New True Detective teaser

HBO to offer standalone service in 2015

HBO made it official on Wednesday: It will launch an online streaming service in the U.S. in 2015 that presumably in some ways will compete with similar offerings from Netflix and Amazon.com.

"In 2015 we will go beyond the wall and launch a standalone over-the-top service with the potential to produce hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenue. And the international possibilities could be just as large, if not larger," HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler said during a presentation at Time Warner's investor day.

"That is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped," Plepler said. "It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO."

Last month, at an investor conference, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes hinted that HBO was considering such a service.

Plepler didn't give too many details about the service, such as on pricing and when it would launch or other details, saying he didn't want to tip off competitors too much. Shortly after Plepler's announcement, shares of Netflix dropped 4 percent, while shares of Time Warner have been about 3 percent higher as investors digested the HBO news as well as some other rosy predictions coming from the Time Warner investor day presentations.

Bewkes, for example, predicted per-share earnings would more than double by 2018. As of 11:30 a.m. ET, Netflix's stock was down 3.1 percent at $435.13. The company reports its third-quarter earnings later on Wednesday.

"So, in 2015, we will launch a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service in the United States," Plepler told the investor day Wednesday before addressing pay TV partners. "We will work with our current partners. And, we will explore models with new partners. All in, there are 80 million homes that do not have HBO and we will use all means at our disposal to go after them."

During a Q&A session later in the day, Plepler said: "First, we're going to look at the 10 million broadband-only homes with our partners," calling them the "low-hanging fruit."

He added: “This is the most exciting inflection point domestically and internationally in the history of HBO.” So far, the HBO Go service is not available without a pay TV subscription in the U.S. An online-only HBO Go service has done well after some initial challenges in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, Plepler said.

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Game of Thrones honest trailer

All three seasons of Game of Thrones in 9 minutes

The new season starts April 6th!

Game of Thrones season 4 trailer

Game of Thrones: Season 4 trailer

SNL spoof of the HBO show "Girls"

Dear HBO...

True Blood's season 7 will be its last

"True Blood" is ending. HBO announced the vampire drama will sign off in 2014 with Season 7 being the show's last.

“'True Blood' has been nothing short of a defining show for HBO," Michael Lombardo, president of programming at HBO, said in a statement. "Alan Ball took the books by Charlaine Harris, assembled a brilliant cast led by the magnificent Anna Paquin in the role of Sookie Stackhouse, and crafted a show that has taken its many devoted fans on an Unforgettable journey. Alan passed the baton to Brian Buckner, who led our fantastic writers and crew in crafting a spectacular sixth season, and he will lead us through the seventh and final season of this amazing show. Together with its legions of fans, it will be hard to say goodbye to the residents of Bon Temps, but I look forward to what promises to be a fantastic final chapter of this incredible show."

The series based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels has been a ratings hit for HBO. Over the years, the ensemble cast of "True Blood" anchored by Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard has grown to include Anna Camp, Joe Manganiello and more. Alan Ball created the series before handing over the reins to Brian Buckner.

“From the moment I read Charlaine’s books, I thought there was potential for something really special," Ball said in a statement. "Then our amazing writers, cast and crew brought her world to life in a way that exceeded my wildest expectations. I’m deeply grateful to HBO for being true partners and collaborators, and, of course, to the viewers who chose to spend Sunday nights in Bon Temps with us."

"I feel enormously proud to have been a part of the 'True Blood' family since the very beginning," Buckner said in a statement. "I guarantee that there’s not a more talented or harder-working cast and crew out there, and I’d like to extend a personal heartfelt thanks to them for their dedication and tenacity over the years, especially this past year, as I stepped into a larger role. Thank you also to HBO for their unwavering support and of course to Alan Ball, whose genius enabled all of us to share in this incredible journey. Finally, a huge thank you to the most passionate fans in television. As we take a final walk through Bon Temps together, we will do our very best to bring Sookie’s story to a close with heart, imagination and, of course, fun."

For the show's last season, expect a more back to the basics type of story. Buckner told The Hollywood Reporter that relationships between vampires and humans will take center stage once again.

"It was my absolute goal and objective was to narrow the number of separate stories we're telling," Buckner told THR. "That's why we're doing for every human, a vampire, for every vampire a human, because now we get to focus on the characters and the relationships. The original promise of the show was, if vampires exist, what do the relationships between humans and vampires look like? And that was Sookie and Bill. And now we have this whole town of characters we're invested in, and we get to look at how the pairings, and what those pairing will do to the relationships people are already in. All of it is about trying to get back to the more entangled romances and soapy-ness that the first season had."

