49 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.

What was HBO's very first broadcast?

An NHL game between the Rangers and Canucks opened HBO's first night because its Manhattan cable parent already held rights to Madison Square Garden events; a Paul Newman film followed.

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

365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, saw the first night; HBO had meant to start in Allentown, but that city sat inside the Philadelphia 76ers' TV blackout zone.

HBO founder Charles Dolan sketched his pay-TV idea in 1971 during a family holiday aboard which ocean liner?

Queen Elizabeth 2 was carrying Dolan's family to France when he drafted a pay channel of uncut films and live sport to rescue his loss-making Manhattan cable company; he later founded Cablevision.

Which actor won three Emmys playing New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano?

James Gandolfini was invited to audition after a casting director saw a short clip of his performance in the 1993 film True Romance, and he played Tony for all six seasons.

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

The Thrilla in Manila came live from the Philippines by satellite, the step that turned HBO from a regional service fed by microwave towers into a network any American cable system could carry.

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

Cinemax was launched as a direct competitor to The Movie Channel, giving HBO's owner a second, all-film service to sell alongside the original.

Which company owned HBO in 2024?

Warner Bros. Discovery owned HBO in 2024: it was created in April 2022 when AT&T spun off its WarnerMedia arm, bought only four years earlier, to merge with Discovery.

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

Sunday night was The Sopranos' home for its whole run, down to the June 2007 finale, whose abrupt cut to black made many viewers think their cable had gone out.

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

George Carlin made 14 HBO specials; the first, in 1977, opened with a warning about its language, and the last aired live less than four months before he died in 2008.

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

Michael Jackson's Bucharest show from the Dangerous tour drew a 21.4 rating on HBO in October 1992, a record for the channel, after he sold the film rights for a reported $20 million.

Which sports show, launched in 1977, ran 31 seasons on HBO before moving to Showtime?

Inside the NFL was dropped in 2008 because, HBO said, the field of football shows had grown too crowded; host Bob Costas called the decision 'boneheaded'.

George Foreman's 1973 knockout of which unbeaten champion was the first fight HBO ever televised?

Joe Frazier went down six times in two rounds in Kingston, Jamaica; HBO stayed ringside for 45 years before dropping the sport in 2018, an executive saying it was not a sports network.

Which long-running PBS children's show sold its first-run rights to HBO in 2015?

Sesame Street's makers used HBO's money to raise output from 18 to 35 episodes a season, while PBS viewers got each new episode nine months later, still free.

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

Fraggle Rock was designed from the start for a world audience: the puppet scenes were shared, while several countries filmed their own human segments, so Britain's version was set in a lighthouse.

Which HBO comedy stars Danny McBride as the eldest son of a family headed by John Goodman?

The Righteous Gemstones, created by McBride, follows a dynasty of televangelists; it opens with his character Jesse being blackmailed over a scandalous video while the megachurch empire rolls on.

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

Oz is the nickname of the fictional Oswald prison, and most of the story unfolds in Emerald City, an experimental unit run as a prison within a prison.

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.

Marta Kauffman and David Crane created HBO's Dream On before launching which NBC sitcom in 1994?

Friends arrived four years after Dream On, the 1990 HBO comedy that cut clips from old black-and-white TV shows into scenes to voice its hero's thoughts.

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 book by which writer?

Candace Bushnell based her New York Observer column on her own dating life and those of the women around her, and wrote Carrie Bradshaw into it as a semi-autobiographical stand-in.

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

A funeral home, Fisher & Sons in Los Angeles, is the family business, and the pilot begins with the father's own death, which pulls prodigal son Nate back into it.

Ian McShane played foul-mouthed saloon owner Al Swearengen in 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 is its subject: the series draws on the memoirs of Marines Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie, and follows John Basilone, who left a hero's war-bond tour to return to combat and died on Iwo Jima.

Which HBO comedy grew out of a one-hour 1999 mockumentary special that its star and the network saw as a one-off?

Curb Your Enthusiasm began with the special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm; the series kept its loose feel, with David writing only an outline and the cast improvising the dialogue.

Which film director made the pilot episode of HBO's Boardwalk Empire?

Martin Scorsese directed the 2010 pilot, his first television episode since 1986, and stayed on as executive producer; lead character Nucky Thompson was based on real Atlantic City boss Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson.

Game of Thrones ended after 73 episodes in 2019 with which character chosen as king?

Bran Stark was elected by a council of lords and ladies at Tyrion's urging, ending inherited rule, while his sister Sansa took the North out of the kingdom.

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

Fire & Blood is written as a history by a fictional archmaester weighing accounts that contradict one another, so the series has to decide which version of the Targaryen civil war actually happened.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus won six consecutive Emmys as Selina Meyer in which HBO comedy?

Veep is slang for a vice president, the job Selina Meyer holds and chafes at before the series makes her president.

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

Richard Hendricks wrote Pied Piper's compression algorithm in his spare time at tech giant Hooli, then turned down a $10 million buyout from its boss to build the company himself.

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

Entourage grew from Wahlberg's own circle: superagent Ari Gold was modelled on his real agent, Ari Emanuel, and Turtle on a member of his old crew who ran errands for him.

Who created and starred in Girls?

Lena Dunham drew the premise of Girls, and much of her character Hannah Horvath, from her own life, having first mined it for her 2010 indie film Tiny Furniture.

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

Louisiana replaced Arkansas, where the story was first planned, because of the state's film tax incentives; the move took creator Nic Pizzolatto back to the region where he grew up.

In The Leftovers, what name is given to the event in which 2% of the world's population vanished?

The Sudden Departure took 140 million people in an instant; the story, from Tom Perrotta's novel, opens three years later with a small-town police chief whose wife has joined a cult.

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 won the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series; its writer, Craig Mazin, had been known for comedies such as the Hangover sequels, and went on to co-create The Last of Us.

Which English screenwriter created Succession?

Jesse Armstrong first wrote the idea as a feature film about the Murdoch family; when that was never made, he rebuilt it as a series about the fictional Roys.

Which actor plays Logan Roy in Succession?

Brian Cox's Logan Roy opens the series by upending his own 80th birthday: his son Kendall expects to be named heir, and the old man has a very different announcement.

Where was the first season of The White Lotus set?

Hawaii was a pandemic choice: HBO asked Mike White for a show that could be shot in a bubble, so cast and crew took over a closed Four Seasons resort on Maui in late 2020.

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

Naughty Dog's creative director Neil Druckmann first scripted a film version, which stalled in development for years; he then 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; she drilled the local Philadelphia-area accent with a dialect coach and said it was hard enough to make her throw things.

Big Little Lies is set in which California town?

Monterey replaced the Sydney beach suburb of Liane Moriarty's novel when the story was moved to California; Meryl Streep joined the cast for season two.

A wisecracking puppet corpse hosted which HBO horror anthology from 1989 to 1996?

Tales from the Crypt drew on 1950s EC horror comics that were cancelled after a restrictive Comics Code came in; its host, the Cryptkeeper, was a puppet voiced by John Kassir.

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

Last Week Tonight went to John Oliver after he spent eight weeks of 2013 guest-hosting The Daily Show; each episode builds to one long main story on a single issue.

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

The Batman (2022) cast Farrell as the Penguin, and the series begins one week after the film's flooding of Gotham, with crime boss Carmine Falcone dead and the underworld up for grabs.

Zendaya won two Emmys playing teenager Rue Bennett in which HBO drama?

Euphoria opens with Zendaya's Rue coming home from rehab at seventeen with no plan to stay clean; the series is adapted from an Israeli drama of the same name.