How HBO makes a "mythical drama": trial and error, gimmicks, and proximity to movies

HBO is a cable network owned by Time Warner. Even with the impact from the Internet, the premium content strategy has still brought good growth to HBO. Time Warner's financial report for the first half of this year showed that HBO's total revenue for the first half of the year was US$2.97 billion, a year-on-year increase of 5%. Time Warner's total revenue in the first half of the year fell by 5% year-on-year due to the decline in Warner Bros. revenue and changes in international currency exchange rates. Some of the impact was offset by the growth of HBO and Turner Broadcasting.

Original title: From "Game of Thrones" to "Westworld", how HBO made the drama

Dolores swatted a fly to death-a simple action by the leading actress at the end of the first episode, HBO's new series "Westworld" has successfully made audiences stand on end: robots are unlikely to harm any life. In "Western World", the awakening of artificial intelligence, the limits of good and evil in human nature, and enough pornography and bloody scenes, these old elements in science fiction movies are thrown into the western prairie, giving new meaning.

With a huge worldview, multiple story lines advancing at the same time, each story line has at least one impressive character."Westworld", which has a budget of up to US$100 million per season, seems to have HBO's next "mythical drama", which is the prototype of a phenomenal series that qualifies as a cultural phenomenon, with an IMDb score of 9.2. For HBO, which has always won the world by word of mouth, it is estimated that this time we can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Why does HBO have to produce a "god drama"?

HBO is a paid channel with no advertising and relies on viewers 'paid subscriptions to make money. This is the most fundamental reason. But the story is not that simple. For this reason, HBO does need to provide high-quality dramas, but it does not have to be "mythical dramas." After all, it is no longer easy to produce good content steadily and continuously.

HBO began to taste the benefits of "The Sopranos". At that time, HBO had just been freed from a bloody battle with other TV stations to buy content, and hired Chris Albrecht to produce a series of successful comedies, including "Seinfeld." Aldrich has a wide network in the comedy industry, and HBO even has enough content to open a comedy channel. Later, this comedy channel became what we know as the comedy center channel that broadcast "The Daily Show" and "The Roast Conference".

The 1999 broadcast of "The Sopranos" gave HBO a completely different success. "The Sopranos" has 6 seasons. During its broadcast, it successfully won 21 Emmy Awards (the highest award in American television) and 111 Emmy nominations. HBO= Ultra-high-quality series, which has been on the mark since then. In 2001, HBO invested US$125 million to produce "Company of Brothers". In addition to honors such as Golden Globe Awards and Emmy Awards, HBO still ranks first among all TV series on IMDb.

The "Sopranos"

public television station has no rigid demand for "mythological dramas". Their job is to retain a target audience for a fixed period of time so that they can sell ads. It is unlikely that all viewers will like a series like HBO in the early stages of its launch, and advertisers may not be willing to sponsor it. It makes sense to think about it. A miserable old man sitting on the grass with a knife in his arms and nagging his sons,"Winter is coming." I believe many people were confused at first. The budget of public stations is also very limited, and we cannot spend large amounts of money to smash the scene or the main creator.

In fact, HBO doesn't need all dramas to be "divine dramas." It only needs to have one or two films to stir up the nerves of the audience for a long time and become a topic for the public to talk about. But without "divine drama", HBO would have lost its core brand label and could not become a mythical image in the eyes of audiences.

HBO is the highlight of Time Warner's earnings every year. Last year, its annual revenue increased by 5% to $3.2 billion. At the same time,"Game of Thrones" has become the most pirated series worldwide. Jeff Bewkes, then President of Time Warner, put it this way: "This works better than any Emmy." Even if "Game of Thrones" ends, subsequent derivative development, tourism development and even new series development will generate considerable profits for AT&T Time Warner.

How does HBO produce a "god drama"?

Compared with public television stations, HBO is willing to give more opportunities for trial and error. Compared to public stations that won't even let you finish half a season if the ratings are bad, HBO rarely has series that are canceled for half a season. At the same time, it is also willing to invest more money in pilot episodes to cultivate new dramas, which is good for slow hits. It is very beneficial for dramas.

For a work to become a cultural phenomenon, most of the time the worldview and plot must be complex to a certain extent to support multi-season plots, such as "Game of Thrones". Or maybe the characters have complex hearts and pasts and build a life picture, such as "Breaking Bad". Sometimes these works may have just been laid out in half a season, but at this time the audience is running out of patience and the advertisers are unwilling to pay, so they have to endure the pain and cut them down.