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Games of Thrones: In Memoriam

Comic-Con 2013: In Memoriam

Compilation of Game of Thrones "Red Wedding" reaction videos

Game of Thrones director finds piracy a compliment, doesn't hurt sales

Last month the director of Game of Thrones admitted something that his paymasters had HBO might have avoided. Huge online piracy doesn’t hurt the show, he said, and in fact might create benefits by generating cultural buzz. Well check the date if you like folks but the following is absolutely genuine. HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has just announced that not only is the huge piracy a compliment, but the phenomenon hasn’t hurt DVD sales at all.

With a head-spinning 4.3 million downloads per episode, Game of Thrones became the most-pirated TV show on the Internet last year.

These figures understandably caused much debate, but left show director David Petrarca quite unruffled. During a panel discussion at the University of Western Australia the 47-year-old said that shows like Game of Thrones thrive on “cultural buzz” and benefit from the social commentary they generate. Piracy, he said, helps to oil those wheels.

But Petrarca wasn’t the only show associate with the impression that piracy might have its benefits. Just a couple of weeks later and the show’s actors were weighing in, with Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte, describing it as a plus.

“I don’t think HBO will be too happy, but yes, one way or another that’s a huge compliment. Not just to me but to the show as a whole,” she said.

With Season 3 of the smash-hit series getting underway last night, HBO have also commented on the piracy situation but in a quite unexpected way. Rather than come out guns blazing they actually agree with Leslie – piracy is indeed a form of flattery.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told EW. “[Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

For HBO to publicly admit that piracy is even a partial positive comes as quite a surprise, but it becomes even more interesting when Lombardo talks about its effect on revenue streams.

Last month Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the actor who plays Jaime Lannister in the show, said that although people watch the show online, he hoped they would still go out and buy the DVD or Blu-ray. And guess what? According to HBO, they do.

“The demand is there,” Lombardo said. “And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales.”

These comments from HBO are significant and underline what many observers have suspected all along. If you have a great product you should expect piracy, but you can also count on large numbers of people to support your efforts financially too. Every viewer – paid or unpaid – is a potential ambassador for the show and therefore a valuable part of the marketing cycle.

It’s too early to say whether Episode 1 of Season 3 will break last year’s download stats but the signs are already there. Last night’s show rocketed straight to the top of The Pirate Bay’s charts for most active torrent, driving way ahead of its nearest competitor, episode 16 of season 3 of The Walking Dead.

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Please please please

HBO could widen access to its HBO GO online streaming service by teaming up with broadband Internet providers for customers who do not subscribe to a cable TV service, according to HBO's Chief Executive Richard Plepler.

"Right now we have the right model," Plepler told Reuters on Wednesday evening at the Season 3 premiere of HBO's hit TV show "Game of Thrones." "Maybe HBO GO, with our broadband partners, could evolve."

HBO launched HBO GO in 2010 to let subscribers view its shows over the Internet on devices such as Apple Inc's iPads. The service has about 6.5 million registered users, compared with about 29 million for HBO's main service.

However, HBO GO is only accessible for viewers who pay for cable TV service, plus an extra fee for HBO. This means monthly bills of $100 or more typically. HBO GO is available to subscribers of several pay TV companies that provide Internet service such as Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Verizon FiOS

Plepler said late Wednesday that HBO GO could be packaged with a monthly Internet service, in partnership with broadband providers, reducing the cost.

Customers could pay $50 a month for their broadband Internet and an extra $10 or $15 for HBO to be packaged in with that service, for a total of $60 or $65 per month, Plepler explained.

"We would have to make the math work," he added.

HBO, owned by Time Warner Inc, relies on large financial support from its cable and satellite TV partners to help distribute and promote its shows.

Internet-only rivals such as Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc are trying to disrupt this approach by delivering original programming directly over the Internet.

This is a challenge to HBO, however it would be a risky step for the company to by-pass its traditional distribution partners, which provide HBO with lucrative subscription fees.

There are billions of dollars generated from HBO's existing distribution network and to simply circumvent that would not make business sense, Plepler said in January, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"Doesn't mean we are not mindful that the problem exists," he added.

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New Game of Thrones promo

Cat sings "Game of Thrones" theme song

Will Farrell does a cameo on "Eastbound and Down" and makes everyone laugh uncontrollably

How HBO made it look like critics love "The Newsroom"

Critical reception of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series set in the TV news business, has been generally cool. On Metacritic.com, which averages out reviews from all over, its score is a distinctly mediocre 57. Even those critics who’ve embraced it have generally done so with considerable caveats.

You wouldn’t know that from ads HBO has been running to promote it, though. A two-pager that ran in last week’s edition of The Hollywood Reporter, among other places, quotes breathless-sounding praise from The New York Times, Time and Salon, among two dozen outlets. Yet all three of the reviews those blurbs were drawn from were distinctly negative.

