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is showtime the new hbo?
Showtime may soon have its moment in the spotlight. After decades of falling short to cable rival HBO, the network is the closest it’s ever been to matching its competitor in buzz and quality programming—and it’s looking to translate this into a substantial boost in subscriptions.
Before 2005, Showtime was viewed, if at all, as a second-rate version of HBO. Two shows, Queer As Folk and Soul Food, garnered critical acclaim and substantial fan bases, but weren’t enough to sustain rising production costs or compete with the mega-successful HBO, to which one-third of all American households subscribed in 2003.
What Showtime needed was to invest in more original programming and, by doing so, to differentiate itself and gather a diverse audience. Executives Les Moonves and Matt Blank opened 2005 by shifting the network’s limited funds from made-for-television movies to more efficient, commercially successful venues. It has to be “about the show,” Blank said to the New York Times, “how compelling the drama is.” One series, The L Word, already had potential. It had the daring of Queer as Folk, but with more characters and plot lines to work with, it also established a broad commercial appeal. Showtime “used to try and be bold,” Moonves said in the same interview. Now it had to be “bold and commercial,” to balance diverse fare and avoid becoming a niche network, as HBO did with Sex and the City and The Sopranos.
The past few years have seen a significant rise in Showtime’s popularity. Weeds, starring Mary-Louise Parker as a drug-dealing housewife, took the Best Actress Golden Globe this year and has a dedicated fan base, while newcomer The Tudors, which dramatizes the court of Henry VIII, has garnered multiple nominations and has a rapidly growing audience. The L Word is ending, but the captivating subject matter of Dexter—which is about a serial killer who only targets other murderers—has made it both controversial and addictive. The show has even made the transition to network television, where its content—albeit toned down—and talented cast continue to draw in viewers.
HBO still holds twice as many subscribers as Showtime and can afford to coast on its past successes. Band of Brothers, Sex and the City, and Rome have almost 100 combined awards to their names, while The Sopranos remains the most financially successful cable series in history. Showtime executives, though, see blood in the water. Their rival’s polygamist drama Big Love and recently concluded, intellectual cop show The Wire have loyal fan bases and considerable acclaim, but HBO has yet to duplicate its past triumphs.
There have been a few recent bright spots for HBO, though. In Treatment, centered on a psychiatrist’s inner turmoil, has possibilities despite its rather lukewarm reception, and the summer series Flight of the Conchords, about a New Zealand digi-folk band transplanted to New York City, already has a strong cult following. Talks are also in session for a follow-up to Band of Brothers, this time set in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
It is up to Showtime to push their advantage while they have the chance—and they plan to. In September, CBS offered a “free preview” weekend that made Showtime temporarily available to 54 million homes. Now providers like DirecTV are offering reduced rates for the first three months of subscription. Dan Hartman, a vice president at DirecTV, is very optimistic about the push. As he said in an interview with the New York Post, “One big factor that leads people to subscribe during free previews is buzz, and Showtime is really giving the competition a run for its money.”
To continue its favorable trend, Showtime has also begun securing more A-listers to populate its casts, some of them graduates from HBO’s own studios. Billie Piper, of BBC’s Doctor Who fame, will play protagonist Hannah in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, a look at London’s upper-class sex industry. Peter O’Toole has donned Pope Paul III’s robes for the second season of The Tudors, which premieres this Sunday, while Toni Collette will star in The United States of Tara as a woman with multiple personalities. Michael C. Hall, formerly David Fisher on HBO’s Six Feet Under, will also return for his second season as the title character in Dexter.
No premiere will be so anticipated as that of Edie Falco in a new Showtime orginal. The actress, who won two Golden Globes and three Emmys as Tony Soprano’s wife Carmela, agreed in February to sign on to an unnamed dark comedy. Falco, who in a Showtime press release called her character and the writing “truly thrilling,” will be playing a nurse with a special calling who “won’t hesitate to take matters into her own hands.” And while Falco is happy, Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment for Showtimewas speechless. “To bring Edie Falco to Showtime,” Greenblatt said in a press release, “… ‘Bada bing’ is all I can say!”
If they continue to match their newly aggressive tactics with critical and commercial success, HBO may indeed see the formerly inferior channel become a serious contender. But executives, for the moment, remain coy. After all, Showtime’s current position looks excellent mainly in retrospect—it will be a long time before the network can establish the clout their rival holds. “We expect there may be an impact in our participation level,” Matt Blank told the Post. “But we won’t be able to gauge the long-term effects.” Maybe so, but it’s enough to make Showtime, the perpetual runner-up, a network to keep your eye on.