within HBO’s Grand Storytelling scan

“The question was once: Do they have a collection in them?” HBO’s head of programming, Michael Lombardo, is sitting in his ethereal, window-lined Santa Monica office, which has a mod, Mad men-esque really feel (ironic, provided that HBO famously handed on that express), as does Lombardo, who wears thick-framed black glasses and is stylishly dressed in a blue-and-white-checked, button-down shirt and unbuttoned blazer.

Lombardo is talking about the way in which HBO has historically viewed the writers and creators who pitch their tv presentations daily to the corporate, longing for a coveted time slot on a top class cable network that has been defining watercooler conversation—and the tradition at huge—for two decades with iconic series like The Wire and The Sopranos. it’s a privilege that’s not taken lightly in Hollywood. just ask John Oliver, whom HBO scooped up after the British comedian sat in for Jon Stewart on The daily express in 2013. ultimate yr, HBO gave Oliver his personal Sunday-night information convey, ultimate Week Tonight With John Oliver. via giving Oliver what has long been considered one of the best time on tv—Sunday night time—the network was placing an important, excessive-possibility guess on the comic.

“It looks like an honor,” says Oliver. “the one problem is, right here we’re on this actual estate on Sunday evening. you do not want to be that vacant lot in ny that any person’s built a shitty tent on prime of, that looks like a waste of Fifth Avenue. So the only drive is—you do not need to be that spectacular failure.”

Oliver can have made it on HBO with a standard 30-minute sequence, but Lombardo says that new structures are inflicting him, increasingly more, to use different barometers when figuring out whether or not or no longer he wants to take a chance on a creative. as an alternative of whether they “have a series in them,” he is now asking himself: “What do they have?”

“it can be two, 15-minute pieces,” Lombardo says. “and they is also two good 15-minute items. Why is that not one thing we will have to lean into?”

The media landscape is all of a sudden changing. the appearance of the DVR and the upward thrust of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have enabled a era of binge viewers who can watch what they need, when they need, the place they want. Viewing habits have never been extra in flux. unless now, HBO has been totally on the sidelines of this revolution. but up to now year, the company has begun taking aggressive steps to no longer just join this revolution, however lead it. Most notably, this week it launched HBO Now, a standalone streaming provider so one can allow fans to subscribe to the network for $14.ninety nine a month. not like HBO Go, HBO’s present streaming providing (which remains to be available), HBO Now does not require a cable subscription. this significant alternate in procedure has been met with applause from younger “wire nevers” whose concept of gazing tv would not necessarily contain a television set—all it takes is hooking up to the web and clicking on Netflix or Amazon.

With HBO Now, HBO can test with new forms of programming outdoor of its existing 30- and 60-minute structure, as there is not any day-to-day agenda that content material has to suit into. displays—or movies, or any type of content material—will simply be arrayed for viewers to click on on; there is not any lineup. HBO Now additionally affords HBO a much less risky platform the place not each exhibit requires a sequence dedication. If something’s not working, the network can just take it down.

Lombardo calls HBO’s new digital center of attention “one of the extra seismic modifications we have now passed through, and i’ve been here 30 years. it can be a transition moment for us. i think we’re an organization that has been very a hit with no need to be as strategic as other companies have needed to be. because cable used to be growing, we had the satellite tv for pc industry, our model was rising. And we simply leaned into what we were doing neatly.

Now, Lombardo says, “i think we’re using new muscular tissues. it’s thrilling and people are energized with the aid of that.”

He says that HBO Now has spread out a “new frontier” for creatives, who are talking to HBO about producing content material in all shapes and sizes for the carrier. “We’re now not worrying about filling an hour or half hour of time. We wish to inform stories in quite a few lengths. i believe as artists have heard about HBO Now, we’ve began some in reality attention-grabbing conversations.” One A-record director has already pitched HBO Now a series of three-minute films—the idea is that folks can watch a brand new one day by day on their telephones or capsules over the direction of several months. HBO CEO Richard Plepler informed him: “We’re in.”

HBO additionally has a new take care of Vice, the gonzo news group that airs a weekly newsmagazine collection on HBO. This yr, Vice will start airing a day by day half-hour newscast on HBO, and the newsmagazine convey will raise from 14 episodes a 12 months to 35. however the community sees attainable for the partnership beyond 30-minute slots. As Plepler recollects telling Shane Smith, the CEO of Vice: “‘you wish to have a information channel, friend? Put it on HBO Now. you want to do 5 specials? Put it on HBO Now. You end an ISIS doc? We don’t have to schedule it. simply put it on.”

HBO is also leaning into new ways of discovering ingenious skill—as an instance, Issa Rae, who first gained popularity for her YouTube collection The Misadventures of Awkward Black lady, is making a pilot for the community.

but it’s not simply layout or artist discovery that’s being rethought at HBO. the corporate’s whole programming technique is under new scrutiny—particularly the belief that piling up the entire absolute best authentic sequence on Sunday night time is the easiest way to attract the most important selection of eyeballs. even supposing die-laborious game of Thrones fans nonetheless dutifully sit down in entrance of their displays at 9 p.m. on Sundays to catch each second of sword-clashing motion the second it airs, viewers of less cultish displays are often chuffed to trap up hours, days, and even weeks later via DVR or HBO Go. Lombardo says this shift has devalued optimum viewership numbers to some extent, so that the attitude within the company around high presentations is not: “Oh my God, now we have to place it on Sunday night time!”

people are also discovering HBO presentations on non-HBO systems, one thing that HBO is each embracing and enabling with Oliver’s remaining Week Tonight. In a move that might have as soon as been impossible at the network, which has historically saved its content on HBO so as to now not dilute its pedigreed model, full-size episodes of ultimate Week Tonight are put up on YouTube an hour after the exhibit airs on Sundays. actuality be informed, a part of the reason HBO posts final Week Tonight to YouTube is to make up for the fact that the convey isn’t available on HBO Go except Monday morning because of how lengthy it takes to upload it to the carrier. There merely is not enough time between when final Week motion pictures and wraps to have it ready on Go when the express airs. Oliver says that is “an extraordinarily technical difficulty” that HBO is working on. “We’re reducing (the time gap), however…i’m not positive we are going to ever have the ability to get it right down to 11 o’clock.”

Necessity apart, the YouTube technique is an indication that HBO is willing to test with new modes of distribution as of manner of reaching new (read: younger) fanatics. And new structures additionally assist lengthen HBO’s world reach.

“[HBO] permitting us to place clips up on YouTube is a really big factor for us,” Oliver says. “because it signifies that we will attain folks that HBO can not reach, not just in this country however all over the world. we’ve individuals watching clips in Saudi Arabia or Yemen. You wouldn’t consider the reach that we have to locations where these things is not on hand. We did this thing on FIFA that simply blew up in every single place Latin the usa.”

Lombardo says it is all part of being “at some degree the place we all know we’ve got to take a look at stuff. establishment for the sake of establishment is now not an acceptable situation.”

Lombardo attributes so much of this alteration in thinking to Plepler, who spearheaded the choice to launch HBO Now this 12 months. Plepler’s leadership has been outlined by means of pushing the company in new instructions, in particular on the digital front, and opening up discussions between HBO divisions that did not previously keep up a correspondence.

“Are we the place we want to be? No. but i believe the company is in a very completely different position than it was two years in the past. And i feel beneath Richard’s management we now have sort of”—he pretends to move a huge block with his hands—”moved this firm slowly however for sure into one who’s develop into extra nimble and extra strategic than we’ve got ever been.”

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