HBO GO Won’t Go the Netflix Way

A few people have asked me if I’ve been keeping up with Girls, and what I think about it, or what kind of money conversations I would have with each of the characters. I had only seen the first episode, because HBO made it available on YouTube, and I don’t have cable service, nor a television. I did not like the first episode.

But you can’t always judge a show by its pilot, and I went searching on iTunes and Amazon to download episodes of the show. They weren’t available. How was everyone watching it?

They were doing what Hannah Horvath would probably do, which was watching pirated episodes, or sharing HBO GO accounts with their friends. Why was HBO making it so difficult to watch one of their programs? Were they considering offering a streaming service to non-HBO cable subscribers?

Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer at Netflix, said that HBO was going to become like Netflix, so Netflix had to come up with some great original programming to stay competitive with HBO.

Sarandos might be wrong. HBO probably doesn’t want to offer a Netflix-like streaming service, and Derek Thompson explains why at The Atlantic, which is basically: HBO isn’t going to make a lot of money offering a streaming service unless you are willing to pay a ton of money, so they’re not going to do it.

So, if I’m going to catch up on Girls, I’ll have to go to a friend’s house to watch DVR’d episodes, or borrow someone’s HBO GO account. Who’s sharing? [via]


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