The quote from the Times, bannered atop the full width of the spread, reads: “Wit, sophistication and manic energy…A magical way with words…a lot of charm.”

Times TV critical Alessandra Stanley did write those words. But she also wrote, “[A]t its worst, the show chokes on its own sanctimony,” said it “ suffers from the same flaw that it decries on real cable shows on MSNBC or Fox News” and called the show’s central structural conceit “probably a mistake.”

Time’s James Poniewozik, summarizing his views on “The Newsroom” for non-subscribers, flatly declared, “I was not a fan.” Yet the ad makes it sound like he was, burbling, “The pacing is electric…captures the excitement.”

Salon’s Willa Paskin is quoted in the ad calling “The Newsroom” “captivating, riveting, rousing.” Here’s what she actually wrote: “The results are a captivating, riveting, rousing, condescending, smug, infuriating mixture, a potent potion that advertises itself as intelligence-enhancing but is actually just crazy-making.”

Then there’s Paste’s Aaron Channon, who supposedly called the show “remarkable…intelligent.” Here’s a more representative sampling of his review: “Compared to the standard established during the past several years by HBO and AMC, early returns on The Newsroom are disappointing.”

A scandal this is not. Movie studios have been doing this sort of thing, and getting called out for it, for decades. And, to be fair, a number of the reviews quoted in the ad are genuine raves. [My favorite example of this is on the back of the Glitter DVD box: "This role fits Mariah Carey like one of those skintight outfits she wears." Well, that's a rave right there!]

But twisting slams to make them sound favorable is not something HBO has done much of in the past, or needed to, with most of its shows becoming instant critical darlings. The last new HBO series to fare this poorly with critics was the short-lived “John From Cincinnati,” which got a composite score of 51 on Metacritic.

Poniewozik says he doesn’t ever remember the network pulling this kind of chicanery with one of his reviews. “Ironic way to promote a journalism drama,” he says. He also fired off a string of tweets to this effect after I alerted him to the ad, and emailed HBO to complain.

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"The Wire" with legos

If "Game of Thrones" was a romantic comedy

Game of Thrones actors out of character

Aidan Gillen (Petyr Baelish, a.k.a. Littlefinger)
In character, he's devious brothel owner Littlefinger. Out of character, he passes for your favorite cultural anthropology professor.

Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister)
In character, she's Cersei Lannister, half of a twincestuous relationship, mother to bratty King Joffrey, and icy widow of the former King Robert Baratheon. Minus that medieval blonde wig, though, Headey's less evil and more badass, all while ridding herself of Cersei's constant "everybody in the world is disappointing me" expression.

Jack Gleeson (Joffrey Baratheon)
Joffrey is a murderous, impatient child king, whose responsibilities vastly outpace his capabilities — and his uncle isn't the only one who wants to slap him. Gleeson tousles his hair so his hair looks less like a wig of knives; you don't want to slap this 19-year-old, you want to take him to Six Flags. (fave, tbh)

Rory McCann (Sandor Clegane/the Hound)
The scar is fake, the long hair is fake, presumably the casual attitude about violence is fake, but that neck beard is 100 percent legit.

Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy)
Theon's a man without a home — his fellow Greyjoys reject his northern ways, but he's not really a Stark, even though he's spent so much time among them. He's such a stranger to his own family that his sister is able to seduce him. In real life, Alfie Allen's sister didn't seduce him — but she did write a song about him. His sister is Lily Allen, and "Alfie" is about him.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)
Jaime's the other half of the Tyrion twincest relationship (lol ummm...), and no matter how evil or terrible he is, he's still just a dopplegänger for Prince Charming from the Shrek franchise. Maybe he should think about adopting Coster-Waldau's real-life beard, which makes him look like a cast member of thirtysomething?

Carice van Houten (Melisandre)
Melisandre is a mysterious priestess who births a scary shadow/smoke baby that murders people. Aaaaaahhhh. Freed from her monochromatically bloody color scheme, Carice van Houten seems like a nice Dutch lady, unlikely to give birth to a monster. Although if smoke does start to waft out of the bottom of her dress, best to give up your crown just to be on the safe side.

Conleth Hill (Lord Varys)
World's snarkiest eunuch Varys has a gift for impersonation and can blend in to most scenarios. Conleth Hill looks like he could blend into a Commitments cover band.

Maisie Williams (Arya Stark)
Arya is among the series' smartest and most capable characters, able to keep her wits about her no matter what she's facing, be it gender discrimination or total exile or the power to secretly execute people. Williams seems to keep her hair at the exact same length, but with some careful styling and the removal of six pounds of dirt, she is the opposite of wretched.