HBO Will Uncouple HBO Go From The Networks When The Math Works

This really isn’t news inci­den­tally. It’s pretty much been HBO’s posi­tion since they launched HBO GO. But no one seems to have noticed that detail.You see every­one is so busy shout­ing about how evil the con­tent providers are and how evil the con­tent deliv­er­ers are, they’ve just failed to rec­og­nize reality.

Right now, it would be finan­cial sui­cide for HBO to decou­ple from the likes of Com­cast etc. Because that’s far too large a por­tion of their rev­enue and it wouldn’t all be replaced by an HBO Go sub­scrip­tion model.

And don’t think for a sec­ond that Dish and all the oth­ers would con­tinue to pay as much and pro­mote HBO as heav­ily as they do if they found HBO to be in direct com­pe­ti­tion with them.

HBO aren’t dig­ging their heels in to be mean or to make peo­ple suf­fer (though you might think that the way some peo­ple carry on about it online). They’re doing it because they’re still try­ing to thread their way through a maze of licens­ing agree­ments, car­riage agree­ments and account­ing that would make it profitable.

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