It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.
I think HBO seems to have an extraordinary clever knack of catching the pulse of its audience. It really, really knows its audience.
HBO is not an advertiser-based model, it's a subscription model. So what's significant to HBO is not necessarily the debut of an episode, it's the cumulative numbers.
What's great about HBO is they just care about quality. They care about the brand. They're not worried about ratings; obviously they want people to buy subscriptions, but they just want people to be into what's on HBO.
The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody.
In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.
There are only a few TV networks that really invest in production in the way that I think they should. HBO, obviously, is one of them.
I'm on record saying that HBO is the best television company in the world, and I believe they are. I think they absolutely understand how to make television that is really, really vital and interesting and visceral, and all the things that television really should be.
HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.
One of the differences between HBO and other television is that they demand the same coverage that you would have in a feature film. We need to have all the shots in order to make it as rich and as stunning as it looks. We can't cut any corners.
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