HBO’s India departure: What OTT universe doesn’t want Home Box Office?

HBO shows

HBO was born for Generation X. Those of us born in the '70s, and who became adults in the '90s, the decade that rested on a giant, fragile wedge of global and local. The first HBO show I watched was The Sopranos. I watched it in university, at a journalism classroom in New York City. Ellen Willis, a legendary music critic and a founder editor of The Village Voice, dissected for us, every revolution the HBO show had signalled for American Television in general. The Sopranos, which aired from 1999 to 2007 across six seasons, had made the channel’s ad slogan, “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”, real. Cinema had come to TV.

Then came Six Feet Under (2001-05). Who’d have thought a show about death could be so life-affirming? Alan Ball’s funeral parlour drama was haunting, profound and funny. And, then, The Wire (2002-08), about narcotics trade in Baltimore, and also about gang violence, the war on drugs, police corruption, the American media, the American education system. Sex and the City (1998-04) was aspirational, and not for the Manolo Blahniks, but because it showed us through multiple seasons (and the reiterations continue with another name now) that over-40 women aren’t always married and monogamous, and that female friendships can be game-changing. Entourage, The Deuce, Veep, Mare of Easttown, The White Lotus, Euphoria cemented its reputation further as home of the fancy, high-voltage show. Then, there's The Last of Us. Of course, who, for the next few generations, can forget Game of Thrones (2011-19)?

All HBO content will be off the site, that is Disney+ Hotstar, from April 1. All That Breathes, Shaunak Sen’s breathtaking documentary about the connectedness of all life forms told through a Delhi milieu and the city’s oppressiveness, just released on the OTT without any fanfare. All That Breathes was up for the Oscar in the Documentary Feature category this year, and HBO Max, HBO’s OTT platform which was supposed to launch in India several months ago, has the film in its line-up internationally. Season 4 of Succession, arguably the best media monopoly thriller ever written for television, airs from March 26, four days ahead of the HBO exit. This is reportedly the last season of Succession, and according to critics in the US who have watched it, is blisteringly dark and thrilling. In an official post, Disney+ Hotstar wrote, “Starting March 31, HBO content will be unavailable on Disney+ Hotstar. You can continue enjoying Disney+ Hotstar's vast library of content spanning over 100,000 hours of TV shows and movies in 10 languages and coverage of major global sporting events.”

Several opinions are appearing on social media and news platforms about what Disney+ Hotstar losing the content tie-up deal with HBO could mean for Disney+ Hotstar. The consensus opinion about this development — is that losing this deal, according to insiders of the TV industry because HBO is asking for a steep $50 million to air HBO content exclusively in India is going to be far less damaging than the fact that Disney+ Hotstar lost the OTT telecast rights of the Indian Premier League to Viacom18’s Voot last year.

According to executives who are former employees of HBO in India, the plan to launch HBO Max in India went awry after the merger between Warner Media (the parent company which owns HBO) and Discovery. The business aspirations and ambitions of HBO changed after this merger. There was an exodus of senior executives in HBO’s Los Angeles headquarters. HBO had aimed big for India a couple of years ago. The biggest plans were for India after US and Korea. Now they have cut back a lot on Warner Bros productions. Many films have been canned. India Originals, which were commissioned last year for HBO Max, have been nixed. One of the executives who left HBO Max after the company’s new directions, said this week that in the last couple of months, HBO has been meeting all the OTT players in India to finalise a deal. But their monetary ask is way too much for OTTs in India now. In terms of actual business, HBO content is minuscule for Disney+ Hotstar; HBO has a vanity profile — an association with creative superiority rather than popular content.

The OTT universe worldwide is going through course corrections. During the pandemic years in India, all the OTT players, mainly Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar had inorganic, unrealistic growth. All eyes for content were on the home screen, and the OTT platforms paid talent across the spectrum of filmmaking way more than they were ever used to. According to insiders, that growth has now become a steady growth. They are prudent with the spends of content. In that scenario, paying HBO a whopper doesn’t make sound business sense. According to a report in Bestmediainfo.com portal, the subscriber base for HBO content in India is niche and has relatively low reach on Disney+ Hotstar, which has been streaming HBO content after both companies signed an exclusive pact in 2015.

