50 Fun Facts About HBO

What do the letters HBO stand for?

HBO stands for Home Box Office, a name chosen to suggest a box-office ticket to first-run movies and live events you could watch at home.

In what year did HBO launch?

HBO launched in 1972, going live on the evening of November 8 to a single small cable system in northeastern Pennsylvania.

What was HBO's very first broadcast?

An NHL game between the Rangers and Canucks, played at Madison Square Garden, opened HBO's first night; the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion followed straight after.

Roughly how many subscribers received HBO's first-night broadcast?

Roughly 365 subscribers, all on one Service Electric cable system in northeastern Pennsylvania, received HBO's first night of programming.

Which cable executive came up with the idea for HBO while on a family vacation aboard the QE2?

Charles Dolan, whose Sterling Manhattan Cable was losing money, sketched the pay-TV idea on a 1971 ocean voyage and persuaded Time Inc. to keep backing him.

What was the codename for the HBO proposal before it got its name?

The Green Channel was the working name of the pay-TV proposal; Time Inc. approved development money in 1971, and the service was renamed before launch.

Which 1975 boxing match was the first HBO program broadcast via satellite?

The Thrilla in Manila, Ali vs. Frazier on September 30, 1975 (US date), was HBO's first satellite-delivered program and the start of its continuous satellite feed to cable systems.

Which sister channel did HBO launch in 1980 as a movie-focused companion service?

Cinemax launched on August 1, 1980 as HBO's movie-heavy sister service, owned by the same parent and drawing on the same studio film deals.

Which company owned HBO in 2024?

Warner Bros. Discovery owned HBO throughout 2024, having formed in April 2022 when WarnerMedia merged with Discovery, Inc.

On which night of the week did HBO air new episodes of The Sopranos?

Sunday night became HBO's signature slot once The Sopranos settled there in 1999; broadcast networks had long treated the night as secondary.

Which comedian headlined 14 HBO stand-up specials between 1977 and 2008?

George Carlin taped 14 HBO specials, from On Location: George Carlin at USC in 1977 to It's Bad for Ya in 2008, the last airing months before his death.

Whose 1992 Bucharest concert set the record for HBO's highest-rated special?

Michael Jackson's Dangerous Tour stop in Bucharest aired on HBO in October 1992 and drew a 21.4 rating, the highest for any special in the channel's history to that point.

Which sports show, launched in 1977, became HBO's longest-running program at 31 seasons?

Inside the NFL debuted on HBO in 1977 and ran 31 seasons there before Showtime picked it up in 2008.

In what year did HBO end its boxing telecasts after 45 years?

HBO aired its final boxing card in December 2018, 45 years after its first bout, with executives saying the channel was no longer a sports network.

Which children's show did HBO acquire first-run rights to in 2015, taking it from PBS?

Sesame Street moved its first-run window to HBO under a 2015 deal, with PBS airing episodes months later; Netflix took over the first-run rights in 2025.

Which Jim Henson puppet series was co-produced by HBO in the 1980s?

Fraggle Rock ran on HBO from 1983 to 1987 and was built from the start as an international co-production with Britain's TVS and Canada's CBC.

Which HBO comedy stars Danny McBride as a member of a televangelist family?

The Righteous Gemstones, which premiered on HBO in 2019, stars Danny McBride as Jesse Gemstone, eldest son of a televangelist dynasty headed by John Goodman's Eli Gemstone.

Which 1997 prison drama was HBO's first one-hour dramatic series?

Oz, created by Tom Fontana, premiered in July 1997 as HBO's first hour-long drama series and ran six seasons inside the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility.

Garry Shandling's 1990s HBO sitcom was set behind the scenes of what?

A late-night talk show is the setting of The Larry Sanders Show, where celebrities played exaggerated versions of themselves as Larry's guests across six seasons from 1992 to 1998.

Which sitcom by the future Friends creators punctuated scenes with old black-and-white TV clips?

Dream On was created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane for HBO in 1990, four years before Friends, and ran until 1996 using Universal's library of old TV clips.

Who created The Sopranos?

David Chase created The Sopranos, drawing on his own New Jersey upbringing; HBO ordered the pilot in 1997 and the series ran 86 episodes from 1999 to 2007.

The Wire set each of its five seasons around a different institution in which city?

Baltimore was David Simon's home turf as a Sun reporter; the five seasons took on the drug trade, the port, city hall, the schools and the newspaper in turn.

Sex and the City was based on a newspaper column and 1996 book by whom?

Candace Bushnell wrote the 'Sex and the City' column for The New York Observer; her 1996 collection of the pieces was adapted by Darren Star into the series, which ran from 1998 to 2004.

Six Feet Under followed a family that ran what kind of business?

A funeral home, Fisher & Sons in Los Angeles, was the family business; Alan Ball created the show right after winning an Oscar for writing American Beauty.

Ian McShane's foul-mouthed saloon owner Al Swearengen was the standout of which HBO Western?

Deadwood ran three seasons from 2004 to 2006; Al Swearengen and Seth Bullock were both real residents of the 1870s Dakota Territory gold camp.

