of
that caliber per month, or just getting access to stuff like Counterpart,
Legion, Get Shorty, Halt and Catch Fire, and Fargo, it's pretty obvious where
I'm getting my money's worth.

Which is the big dilemma with HBO's previous strategy. There is too much
content that clears the bar HBO set available outside of HBO for them to
charge a premium, unless they can keep bottling lightning like they did with
GoT, which is not at all a sure bet.

~~~
mbesto
> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good
> (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of
> TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire,
> Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at
> Netflix.

As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man"

Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netflix-original TV show rated over
9 on IMDB: [https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/netflix/tv-
shows?ratin...](https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/netflix/tv-
shows?rating_imdb=9)

Compared to 7 titles on HBO: [https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/hbo-
now/tv-shows?ratin...](https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/hbo-now/tv-
shows?rating_imdb=9)

But I think your point is that when we're talking about "The Wire" level
production, others have caught up (AMC, FX, etc) and Netflix can simply
license those titles. But, there's notable downsides to that (you have to
wait, there's a significant cost to purchase, etc). Also, AMC, FX, etc have
yet to establish a long-term credibility for consistently creating high
quality content...until they do, HBO as the "premium offering" in light of
others is still there.

At the end of the day we're talking about whether HBO's content can sustain
the justification of paying $15/month. You just need rabid audiences for that
to happen, not "one dude on the internet thinks The Wire is greatest thing
ever created".

~~~
Retric
How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45
years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.

GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO’s actual
original content has been lacking. Their library is enough to get people to
sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd
party content and or high volume production like Netflix to keep people paying
15$ a month.

In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month. And
the economics of that are going to be brutal.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing
> 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.

No, having 45 years of exclusive back catalog is a real and concrete
competitive advantage.

> GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material.

I'm not sure I agree; I mean, I get why it seems like they in retrospect, but
the history of genre fiction jumping from print to film (whether big screen or
small) is littered with dozens of corpses of failures of conversions of “great
source material” for every even modest success.

> Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old
> content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high
> volume production like Netflix to keep people paying 15$ a month.

I pay for both HBO Now and Netflix, and I pay of HBO Now largely because it
has fairly consistent if low volume high quality new original exclusive
content, unlike Netflix's high-volume firehose of stuff I have no interest in
that occasionally produces something of value, which even with their
supposedly personalized recommendations is still hard to find and identify
among the sea of mediocrity.

> In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month.

So did premium TV. HBO is more focussed on providing very high quality to a
more focussed audience while Netflix is running a scattershot content
approach; the latter probably has less value per customer but can perhaps
support a larger customer base; or it's a consciously unsustainable model that
only lasts until they figure out what their target audience really is.

EDIT: however, AT&T seems to want to try something closer to the Netflix
strategy with HBO, which I think is likely to be a disaster, but possibly one
that gets recognized in time to turn around.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think that last argument is true. Yes, Netflix has a shotgun approach
to picking content. But Netflix has core prestige series that hold their own
against HBO, and HBO has middling series that go nowhere; the only difference
is that Netflix has _more_ stuff.

------
smacktoward
I personally have not found the UX of HBO's streaming offerings (I use HBO GO,
primarily through an iPad and a PS4) to be appreciably worse than Netflix's.
The apps load and are straightforward to find my way around in, I can always
find the content I'm looking for, I've never had any technical issues prevent
me from streaming that content.

In some regards, I would even say their UX is _better_ than Netflix's --
scrolling through a list of items in the HBO apps doesn't trigger a parade of
loud auto-playing videos, and HBO doesn't visually privilege their own
original content over stuff they've licensed by giving it huge icons and
putting it at the top of every list.

The article mentions that HBO couldn't handle the streaming demand for _Game
of Thrones_ in 2014, which is pretty bad, but which was also _five years ago._
It doesn't mention them having problems like that anymore, so it seems
reasonable to assume they learned something from the experience.

If anything, I would say HBO's biggest failure is in marketing/branding:
naming their offering for cable subscribers "HBO GO" and the one for cord-
cutters "HBO NOW" is an invitation for confusion, and the logos/icons for the
apps are so similar anyone could be forgiven for downloading the wrong one.
They need to distinguish these services better, and provide some incentive to
use HBO Now to attract people like me who are getting HBO through their cable
company to jump to having a direct relationship with them instead.

~~~
pronoiac
There's also the DirecTV Now app, which gets bundled with some AT&T mobile
plans, and the UX there is much worse than in HBO Now. I don’t think you can
make watchlists, and it won’t pick up from the same time if you get
interrupted.

------
colechristensen
I like HBO just as it is and can't fathom why anyone would claim it is in the
dark ages.

"Decisions are made slowly and by consensus; longtime employees guard the
network’s lucrative, award-winning status quo." \-- this is said like it is a
bad thing. There is nothing wrong with not being "disruptive" and being slow
and steady to stay excellent.

Many businesses and consumers would be better off if there were less pressure
to be #1.

~~~
btmiller
Deliberation is slowly going extinct in favor of throwing everything at the
wall to see what sticks. I see it as the "news feed"-ification of video
content.

~~~
colechristensen
OR A/B testing until every product fits only the lowest common denominator
niche.

Same argument as the "dictatorship of the majority" in democratic government.
Everybody doing what is most popular results in many people losing.

~~~
com2kid
It is perfectly possible to A/B content to find which content targets a more
lucrative niche.

It just depends on the goals you set for the test.

------
smacktoward
For those (like me) who are puzzled by some of the assertions made in this
article -- I suspect that it's what journalists refer to as a "beat
sweetener"[1].