American-born confused 'desi'

We reached out to a number of people at HBO, including Singapore-based Clement Schwebig, president Asia — India, Southeast Asia, Korea at Warner Bros. Discovery, for a comment on these developments and the future of Box Office in India. Schwebig declined, saying Warner or HBO are “not commenting on this for now”.

In April 2022, Discovery, Inc. and AT&T Inc. announced that they officially closed a deal with WarnerMedia wherein AT&T received $40.4 billion in cash. The combined media and entertainment company, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., houses three streaming services, HBO Max, Discovery+ and CNN+; Warner Bros. studio; and cable channels such as TNT, TBS, Food Network, Investigation Discovery, TLC, Discovery, truTV, Travel Channel, MotorTrend, Animal Planet, Science Channel, New Line Cinema, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, HGTV and HBO, among others. In India, Comedy Central stays on as a cable TV channel. In February this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the combined service will include all the content on both streamers, but Discovery+ will “stay on the market”. It will be a stand-alone entity that you can still subscribe to without having to also pay for content.

A recent report by TechCrunch American news publication mentions that Amazon may be one place where one can view HBO content in the future. It reads, “Last year, the firm signed a deal with Amazon for streaming rights of some HBO content. Amazon is one of the likely contenders to broaden a deal with Warner Bros, industry analysts say.” Among industry insiders, speculation that HBO’s new home in India is going to be Amazon Prime Video is high.

Home Box Office (aka HBO) launched on 8 November 1972 as a pay channel for movies and live sport. It pivoted to original programming in the 1990s and transformed the small-screen landscape in the US.

Like every business on the planet — quality is about relationships and not money. Under its head Michael Fuchs, HBO got the best talent. He believed that relationships build quality, not TRPs or ads — a belief that runs through several iconic creative idea- or art-driven companies around the world, the opposite, perhaps of what Yash Raj Films custodian Aditya Chopra explained in a recent Netflix documentary, The Romantics, on the Bollywood production House as “institutionalising creativity”.

HBO was a breeding ground of the most successful executives in the American television industry. Through the 1990s and 2000s, HBO worldwide brought in, trained and mentored great talent. Steve Buscemi is an example of several great actors who have done their best work for HBO shows. Fuchs pioneered original programming on cable in America. HBO was a cash machine from subscriptions, with a continued panache for excellent comedy in original productions. HBO is still a name that demands respect from filmmakers and serious movie lovers — serious story lovers rather, considering HBO’s diverse programming. It will be a tragedy and a travesty if Torrents and VPN become the only gateway to watch HBO shows. House of the Dragon, the GoT prequel that’s one of HBO’s hottest properties now, will return for a second season. Need our Torrent fingers be activated?

HBO shows to wrap up by March 31

Entourage

Adventures of a movie star’s posse of pals is huge fun, largely largely thanks to abrasive agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven).

The Deuce

An immersive drama set in 1970s’ NYC during the “golden age of porn”. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a sex worker turned adult film director, with James Franco doubling up as twins working for the mafia. Stylishly seedy.

Euphoria

Zendaya’s best. High school dystopia at its best. It’s a twisted teen drama that’s as exhilarating as it is terrifying.

Veep

A Washington satire, it’s about a politician who is incompetent as vice-president. Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is hilarious.

The White Lotus

Mike White shot The White Lotus in a Covid-safe bubble, and the result is a delicious comedy-drama set in Hawaii and Sicily (first and second seasons respectively) and the real arriving of Jennifer Coolidge as a gifted comic actor.

Mare of Easttown

Kate Winslet delivered a blistering performance as world-weary Mare Sheehan, a small-town Philadelphia detective investigating a teenage girl’s murder. The mini-series is a genre-bender like few others.

Game of Thrones

A fantasy epic that turned into a pop-culture phenomenon like the world has never seen.

Chernobyl

The devastating 1986 nuclear disaster in present-day Ukraine, brought to life in a terrifyingly realistic miniseries.

Succession

Another brilliant comedy-drama inspired by the life of Rupert Murdoch, creator  Jesse Armstrong makes it  a critique of media ownership, late-stage capitalism and the ultra-rich. A super-soap.

The Sopranos

Television’s best ever mobster masterpiece, the gang leader is Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) who talks to a shrink in between killing people, while keeping home and family on a precarious balance.