page_title: HBO
section_title: National expansion, innovation and rise to prominence (1975–1993)
hierarchical_section_title: HBO / History / National expansion, innovation and rise to prominence (1975–1993)
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a former logo used by HBO between 1975 and 1981.
context_page_description: Home Box Office is an American pay television network owned by WarnerMedia Studios & Networks and the flagship property of parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc. Programming featured on the network consists primarily of theatrically released motion pictures and original television programs as well as made-for-cable movies, documentaries and occasional comedy and concert specials.
  HBO—also the oldest and longest continuously operating subscription television service in the United States—pioneered modern pay television upon its launch on November 8, 1972, as the first television service to be directly transmitted and distributed to individual cable television systems.
  The network operates seven 24-hour, linear multiplex channels as well as a video on demand platform and an eponymous streaming service, and its content is the centerpiece of HBO Max, an expanded streaming platform operated separately from but sharing management with Home Box Office, Inc., which also includes original programming produced exclusively for the service and content from other WarnerMedia properties.
context_section_description: In the Fall of 1974, executives from Time Inc. and the Home Box Office unit began conceptualizing ideas to expand HBO into a national pay television service. Developing a vast infrastructure of microwave and coaxial telephone relay towers in all 50 states and U.S. territories would have been cost-prohibitive for Time/HBO due to the time and expense involved. HBO's existing microwave network was also expensive and difficult to maintain—especially in winter, when snow and ice storms periodically disrupted service—along with being geographically limiting, as the signal could only be fed to an affiliated cable system if it was along the microwave signal's path.
  Seeing it as the only efficient and cost-effective option to expand distribution of Home Box Office to the entire nation, Time settled on using a geostationary communications satellite to transmit HBO directly to cable providers throughout the United States within and outside of its existing microwave relay network. Other television broadcasters at the time were hesitant about uplinking their feeds to satellite because they feared that the satellites may inadvertently shut down or jettison out of their orbit, as well as holding reservations about the cost of purchasing downlink receiver dishes, which in 1974, were sold for as much as $75,000 (equivalent to $388,815.79 in 2019 adjusted for inflation). Sid Topol, president of cable television equipment manufacturer Scientific Atlanta, met with RCA Americom Communications (which was granted FCC permission to operate and launch a telecommunications satellite), Home Box Office and a group of multiple system cable operators (MSOs) to propose having the RCA satellite transmit the HBO signal; Scientific Atlanta (through a client arrangement with Transcommunications Corp.) would agree to build earth-based satellite relay stations to be set up outside of HBO's Manhattan headquarters and to the service's client cable systems. RCA and HBO agreed to Topol's proposal, and the Time-Life board subsequently approved the satellite transmission plan.
  On April 11, 1975, Levin and Time-Life unveiled plans to distribute the HBO signal via satellite to cable systems elsewhere throughout the United States, announcing a $7.5-million agreement (including $6.5 million allocated by Levin) with RCA Americom to lease a transponder on the then-under construction Satcom I—which was expected to be launched at the end of 1975—for a five-year term. HBO also signed an agreement to distribute the satellite feed on eight UA-Columbia Cablevision systems in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Arkansas and Washington State, and have earth station receivers built at their headends to intercept and relay the signal. Now that a more superior transmission method than Home Box Office's existing land-based distribution network was being developed, Time/HBO lined up agreements with various cable system operators—including MSOs like American Television and Communications Corporation, Comcast, Cox Cable Jones Intercable, Heritage Communications and TelePrompTer Cable—to redistribute the satellite feed for system-determined fees of between $6 and $9 per month. HBO also entered into preliminary discusions with Kansas City-based regional cable service Target Network Television, from which a deal did not materialize, to share a transponder, either by dividing their respective airtime to allow HBO broad coverage in the Midwestern United States or dividing transmission by geographic region. Through the Scientific Atlanta contract, UA-Columbia and other cable providers also commissioned earth station dishes through Scientific Atlanta to receive the HBO satellite feed at their headend sites.
  On September 30, 1975 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Home Box Office became the first television network to continuously deliver its signal via satellite when it transmitted the "Thrilla in Manila", televised from the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Philippines. Subscribers of UA-Columbia's Fort Pierce and Vero Beach, Florida systems and American Television and Communications's Jackson, Mississi
caption: First version of HBO's current[update] logo, used from May 1, 1975 to January 31, 1981; during 1980, HBO used this logo in tandem with the second incarnation of the logo (seen above, in the Infobox) that is still used to this day[update].
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