True Blood – Cash Making Machine
True Blood Season 2
Charlaine Harris Books
They say that every cloud has a silver lining but where pay cable network Home Box Office (HBO) is concerned theirs’ is pure gold!
Why? Well, because of their showing in June of the serial “True Blood” Season 2, which has been adapted by Director Allan Ball (of “Six Feet Under” fame) from the books of Charlaine Harris. The stats show that Season 2 episode 1 pulled in more viewers (3.7 million) than any of HBOs serials since the finale of The Sopranos screened 2 years ago.
Within the first 2 weeks of its release, the Season 1 DVD of “True Blood” sold almost three quarters of a million copies which equated to $26 million added to which, it became one of the most popular iTunes downloads too.
HBO are also in the rather fortunate position of producing and owning the series, therefore all profits will go to them and to Time Warner, its “big brother”.
To screen an episode of a typical serial on HBO, costs rise to an estimated $2 million, while to screen an episode of “True Blood” costs between $3 and $4 million each! If things continue as they have begun though, it will not be long before Season 2 is showing a nice profit.
The first episode of Season 1 made things look like True Blood was going to go the same way as a number of other flops on the network, unlike “Six Feet Under” and “Sex and the City”, which were both huge successes.
Those early days are long gone now though after pulling in almost 3 times as many viewers for the first episode of Season 2 compared to the 1.4 million viewers for the first episode of Season 1.
The total viewing figures for the night of 14th June stack up to have been over 5 million – 3.7 million for the first screening and a further 1.4 million for the second which was shown later the same night. I suspect many of those viewers would have been die-hard Sookie Stackhouse and Charlaine Harris fans.
This also beckons good things for a new series to be shown at the end of June which goes by the unusual name of “Hung” and tells the story of a school teacher who tries his hand at becoming a gigolo. Sounds interesting!
In the US, Showtime recently took over as the main cable network provider in part due to various successes including “Weeds”, “Californication” and “Nurse Jackie”. However, with the likes of “True Blood”, HBO has managed to regain top dog.
Profits for HBO are in the region of between $1.3 and $1.4 billion a year, which is mainly due to its US base of 38 million subscribers. The company also have however branded joint ventures in a further 50 countries throughout the world which include with the UK companies BT Vision, Tiscali TV and Virgin Media.
Personally I wish HBO every success with Sookie Stackhouse and True Blood!
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