Band of Brothers followed which World War II unit?

Easy Company of the 101st Airborne (506th Parachute Infantry Regiment) was the subject of Stephen Ambrose's book; Spielberg and Hanks produced the 2001 miniseries, reusing crew from Saving Private Ryan.

The Pacific, Band of Brothers' 2010 companion, centred on which branch of the US military?

The Marine Corps was its focus: the 2010 miniseries followed Marines Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.

Curb Your Enthusiasm began as what?

A one-hour mockumentary special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, aired on HBO in October 1999; David and the network saw it as a one-off before ordering a series in 2000.

Which director made the $18 million pilot of Boardwalk Empire?

Martin Scorsese directed the 2010 pilot and stayed on as executive producer; Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson was based on real Atlantic City boss Enoch L. Johnson.

How many episodes of Game of Thrones aired in total?

73 episodes aired across eight seasons, from April 2011 to May 2019; the first six seasons had ten episodes each, then seven and six.

House of the Dragon is based on which George R. R. Martin book?

Fire & Blood, Martin's history of the Targaryen dynasty, supplied the Dance of the Dragons storyline; the show opens 172 years before Daenerys's birth.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus played fictional Vice President Selina Meyer in which HBO comedy?

Veep was created by Armando Iannucci and ran seven seasons from 2012 to 2019; Louis-Dreyfus won six consecutive Emmys for playing Selina Meyer.

Silicon Valley's startup Pied Piper was founded by which character?

Richard Hendricks, played by Thomas Middleditch, wrote the compression algorithm behind Pied Piper and founded the startup in the 2014 pilot; the show ran six seasons.

Which HBO series was loosely based on Mark Wahlberg's early Hollywood experiences?

Entourage drew on Wahlberg's early years in Hollywood with his friends from Boston; he executive-produced all eight seasons, from 2004 to 2011.

Who created and starred in Girls?

Lena Dunham created Girls and played Hannah Horvath; Judd Apatow executive-produced, and it ran six seasons on HBO from 2012 to 2017.

The first season of True Detective, starring McConaughey and Harrelson, was set in which state?

Louisiana, in the bayou country outside Lafayette, was the setting for Rust Cohle and Marty Hart's 17-year hunt for a ritual killer; each later season reset with a new cast and place.

The Leftovers begins three years after what percentage of the world's population vanished?

2% of the world's population, about 140 million people, vanished in the Sudden Departure; Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta adapted Perrotta's 2011 novel, opening three years later.

Damon Lindelof's Watchmen series was set mainly in which US city?

Tulsa, Oklahoma is the setting, 34 years after the comic's 1985 events; the series opens with the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and follows masked police detective Angela Abar.

Bill Hader's character in Barry is a hitman who joins what?

An acting class run by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) pulls Barry Berkman in when a hit takes him to Los Angeles; Hader co-created the show with Alec Berg, and it ran four seasons.

Which HBO miniseries won the Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series in 2019?

Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin, won the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series for its account of the 1986 reactor explosion; Mazin went on to co-create The Last of Us.

Which English screenwriter created Succession?

Jesse Armstrong, previously a writer on Peep Show and The Thick of It, created Succession; the Roys' company Waystar RoyCo drove four seasons of infighting.

Which actor plays Logan Roy in Succession?

Brian Cox played patriarch Logan Roy; Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Alan Ruck played his four children.

Where was the first season of The White Lotus set?

Hawaii, at a Maui resort, was the setting of the 2021 first season; later seasons moved to Sicily and then Thailand.

The Last of Us on HBO is based on video games by which studio?

Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned studio behind Uncharted, released The Last of Us in 2013; its writer-director Neil Druckmann co-created the HBO series with Craig Mazin.

Kate Winslet won an Emmy for playing a detective in which HBO miniseries set outside Philadelphia?

Mare of Easttown cast Winslet as detective Mare Sheehan in a Delaware County township; the cast's Delco accents got almost as much press as the plot, and she won the 2021 Emmy.

Big Little Lies is set in which California town?

Monterey, on California's central coast, was the setting, with Liane Moriarty's novel moved from Australia; Meryl Streep joined Kidman, Witherspoon, Woodley, Dern and Kravitz for season two.

The Cryptkeeper hosted which HBO horror anthology from 1989 to 1996?

Tales from the Crypt adapted the 1950s EC Comics; John Kassir voiced the wisecracking Cryptkeeper, and Robert Zemeckis was among the producers.

Which HBO satire show, hosted by a British comedian, premiered in April 2014?

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver premiered on HBO on April 27, 2014; its signature main segment devotes most of each episode to a single deep-dive topic.

Colin Farrell's HBO miniseries The Penguin is a spin-off of which film?

The Batman (2022) introduced Farrell's Oswald Cobb under heavy prosthetics; The Penguin picks up in the days after that film's flooding of Gotham.

Subscribers in which Pennsylvania city were the first able to watch HBO on its launch night?

Wilkes-Barre's Service Electric cable system carried HBO's first night, on the evening of November 8, to a few hundred subscribers in the Wyoming Valley.