Between the late 1990s and the mid-2010s, HBO drama held a unique cultural status that no other network could equal. The Sopranos. The Wire. Deadwood. Six feet under. These weren’t just popular TV programs; they were debates about the potential of the medium. In the same manner that some book publishers or record labels used to use the term “HBO Original” as a quality indication. Before you ever saw a single frame, it made a clear statement.
For a number of years now, it has been more difficult to read that signal. Something that had taken decades to develop was muddy by the rebranding to Max, which combined HBO’s meticulously developed identity into a larger streaming platform that features reality programming, library sitcoms, and content carried over from several mergers. Without a clear organizational concept to guide them, viewers in 2024 had to navigate between reality dating competitions and The White Lotus while scrolling through the Max interface. The HBO brand did not vanish, but once the pattern was set, it became diluted in ways that were hard to recover from.
Things became worse as a result of the content purges. After the Discovery merger, Warner Bros. Discovery faced substantial debt obligations. As a result, it deleted some programs from the platform, eliminating residual payments and lowering catalog overhead rather than canceling them in the conventional sense. Shows that had been produced, promoted, and released just disappeared. The removals felt like a betrayal of something inherent to an audience that had developed a bond with HBO in part on the hope that its archive would continue and grow. The archive was no longer a given.
Slow-burn prestige drama’s economics have also changed in ways that the industry has found difficult to explain. The Sopranos was pricey for its time, but it didn’t need to be a mass-market success in its debut week to justify its existence; instead, it grew its audience gradually and earned its cultural status over several seasons. That business model relies on a subscriber base that endures long enough to watch a show grow and on a cost structure that doesn’t require immediate profits.
In the current streaming context, neither of those prerequisites is present. In order for the algorithm to support renewal, shows must now make a quick announcement, create conversation throughout the first weekend, and maintain engagement metrics. That cadence is not well suited to ethically dubious, dense drama that rewards patient.
Even though the comparison isn’t totally direct, the Bear provided a helpful data point on where attention is going. High-production-value, truly artistic television can function in a condensed episodic format, as FX’s show showed. This includes thirty-minute episodes, season arcs that conclude somewhat satisfactorily, and pacing that takes into account the fact that viewers are increasingly watching on phones and second screens while engaging in other activities.
A twelve-episode drama requires a persistent investment, yet a six-hour season of The Bear offers a cohesive, challenging creative experience. It’s unclear if HBO could use that model for its own aspirations for prestige, but the audience’s reaction indicates that it’s a path worth considering.
Watching all of this unfold gives me the impression that HBO’s ability to produce quality programming did not fail; rather, it continued to do so. The unique cultural ecosystem that made it possible for a certain type of television to be produced, maintained, and valued over time failed. The Sopranos required a viewership that returned every week, discussed it at work, and eagerly anticipated the new season. That audience still exists, but it is dispersed over a dozen platforms, conditioned by algorithms to prioritize variety over depth, and more difficult to retain for the years required for a sophisticated drama to reach its full potential. That’s not only an issue with HBO. However, HBO stood to lose the most.
