When Sue Naegle first took over the helm at HBO I wrote some post about her already being on shaky ground. Mostly what got me there was reading about True Blood. It was at a time CBS' Moonlight was on the bubble (indeed, a few weeks later the bubble would burst for the CBS show). I didn't view vampires as a ratings winner and thought it was pretty silly. But not being in the proximity of any teenage girls, I was unaware of the phenomenon that was Twilight and how all of that would play out.
Months later when I wrote HBO: True Bloody Mess before season one of True Blood kicked off, I still don't think I'd ever heard of Twilight!
It turns out I was hugely wrong. The strategy around True Blood was well-crafted and definitely paying off big for HBO which coupled an extremely successful DVD launch (over 850K units and $30 million in revenue in its first three weeks of release) with the on-air launch of season two of True Blood that had viewing increases of 157% over season one. We're results oriented, and those are great results.
My hat is off to Sue Naegle. I'll take a lot of ongoing ribbing for predicting Dollhouse would be canceled. But the truth is, the predictions regarding HBO and True Blood were much, much farther off the mark. I mean sure, Dollhouse was renewed, but its numbers sucked. I thought True Blood's numbers would suck, but they did not. And though I haven't seen the demo numbers for True Blood's airing on Sunday, it was the first time in the history of this web site that an HBO show placed in the weekly cable top 20.
The last time that happened was for the week ending June 10, 2007 when the finale of The Sopranos was the week's number one show. In fact, since September 2007 when we launched this site, this is the first instance of a premium cable show making the weekly cable top forty, let alone the top 20.
I am not a fan of vampires or that nonsense, but when I learned that Alan Ball (American Beauty and Six Feet Under) created the show I thought I would at least watch the first the espisode and it was great.
My hat is off to Ms. Naegle as well. Heck, it’s become my favorite show anywhere on TV.
“And though I haven’t seen the demo numbers for True Blood’s airing on Sunday”
Do demo numbers even matter for HBO? Since they make their money of subscriptions, doesn’t that mean every viewer is as good as another, regardless of age?
Andrew, I don’t think “ratings” really matter for HBO at all, except perhaps in terms of cachet (which is necessary to fuel new subscriber growth)
The demo comparisons are probably completely unimportant other than for the stats junkies who want the capability of being able to do more in-depth comparisons (say, how does it stack up w/Dollhouse?). And if anyone at HBO needs to do that, I’m sure they have all the data they need available to them.
told ya so… lol. very nice that you admit the mistake. very rare on the internet. i wonder what the number will be for the 3.7 + on demand + rebroadcast.
and i know you are obsessed with the demo numbers (rightfully so or not) but HBO has to care less about that. they want viewers because it’s not advertising. they want people who pay for the service to watch no matter what the age. and i would think they don’t want too young because those people are less reliable to pay monthly.
like i said in my last post on the shot you gave naegle… baby steps. now they def need a companion to this. will it be hung? i heard the pilot is not great from a person who works on other hbo shows but some people are so jaded here (LA) that i never take those views seriously until i see it for myself.
It suits you to be wrong and to admit that!
Robert Seidman
“Andrew, I don’t think “ratings” really matter for HBO at all”
What are you saying Robert? Surely they need to know if their customers like it or not lest they end up only showing stuff nobody likes, and hence everybody would be leaving?
Kermonk, not mattering at all is perhaps overstated, but unlike broadcast networks which need Nielsen to tell them when “everyone is watching or leaving”, HBO’s more telling numbers are “net new subscribers” (new subscribers less people who have canceled). While I’m sure there is some correlation between viewing and subscribers, HBO doesn’t need to rely on Nielsen to find out whether customers like what they are offering.
Robert, you not being in the proximity of any teenage girls is probably not a bad thing lol.
I was eager to see the ratings of True Blood (been lurking around the site for a couple of hours) cos I knew they would be big but I had no idea how huge.
