[vikascoder]

Applies to a lot of industries and areas. I suspect the reason is the constant endevour to increase profits every quarter and year eventually leads to a saturation stage where the only way to increase the bottom line is to start producing cheap crap and shove it down the users throats. Superficial low quality garbage actually is what the market wants too. Check out the top ten list of Netflix most watched shows. You wont find much critically acclaimed content there. Whats the highest selling Kindle book of all time? Fifty Shades of Gray. The only channel which has been really consistent in quality over the years has been HBO.

[skuhn]

HBO is an interesting outlier in cable TV (and media creators in general). As you said, they have consistently been at the top of the heap in terms of quality even while reinventing their product and adapting to changing markets over the years.

I think that HBO’s secret has been having revenue directly tied to producing content people want (unlike most other TV channels), which in turn forced them to always have an evergreen source of that content (boxing fights, newly released movies). That stuff is their “Buzzfeed” side that gives them the ability to ride out lean times and come out with their next big thing, like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones (their “Buzzfeed News” side).

If they didn’t have the consistent money makers and a revenue strategy that rewards it, they would long ago have had a business hiccup and been taken apart for spare parts ala most other TV channels.

There are a lot of places trying to emulate HBO now in the prestige content game. What I’m interested to see is if any of them (especially Netflix) can follow the HBO playbook over the next 10-20 years or if they all descend into mediocrity in the pursuit of growth.

And it’s always possible that HBO fails at their own game and gets replaced too.

[nasredin]

Insightful post.

I so wanted you to end it with...

But... "it's all in the game."