Bruce
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- Nov 29, 2003
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I keep reading posts that says that Mr.Dolan started HBO and made that a success and since he did that, Voom will be a success,well I did a lot of searches for the History of HBO and found a lot of stories but the best was this interview with J. Richard Munro, recently retired co-chairman and co-chief executive officer of Time Warner Inc., now the world's largest media and entertainment company.
SMITH:And that is a history that has to be written, too. It needs to be put down. I don't want to forget before we complete our interview to go back into some of your civic background and interests. But, since logically, we have gotten this far into cable, we might just as well go on and talk about the HBO situation. Was HBO the first of the major network cable organizations?
MUNRO: Yes. There were previous failed pay television ventures, several in the '60s, but none of them were successful, and they came and they died a brief, quick death. HBO was the pioneer in the current and successful genre of pay television. I think to a great degree, Chuck Dolan, was certainly a legend in the industry. It was his idea. He brought it to us long before anyone fully grasped the potential of pay television. It was Chuck's dream. Chuck worked at it for a brief period of time. When we sold Chuck our Long Island systems, he left, but left the concept of HBO with us. Then, it was really only a concept and a dream. I credit Chuck with having had the dream and the concept. But, I credit my colleagues at Time Inc., particularly Jerry Levin, with the wherewithal and the stamina and the energy to take a dream and make it a reality which is what Time Inc. did with HBO. I remember those days rather vividly even though they are damn near twenty years ago. I think a lot of people really never fully appreciated the magnitude of what could happen here.
Of course, it started off as a terrestrial microwave network, going along telephone lines. It was Jerry Levin, I think, who was primarily responsible for putting HBO on the satellite. Of course, that was the revolutionary step that put HBO on the map, as well as everyone else on the map. We were the pioneer in terms of satellite transmission. I think of all the things that HBO stood for, and all of its success, that obviously was far and above anything else HBO has done to put them on the map.
And those were interesting days, the early days of HBO when we were living kind of "hand-to-mouth." Within timing, no one fully appreciated what it was. I don't think anybody had any idea of its potential. I'm not sure I did at that time. I'm not even sure Jerry did. But slowly but surely, those who worked in the vineyards of HBO began to realize that we really had something of enormous potential, particularly if we could get it up on that satellite and put that satellite footprint all over America. We first did it by sending tapes around, then we went to telephone lines. But to make a national television network by telephone lines was pretty difficult to do. So, the satellite was obviously the breakthrough.
http://www.cablecenter.org/library/collections/oral_histories/history_detail.cfm?SelectedHistory=71
SMITH:And that is a history that has to be written, too. It needs to be put down. I don't want to forget before we complete our interview to go back into some of your civic background and interests. But, since logically, we have gotten this far into cable, we might just as well go on and talk about the HBO situation. Was HBO the first of the major network cable organizations?
MUNRO: Yes. There were previous failed pay television ventures, several in the '60s, but none of them were successful, and they came and they died a brief, quick death. HBO was the pioneer in the current and successful genre of pay television. I think to a great degree, Chuck Dolan, was certainly a legend in the industry. It was his idea. He brought it to us long before anyone fully grasped the potential of pay television. It was Chuck's dream. Chuck worked at it for a brief period of time. When we sold Chuck our Long Island systems, he left, but left the concept of HBO with us. Then, it was really only a concept and a dream. I credit Chuck with having had the dream and the concept. But, I credit my colleagues at Time Inc., particularly Jerry Levin, with the wherewithal and the stamina and the energy to take a dream and make it a reality which is what Time Inc. did with HBO. I remember those days rather vividly even though they are damn near twenty years ago. I think a lot of people really never fully appreciated the magnitude of what could happen here.
Of course, it started off as a terrestrial microwave network, going along telephone lines. It was Jerry Levin, I think, who was primarily responsible for putting HBO on the satellite. Of course, that was the revolutionary step that put HBO on the map, as well as everyone else on the map. We were the pioneer in terms of satellite transmission. I think of all the things that HBO stood for, and all of its success, that obviously was far and above anything else HBO has done to put them on the map.
And those were interesting days, the early days of HBO when we were living kind of "hand-to-mouth." Within timing, no one fully appreciated what it was. I don't think anybody had any idea of its potential. I'm not sure I did at that time. I'm not even sure Jerry did. But slowly but surely, those who worked in the vineyards of HBO began to realize that we really had something of enormous potential, particularly if we could get it up on that satellite and put that satellite footprint all over America. We first did it by sending tapes around, then we went to telephone lines. But to make a national television network by telephone lines was pretty difficult to do. So, the satellite was obviously the breakthrough.
http://www.cablecenter.org/library/collections/oral_histories/history_detail.cfm?SelectedHistory=71
