The thesis offers a revised institutional history of US cable network Home Box Office that expands on its under-examined identity as a monthly subscriber service from 1972 to 1994. This is used to better explain extensive discussions of HBOâ\u80\u99s rebranding from 1995 to 2007 around high-quality original content and experimentation with new media platforms. The first half of the thesis particularly expands on HBOâ\u80\u99s origins and early identity as part of publisher Time Inc. from 1972 to 1988, before examining how this affected the networkâ\u80\u99s programming strategies as part of global conglomerate Time Warner from 1989 to 1994. Within this, evidence of ongoing processes for aggregating subscribers, or packaging multiple entertainment attractions around stable production cycles, are identified as defining HBOâ\u80\u99s promotion of general monthly value over rivals.

Arguing that these specific exhibition and production strategies are glossed over in existing HBO scholarship as a result of an over-valuing of post-1995 examples of â\u80\u98qualityâ\u80\u99 television, their ongoing importance to the networkâ\u80\u99s contemporary management of its brand across media platforms is mapped over distinctions from rivals to 2007. Suggesting much longer institutional continuities and influences for understanding HBOâ\u80\u99s success, the thesis outlines the development and influence of these strategies through a critical chronology of the networkâ\u80\u99s history. In doing so, the thesis aligns with trends for rigorous media histories that consider the origins, long-term precedent and cyclical institutional strategies that govern contemporary industry practices.Arts and Humanities Research Counci