HBO’s pay-cable status allows its original series to push the established boundaries around sex, violence and subject matter, resulting in an offbeat, thought-provoking and often groundbreaking lineup of shows. Then with the debut of The Sopranos in 1999, HBO blasted off into an era of massive success, with a tidal wave of critical acclaim (it regularly tops all networks in Emmy wins each year) and a flurry of buzzy watercooler hits from Sex and the City to Game of Thrones. HBO’s original programming ambitions started out small with raunchy comedies like 1st & Ten and Dream On, but the arrival of The Larry Sanders Show in 1992 announced it as a serious player in the TV content wars. Home Box Office first began broadcasting as a pay-cable network 50 years ago today, and what used to be just a channel for old movies and boxing matches has grown into arguably the single greatest producer of quality programming in television history. Across the past five decades, what was once a simple catchphrase has become an unassailable fact: “It’s not TV.
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