I wouldn’t let Sookie Stackhouse novel fans hear you mentioning Twilight in the same sentence if I was you my understanding is they are at war
I was also highly skeptical of True Blood, since I’m the furthest thing from a vampire fan, and I think that both Twilight and True Blood’s source material are pure unadulterated crap. But boy did Alan Ball come through on this one. From the amazing opening sequence to the excellent casting for every single bit part, it’s a quality product all the way.
True Blood is a sign that HBO is back on form, while not as high as Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, it’s still a good figures. Here’s hoping that Hung and How to Make it in America do well for them although I think The Pacific will be the minseries which put them back on the map.
But, doesn’t HBO still need to know who is watching what in order to better attribute what is driving net new subscribers? Sure, it may be easy in this case when they launch only one new Sunday night original series. But, in cases where they launch multiple original series at once, they must need to know what is really driving the subs. Like, when they had The Sopranos, Entourage, and Lucky Louie airing, why was Lucky Louie the one to get the axe?
I guess there is a certain point where prestige can afford them to suffer through nobody watching (5 years of The Wire).
Shoot, it would be more accurate if the cable operators would just ask people what motivated them to subscribe or why they are cancelling. I only keep an HBO/Showtime subscription when there is an original series I watch.
BTW, Robert, do you think The Pacific will do well? I loved Band of Brothers and I think lightning can strike again for HBO, Spielberg and Tom Hanks plus it’s guranteed to win major awards at the Emmys and Golden Globes and it’s the sort of thing that only HBO does best.
Bradon, HBO does need to know that but I suspect that they somewhat know that even without the Nielsen ratings and from HBO’s perspective there is no difference between 1.5 million and 2 million even though it is a 33% difference — if it has no impact on cancellations or new subscribers.
I am sure there are many people who cancel HBO when there are no new original series on they watch. I’d guess HBO can predict that fairly reliably at this point (e.g., how many people will cancel when Entourage goes into repeats, and come back when the new episodes come back).
Jon, I don’t have any opinion on how Pacific will perform.
I don’t understand how Stephanie Meyer wasn’t sued for her blatant ripoff of a series that came out 4 years prior.
It’s good to see such success coming to the “Dead Until Dark” series via True Blood… and such laughable results coming from the Twilight movie franchise.
I didn’t particularly LOVE True Blood during the first season. I could sum it up with the word “meh”. It seems below HBO’s usual quality, but it’s an alright show and shows me enough boobies each week to keep me entertained. My girlfriend’s love of it gives me even more cause to watch it…
OMG… I LOVE YOU JON. I hadn’t heard of “The Pacific”, and I am obsessed with Band of Brothers! Own it on Blu-Ray and have seen it more than any other series I’ve watched.
I used to play Battlefield: 1942 as “Cpt.Winters” and then Battlefield: Vietnam as “Cpt.Spiers”
I know that in SF on Comcast, we had a HBO free preview weekend, as did many other major metropolitan cable co’s. I wonder how that impacted the numbers and gave them an artificial boost in an admittedly almost meaningless number. Some ratings “engineering”? It is the only reason I watched nr Live rather than via BT.
Not saying that it isn’t a great show, but not worth the extra $s per month from Comcast. They try to string their good shows across the year so there is 1 decent scripted thing per week to watch (FotC, E&D) but it isn’t worth it for 30 minutes of TV per week. I like their sports shows but I can take them or leave them.
Capnbob, my guess is that the freeview was national. And especially given the success of the DVD sales though, I’d say timing it w/the S2 premiere was good. I’m sure it made some difference, but unfortunately we’ll never know exactly how much.
But if the second episode does similarly next week (and going down from season premieres is typically the rule, not the exception) we can probably reasonably conclude that it didn’t make much difference. But if the second episode goes down, we will not be able to form much of a basis for attributing it to the freeview weekend this past weekend.
I hope Wonderful Maladys gets huge ratings (well, after being picked up), though mostly because I love Buffy. Huh, True Blood actually got higher ratings than half of the Dollhouse eps.
Moonlight did technically get like double the viewers True Blood is getting, though of course CBS and HBO have different standards.