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The Past, Present & Uncertain Future of HBO

A chat with the incomparable James Andrew Miller, who’s just written a new book on HBO, about the Netflix rivalry, the disastrous AOL merger, who comes across as the biggest asshole, and what David Zaslav can expect when he walks through the door.

the sopranos
Photo: Anthony Neste/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
November 22, 2021

If I have to tell you that author James Andrew Miller has a new book about HBO, you should probably unsubscribe. Jim is a friend of What I’m Hearing… who wrote for me at T.H.R. and whose previous oral histories of Saturday Night Live, ESPN and CAA occupy major shelf space at What I’m Hearing H.Q. In Tinderbox, out on Tuesday, he uses 750 interviews to trace the history of Home Box Office from its 1971 origin in the brain of cable mogul Charles Dolan all the way to its pending spinoff from AT&T to Discovery, with all the programming dramas and executive intrigue in between. We talked about the past, present and future of HBO on Thursday; our condensed and edited chat is below.