At HBO, Life After ‘Larry’ Ain’t So Bad

For years, “The Larry Sanders Show” carried Home Box Office’s banner as its flagship series, earning the pay channel critical plaudits and dozens of Emmy nominations.

“We were pretty much all they had for a long time,” said Brad Grey, one of the comedy’s executive producers.

Peeking behind the curtain of a fictional TV talk show, “Sanders” was a hit with the Hollywood crowd, a show that played extremely well in studio corridors and among TV critics but never amounted to much from a ratings standpoint. Even so, HBO officials admit they were “a little scared” when the program ended its run a year ago, wondering what would qualify as an encore.

The last 12 months, however, have seemed to mark a turning point for the pay channel, beginning with its Mafia-theme series, “The Sopranos,” not only viewed as a legitimate Emmy contender--a breakthrough for HBO on the drama front--but also an exceptional ratings draw by the channel’s standards. Last year, HBO also added “Sex and the City,” a comedy about single women in New York starring Sarah Jessica Parker, which begins its second season in June and may possess even better commercial prospects, bringing in a new, mostly female audience.

These coups--along with “From the Earth to the Moon,” the Emmy-winning 12-hour miniseries produced by Tom Hanks--helped earn HBO’s president of original programming, Chris Albrecht, a recent promotion, which placed him in charge of movies as well as series. That decision prompted the resignation of John Matoian, the pay channel’s well-regarded movie chief, who objected to the revised structure.

HBO appears to have charted a new course in which series represent a primary component of its programming mix, hoping to distinguish the channel in a manner merely running uncut theatricals and even classy made-for-TV movies cannot, given the glossy fare being presented by competing networks like Showtime and TNT.

According to Albrecht, the latest series, coming on the heels of such programs as the brutal prison drama “Oz” and zany comedy “Mr. Show,” are helping lure new talent to HBO.

“We are having discussions with people that wouldn’t even have called us before, who are saying, ‘We want to make deals with you,’ ” he said.

HBO has also landed properties coveted by the major networks. Albrecht cited as an example the next Hanks-produced epic, “Band of Brothers,” a World War II miniseries expected to surpass “From the Earth’s” $70-million price tag, as a property major networks had sought.

“Sex and the City” creator Darren Star, whose network credits include Fox’s “Melrose Place” and “Beverly Hills 90210,” said he moved to HBO hoping to escape the grind of churning out episodes while exploring a more theatrical approach.

“You have to do something a cut above, because people are paying for it,” he said. “As a writer, that’s a great challenge.”

Fewer Series Means More Production Time

Executives at the major networks have argued precisely that in pleading their case to Emmy voters, insisting that HBO operates on an unequal playing field. Beyond the obvious creative latitude in terms of language and sexuality, the pay service orders fewer series, which benefit from higher budgets and more generous production schedules.

“It’s nice when you only have to launch one or two shows a year and do 13 episodes,” said one network executive, referring to the number of “Sopranos” produced, compared to 22 for most prime-time shows.

Reaching roughly 35 million subscribers, compared to nearly 100 million homes that receive the major networks, HBO does have the luxury of creating more narrowly targeted programs. Still, Albrecht said, the channel can’t be content producing the TV equivalent of art-house films, garnering Emmy nominations without substantial audiences.

“We’ve grown up in the chances that we’re taking and what we expect them to deliver,” he said. “It’s not enough that [critics] just write about it. People have to watch it. It can’t be anymore, ‘If we like it, it’s OK.’ . . . That’s a different accountability than we’ve ever had before.”

“Accountability” doesn’t mean quite the same thing for HBO as for broadcasters, who live and die by ratings and advertising. For pay TV, the real chore is to woo new subscribers and make existing ones feel they’re getting their money’s worth for that $10 every month--which, in HBO’s case, has created a $2-billion business.

“It’s more complicated for us,” said HBO Chairman Jeffrey Bewkes. “We’re not looking for that mass-audience demographic. We’re looking for each show to hit a different one.”

Bewkes added that the channel has set the bar high for itself with the promotional slogan, “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” To fulfill that claim, he said, a program “has got to be judged to have a quality that is superior to what you can get on commercially-supported free TV.”

This distinction was clearly true in feature films, which are edited for content and length on commercial stations, but is less obvious in series. Albrecht maintains that the difference is more subtle than just greater freedom in terms of content. With “Sopranos,” for example, just having the show build to a key moment before each commercial break--as most network dramas do--would significantly alter the show’s format.

“The job on a broadcast network is to get you to not flip during the commercials,” he said. “The job on HBO is to get you to not flip during the show. It’s a whole difference in how you construct the show. . . . That has nothing to do with [four-letter words] or blood or nudity.”

By proclaiming that run-of-the-mill programs won’t do, HBO will be hard-pressed to sustain its recent track record as the channel adds to its lineup of original fare. With 18 new episodes of “Sex and the City” to run into the fall and “Sopranos” returning in January, Albrecht is looking for another Sunday-night franchise to run the balance of the year and a like-spirited comedy to follow “Sex” next season.

Grey, whose Brillstein-Grey Communications is also behind “Sopranos,” conceded that the upside on an HBO hit doesn’t rival a network smash like “ER” but added, “Not every show has to be a grand-slam success financially. . . . I think it’s a great thing for our business [whenever] you can make a show you believe in, make a profit and get a real audience.”

Showtime, the runner-up among pay services, has made its own aggressive push into series and will introduce two more this summer, including “Beggars & Choosers,” conceived by the late NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff, which is set at a fictional TV network and at least thematically sounds like a potential heir to “Larry Sanders.”

“We said five years ago . . . that we couldn’t rely on theatrical films, where we were the sixth place that audiences see them,” said Jerry Offsay, Showtime’s programming president, adding that the fun in producing series for HBO or Showtime stems from being free to provide unflinching glimpses of reality. Still, he said, “[My boss] reminds me frequently that I’m not here to make home movies, even if they’re good.”

Indeed, while the pay format clearly allows producers and executives more opportunity to take chances, Albrecht stressed that such license alone doesn’t turn out compelling shows.

“It’s really easy to do mediocre stuff,” he said. “It’s a lot easier than doing good stuff.”