Game of Thrones' Director Claims Illegal Downloads Don't Matter

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First, that's a declining subscriber base for HBO.

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Yes, but they are able to charge more to equalize things. That is due to the quality of their programming. Moral of the story, make good shows and people will pay to see them.

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Moral of the story, listen to your customers and people will pay to see them.

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FIFY.

Quality programming is only one piece of the puzzle. Conventional Cable TV in its current model is antiquated and will eventually fail because of digital media. The record companies finally figured this out. Its not been that long ago that the war on Napster happened, and despite the record companies perceived "victory", consumers got what they wanted: choices. We no longer have to pay $15-20 to legally buy an album we only want one song for. We can stream music wirelessly. Record companies are catering and embracing the digital download.

The traditional idiots in the movie industry are trying to use the victories won by the recording industry to "have their cake and eat it too." They dont have to combat mainstream pirating like Napster and Limewire, and they are resisting the shift to digital media as wholly as possible. Look at the Netflix fiasco. They saw a system immensely popular with consumers that threatened the traditional model, so they tried to rape Netflix with price increases. What they didn't count on was the overwhelming response from consumers. Netflix, stupidly, had no idea how strong they were and should have taken the studios actions to the world of social media and fought.

HBO is actually ahead of the game pushing HBO Go. The format is great, its very reliable, and all of their original content is available. I wouldn't be surprised if HBO is the first premium subscriber to break the cord and start offering online/streaming subscriptions. All it takes is for these distributors to give the consumers what they want and realize the power they really have.

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I don't know why premium cable companies haven't done this yet. It is easy money for them.

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If they did, they could not offer the same subscription rates because the cable providers subsidize some of the studio costs. HBO would either have to raise rates, or bank on getting a shite ton more subscribers. You also have to imagine that the cable companies would lobby the studios hard to give them the Netflix treatment. HBO would have to be ready for a fight.

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If they did, they could not offer the same subscription rates because the cable providers subsidize some of the studio costs.

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This doesn't seem accurate to me, but I know absolutely nothing about how cable television operates. It seems that the only funding cable companies would give HBO is in the form of subscriber fees. I could be very wrong, however.

I would think a rate of 10-15$ a month would provide them with pretty good revenue. But I'm not businessman.

The older crowd will continue their cable subscriptions and premium subscriptions.

The younger crowd who are currently just pirating offerings from premium channels would be the ones to subscribe directly from premium services for the convenience of having these services available on their numerous devices anywhere and in the proper high quality format.

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Why couldn't they just continue to do both though?

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Because their cable partners view independent streaming as a death threat and would start playing hard ball and threaten to cut them off, raise rates, etc. HBO can either maintain the status quo which is very good for them and wait for a time when new middlemen that are more aligned with consumer demand appear (the aforementioned Roku/Apple/MS/etc.) or they can rock the boat and possibly go out of business just so they can be free of the cable companies. They may not be free now but they are well paid and able to do mostly what they want to do.

I think if any network could cut ties with cable it would be hbo. You already have millions of people actively paying $10-15 a month for hbo. I would be willing to bet most hbo watchers are fairly young people who would actually watch online if given the chance.

Time warner owns hbo I believe, they'd be cannibalizing their own revenue at minimum and losing subscribers who are partly inclined to subscribe for hbo at worst.