Owning Shows

Yesterday I got to ask a few questions of Richard Plepler, the co-president of HBO, and one of the questions was about so-called “vertical integration”: networks owning the shows they put on the air. Some of HBO’s key shows in the past, like Larry Sanders, were produced by outside companies. Now they are almost 100% in the business of airing shows they produce themselves. As you might expect, Plepler says this is an entirely intentional business strategy: