HBO's revolution in the art of television happened on HBO. It'll be interesting now to see almost the reverse process as a service like Netflix that has also operated in this ad-free, commercial-free environment for 25 years. Suddenly they're going to have advertisements. Well, they're also going to have sponsors looking over their shoulders and what that'll do. The best time of TV is HBO.
Remember when everyone loved to complain how there were 150 channels on TV and nothing good to watch? It’s pretty hard to say that now. There are so many good shows being made.
Our new complaint: how hard it is to watch all those great shows, especially when they’re spread across so many streaming services—and most of them you have to pay for.
How did we get here? Bloomberg media reporter Felix Gillette has answers. He’s the co-author of the book It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO.
Felix joins this episode to break down why TV has never been better–and yet has never been more frustrating to watch. Bloomberg’s entertainment reporter Lucas Shaw also stops in to explain how this shift has changed the way Hollywood decides which shows get made--and which ones don't.
This episode originally aired in October of 2022.
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