Reporters have particular sectors, companies, etc. they're assigned to cover;
these are referred to as their _beat_. To get stories, a journalist has to
develop sources within those sectors/companies/etc. -- people "in the know"
who are willing to share information with them. Developing sources is a hard
thing to do, as people tend not to talk to reporters unless they've got an axe
to grind, which biases their information and makes it less useful to you.

One way to get potential sources to open up to you is to butter them up in
advance with some flattering coverage. Once you're fixed in their memory as
the guy/gal who wrote that great story about them, they're less likely to see
you as an adversary.

So it's not uncommon, when a new executive takes over somewhere, to see a
glowing profile of them appear -- a profile that "explains" how all the
problems the place the executive just took over at are the fault of their
departed predecessor, who was an idiot whose momma dressed him funny, and how
the new executive's bold, daring Vision for the Future™ will solve them all at
a stroke.

I have no hard evidence whether that's the actual thought process that led to
this puzzling article, of course. It just really, really reads that way.

[1] See [https://www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-beat-
sweetener...](https://www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-beat-sweetener-
media-culture/), [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/04/a-beat-
sweetener...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/04/a-beat-sweetener-
sampler.html)

------
criddell
If AT&T wants to drag anything out of the dark ages, I wish they would take a
look at the DVRs they give to their customers. They are so slow and their user
interface is atrocious.

When our contract is up, we are going to try YouTube TV and Hulu to see if
either of those is better.

~~~
rwc
The solution is DirecTV Now and, while far from perfect, is under very active
development.

~~~
__david__
It's not really a solution. It has a _terrible_ interface. Same with
Playstation Vue and Hulu+Live TV. They're all geared towards people who turn
on their tv and get blared at by whatever random channel it's tuned to. None
of them comes close to what Tivo was doing 20 years ago where the menu of your
currently recorded shows became front and center and live tv became a
secondary concern.

Not to mention that several of those services have certain shows blacked out
on their DVR service, and some even convert your recorded shows into on-demand
versions which (or course) contain unskippable commercials.

When I cut the cord last summer it was extremely sobering realizing that all
the fancy new internet tv services were so far behind my already long in the
tooth Tivo.

~~~
criddell
> some even convert your recorded shows into on-demand versions which (or
> course) contain unskippable commercials

Is there a higher paid tier that gets rid of those commercials?

------
jjoonathan
Am I going to be able to give them money in exchange for watching Game of
Thrones? Or do they still expect me to mix and match a cable TV package, a
"partnered" home entertainment box, and some other nonsense?

~~~
stolson
You can subscribe to HBO NOW for $15 a month.

~~~
jjoonathan
That was an option last season too, but I think I had to have a unique,
partnered, non-computer device on which to register the HBO Now account, and
the process was broken on the one "acceptable" device I had. I don't remember
what it was, but I do remember digging it out of storage and being terribly
inconvenienced.

In any case, after two thorough, time-consuming attempts I gave up and mooched
of a friend who had recently bought a Roku or something.

~~~
X-Istence
Creating a HBO Now account can be done through the web at
[https://hbonow.com/](https://hbonow.com/)

You need a web browser.

~~~
jjoonathan
In that case, I'm cautiously optimistic that they've reconsidered the
nonsense!

------
kitrose
I prefer HBO’s content and streaming app so much more than Netflix/Hulu, I
always start there if I am wondering what to watch.

------
teilo
The best HBO experience is on Amazon. HBO Now is so unreliable and bad that I
cancelled it and added the HBO Now channel to my Prime Subscription. Same
content, but a player that actually works.

HBO Now's web player (on my Macbook Pro, anyway) would not play in HD on an
external monitor no matter what I did. HDPC is working. Every other service
(including Netflix) worked fine. Only HBO reverted to SD video as soon as I
moved my browser window to my 4K display, no matter what browser I used. I'm
sure the problem is Silverlight. But it's ridiculous that they still use that
piece of garbage.

------
bigmattystyles
Slight tangent: Does anyone find it weird that no matter what you watch, HBO
puts a 30 second preview for something else before your show. Fix that - and a
skip intro button. Otherwise, keep it as is.

~~~
thomasthomas
Needs an "Are you still watching?" prompt as well. It will play every episode
of a series if you fall asleep while watching. Would cut costs for them too.

------
kevin_b_er
While I can appreciate "HBO Now", which is netflix-esque, I fear HBO is still
too bogged by the legacy of being a premium cable channel. "HBO Go" is just
that, restricted to the cable TV bundling problem. With AT&T in the mix, I can
see it going to needing Cable TV or AT&T wireless internet as the requirement
to be able to buy HBO. If that happens, they'll still not be as good Netflix
at distribution.

------
vonseel
Subtitle: With Richard Plepler out, new boss Robert Greenblatt will need to
fix years of missteps to catch up to Netflix.

If what they are giving HBO is anything like the “AT&T Watch TV” app, that’s a
pretty accurate subheading. The user experience is a solid 5 years behind
Netflix and Hulu.

~~~
bluedevil2k
The current HBO Go app has a really good interface, much better than Netflix
and sooo much better than Hulu's jumbled mess (on the AppleTV). I can find the
shows I want to watch easily, the current shows are easy to find on the main
page, the categories are clean and easy to sort through. Just the fact that
you scroll down and not some infinite row like in Netflix works so much better
on the TV.

------
OrgNet
most of the large media companies need a wakeup call... why is it easier to
find pirated content then finding a source willing to take your money for non-
drm content...

------
draw_down
Perhaps their streaming strategy needs to be dragged out of the dark ages, but
I don't think the situation bodes well for the quality of their content. The
CEO who just left was apparently beloved by creators in the industry, and the
new one just wants a firehose of content like what Netflix offers. So it feels
like the end of an era.

Looks like the future will be HBO trading on the brand they built over the
last few decades but content-wise attempting to match Netflix. I hope I'm
wrong.

