HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler just confirmed what had been in
the wind for some time: In 2015 a stand-alone over-the-top HBO Go service
will launch in the the U.S. There are 80 million homes that do not have HBO,
and “we will use all measures to go after them,” Plepler said during his network’s
portion of the Time Warner Investor Day underway in NY. He said such a move
could produce hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue. “There is
huge opportunity in front of us… we will use all means at our disposal to go after
it,” he said. “This is the most exciting inflection point domestically and internationally
in the history of HBO.”Last month, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes signaled the idea
was brewing to offer HBO Go without a TV Anywhere authentication, noting the
increasing opportunity of broadband was making a direct-to-consumer HBO Go “more
viable and more interesting.” An Internet-only HBO Go offering has worked well after
some hiccups in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, he said.
Source: Deadline