The Zaslavication continues.
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!”
complaining about the writers strike preventing new content
apparently likes Bill Maher
woof
There hasn’t been anything worth watching on HBO for about the last year. I only have it because I’m not the one paying for it… My sister has it as a free perk of a cable package or something I can’t believe anyone does pay for it.
People don’t like what I like and that’s stupid waaaaaaaaaah
There, saved you a click.
I didn’t get that from the article at all. What I read was that HBO has a dearth of programming because a lot of their content either ended or got canceled. And they’ve had to fill in the blanks with AMC programming.
I was over indexing on the walking dead complaint, though find the whole thing overly dramatic. A couple of shows ended and there’s a writers strike. Their choosing to run a steaming service with a breadth of content isn’t evidence that HBO programming is on the decline, just that they are trying to run a business.
They’d already been openly gutting their original shows since the merger. The only things they’re interested in making are “sure things” and cheap shit with high ROI. I’m sure we’ll get another half dozen game of thrones spinoffs as they beat the corpse and load it up with garbage.
