HBO's programming consists primarily of theatrically released motion pictures and original series, along with made-for-cable movies and documentaries, boxing matches, and occasional stand-up comedy and concert specials.
Dolan presented his "Green Channel" idea to Time Life management, and though satellite distribution seemed only a distant possibility at the time, he persuaded Time Life to back him. Soon afterwards, on November 8, 1972, "The Green Channel" became "Home Box Office". HBO began using a network of microwave relay towers to distribute its programming. The first program and film broadcast on HBO, Sometimes a Great Notion, starred Paul Newman and Henry Fonda. It transmitted with a CATV system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (a plaque commemorating this event is found in Wilkes-Barre's downtown Public Square). HBO's first sports event was broadcast immediately afterwards, an NHL hockey game from Madison Square Garden featuring the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucks.
Sterling Manhattan Cable lost money because the company had only a small subscriber base of 20,000 customers in Manhattan. Dolan's media partner, Time Life, Inc., gained 80-percent control of Sterling and decided to pull the plug on the Sterling Manhattan operation. Time Life dropped the Sterling name to become Manhattan Cable Television and gained control of HBO in March 1973. Gerald Levin replaced Dolan as HBO's President and Chief Executive Officer. In September 1973, Time Life, Inc. completed its acquisition of the pay service. HBO was soon the fastest growing TV pay service in America, but the churn rate was exceptionally high. Subscribers would sample the service for a few weeks, get weary of seeing the same films, and then cancel. HBO was struggling and something had to be done. When HBO first came to Lawrence, Massachusetts, the idea was to allow subscribers to preview the service for free on channel 3. After a month, the service moved to channel 6 and was scrambled. The preview proved popular, obtaining many subscriptions and the concept was used elsewhere.
On September 30, 1975, HBO became the first TV network to continuously deliver signals via satellite when it showed the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing-match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. HBO switched its domestic satellite transmissions from Westar 1 to Satcom 1 in February 1976 and by 1977 was joined by Ted Turner's Atlanta superstation WTCG-TV (soon to become WTBS) and Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (later to become the present-day ABC Family), laying the foundation for satellite delivery in the modern cable television industry.
The network had broadcast only for nine hours a day for its first nine years on air, from 3 p.m. to midnight ET. In September 1981, HBO began broadcasting a 24-hour schedule on weekends, until midnight ET on Sunday nights. On December 28, 1981, HBO expanded its programming schedule to 24 hours a day, seven days per week (Cinemax had a 24-hour schedule from its launch, and Showtime and The Movie Channel went to a 24-hour schedule earlier). On August 1, 1980, HBO launched a companion network, Cinemax, a movie-based pay service created as HBO's answer to The Movie Channel; in its early years, Cinemax carried music specials and some limited original programming such as SCTV and Max Headroom, in addition to movies, but the network has since become known for airing softcore adult films and series during its late night schedule, and has forayed into original programming with the addition of weekly action series to its lineup in August 2011.
In 1983, HBO's first original movie and the first made-for-pay-TV movie The Terry Fox Story premiered. That year also saw the premiere of the first kids' show broadcast on the channel: Fraggle Rock; HBO continued to air various original programs aimed at children until 2001, when such programs were almost completely moved over to HBO Family. HBO became involved in several legal suits during the 1980s; these involved cable systems and legal statutes imposed by state and city laws that would have censored some programming on HBO and other pay-TV networks. In January 1986, HBO also became the first satellite network to encrypt its signal from unauthorized viewing by way of the Videocipher II System. Four months later, HBO became a victim of broadcast signal intrusion when satellite TV dealer John R. MacDougall, a man calling himself "Captain Midnight", intercepted the network's signal during a movie presentation of The Falcon and the Snowman. The Federal Communications Commission subsequently prosecuted MacDougall.
In 1987, HBO launched a short-lived channel, Festival. Festival featured classic movies and recent hit movies, along with specials and documentaries from HBO. Distinctively, Festival's programmers aimed to provide family-friendly fare. R-rated movies were edited for broadcast and no low-quality series, specials and/or movies were shown. Also, the pricing for subscribing to the channel was cheaper than HBO and Cinemax. Only a few cable systems carried Festival and the channel shut down in late 1988. In 1988, HBO's userbase expanded greatly on account of the Writers Guild of America going on strike; HBO had new programming while standard television channels could only broadcast reruns. In 1989, HBO compared programming against pay-television network Showtime, with the slogan "Nobody Brings it Home Like HBO", using the Tina Turner single "The Best". When Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1989, HBO became part of Time Warner (which as of 2011[update], continues to serve as the parent company of the network). Coincidentally, Warner Communications had created rival The Movie Channel (now owned by CBS Corporation) in the late 1970s before Viacom, which purchased a 50% stake in The Movie Channel in 1983, bought Warner's remaining half-ownership of that network in 1985. In 1991, HBO and Cinemax became the first premium services to offer multiplexing to cable customers. Providing multiple options of HBO and Cinemax instead of just single channel services, these include HBO2 (renamed HBO Plus from 1998 to 2002) and Cinemax (Cinemax 2, from 1998: MoreMax) to three cable systems in Wisconsin, Kansas and Texas. The move proved successful, resulting in HBO and Cinemax launching additional multiplex channels of its service, HBO 3 (launched in 1995, renamed HBO Signature in 1998), HBO Family (launched in 1996), HBO Comedy & HBO Zone (launched in 1999) and HBO Latino, a Latin-themed channel of HBO (launched in 2000). Cinemax also launched the multiplex services Cinemax 3 (launched in 1996, ActionMax in 1998), ThrillerMax (launched in 1998) and WMax, @Max, OuterMax and 5StarMax (all launched in 2001). In 1993, HBO became the world's first digitally transmitted television service.[citation needed] HBO.com, subsequently well known for its online web shows, launched in 1995.