Fox TV is a public television station. The first season of the Space West science fiction drama "Firefly", which it aired in 2002 and was cited as a classic for science fiction fans, was canceled due to poor ratings. Later, Jos, the creator of "Firefly". Joss Whedon has achieved great success with "Avengers", which is somewhat of a thrill for fans of Fox's "revenge".

Stunking is a must. Although nudity and blood have become standard features on HBO, they were still a rare phenomenon at the end of the last century. In other words, the series HBO chooses to produce are anti-tradition, anti-experience, and anti-routine. This requires taking risks, because as mass entertainment, it is too deviant and may offend the audience. In a series of silly white and sweet dramas on public stations in the last century, HBO was the bad kid who took you to climb the wall in class. In this century, a series of highly satirical dramas such as "Bad Sisters" and "Silicon Valley" are allies who speak ill of others behind their backs and die together with you.

HBO never goes too far with movies. Film is a form of expression of art, while television is rarely a work of art. Television is destined to be superficial, commercial, and instant, because this can allow the audience to get the fastest release. But what you can see on public stations every day is not enough to retain audiences with higher demands. For audiences, being able to see content that they can't see elsewhere or just right to their taste is an important reason for them to pay.

In other words, either HBO can be more in-depth, more complex, and more interesting than public stations; or HBO can meet the needs of subcultures and small groups. And film workers can meet the needs of HBO dramas for in-depth and focused attention. They think more deeply about stories and have more exposure to niche cultures. This is also why among the creators that HBO has worked with, there are a series of glittering Oscar winners: Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Alan Sorkin... and the list of actors is even longer, except for the ones that have been counted before. Gold medal actors such as Jude Law, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, etc. If they want to test the test of TV, they basically choose between HBO, Showtime, AMC TV and Netflix.

Jude Law's participation in the HBO and Canal+ co-production drama "The Young Pope"

can also be seen from this that the content production models of TV stations that use the viewer-paid model as a profit-making model may be different in the early stage, but for paid TV stations that have successfully done so in the later stage, the thinking is still very consistent-that is, to produce high-quality, gimmicks content while meeting the requirements of subculture. Showtime's "Shameless" and "Double Forensic";AMC's "The Walking Dead" and "Breaking Bad"; and Netflix's "House of Cards" all go this path.

HBO's test

As "Game of Thrones" comes to a close, HBO is in urgent need of a strong phenomenal series to maintain its dominance.

Among the current episodes on HBO,"Silicon Valley" and "Vice President" are both very successful 30-minute comedies. But on the one-hour drama side, after Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson created the word-of-mouth spectacle in the first season of "True Detective", the second season turned sharply. "Watching the World" was given high hopes when it started, telling the story of 2% of the world's population suddenly disappeared one day. HBO also had to cut it after three seasons due to poor performance. The series that also suffered the fate of being cut for three seasons is "Newsroom".

HBO has spared no expense in the past year or two to continue its glory on dramas such as "The Sopranos","Sex and the City" and "Game of Thrones". The pilot episode of "Vinyl Age" broadcast in February this year has been configured according to movie specifications: 2 hours long, with an investment of US$30 million, directed by Martin Scorsese. Although the series after the pilot episode did not keep up with Scorsese's standards, it scored 7.9 on IMDb, which is still among the best films.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the budget for the season of "Westworld" mentioned at the beginning of the article is US$100 million. Such investment regardless of cost is also due to the feeling of threat from competitors.

In response to Netflix's challenges, HBO launched HBO Now, which allows users to use the same paid membership service as Netflix. They can watch almost all HBO episodes on Apple devices, as well as watch sports games, movies, variety shows, etc.

HBO Now subscriptions range from $15 to $20, depending on the carrier, and there is also a student price of $9.99. This is to correspond to Netflix's $9.99 base plan offer. It's just that HBO's pricing has been declining, while Netflix's pricing has been rising. But this also creates a problem. HBO still earns the bulk of its revenue from cable TV subscriptions. HBO users spend an average of $130 a month to subscribe to their services. HBO Now may have a conflict of interest with cable TV.

Richard Plepler, current CEO of HBO, said his task first is to get more customers to watch HBO. Therefore, while focusing on content, he hopes to put some pressure on cable providers to put HBO into more basic packages and change the way they sell it.

Editor: Nancy