It's not TV it's...

On the Media

WNYC Studios

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2022 HBO picked up nearly forty Emmy awards — many of which went to The White Lotus. That year also happened to be the Home Box Office's 50th birthday. John Koblin co-wrote the book It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO with Felix Gillette. Last winter, guest host Ilya Marritz spoke to Koblin, who covers the television industry for The New York Times, about how the network came to be a critical darling, and HBO's fraught future under its new owner, Discovery+.

This is a segment from our December 9, 2022 show, Still Watching?.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the On The Media Midweek Podcast.
0:03.0	I'm Ilya Maritz, I'm a reporter and co-host of the series Will Be Wild, and I occasionally
0:07.8	sit in for Brook Gladstone.
0:10.1	We've got some good stuff cooking up for the big show this weekend, including a conversation
0:13.6	with an Israeli journalist on the protests in her country.
0:17.2	Andrew will examine a new law in Utah banning children from social media without parental consent.
0:23.0	But in the meantime, let's re-listen to an interview I did last year.
0:26.7	It's newly relevant.
0:27.9	In light of this.
0:30.0	Last weekend was the first episode of season 4 of Succession, a huge hit for HBO, which
0:38.6	is no stranger to success.
0:40.9	Take White Lotus.
0:42.2	That show picked up nearly 40 Emmy Awards in 2022, a year that also happened to be HBO's
0:47.5	50th birthday.
0:49.7	In those five decades, the network has changed hands between a variety of corporate owners,
0:54.4	from the publisher Time Inc. to AOL and later AT&T.
0:58.4	And most recently, Discovery Plus.
1:01.1	Along the way, HBO never had a singular leader, its own Walt Disney.
1:06.4	Instead, the network was propelled by generations of risk-embracing taste makers.
1:11.2	And from the start, they promised to give audiences a good time with what was then a novel
1:15.2	business model.
1:16.6	You pay for content, you get no ads, and you get live boxing matches.
	...

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