The Family Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand

Abstract

This paper examines HBO's The Sopranos in the context of several industrial factors. I begin with the series'generic inscription. As a gangster program, The Sopranos comes to us in the form of a pedigreed pre-sold product, a television text of esteemed cinematic lineage. This leads to the examination of branding. In order to corral The Sopranos into the slogan, “It's Not TV, It's HBO,” HBO seeks to differentiate its product from lowest common denominator, broadcast fare. The separation results in the construction of the “quality” brand, a problematic concept academics have linked to demographics. HBO's branding strategy has also intensified the claim of competition between pay cable and broadcast television in popular discourse. This claim is problematized by the ratings gathering methodology of A.C. Nielsen and by AOL Time Warner's tiering strategies. By examining the aforementioned strategies, I uncover the materialist— rather than auteurist—foundations of The Sopranos.

Netflix, Amazon, and branded television content in subscription video on-demand portals

“…This practice, known as ‘tiering’, provides ‘a wide range of niche taste cultures within the same corporate-semiotic family or umbrella’ (Caldwell, 2006: 124). In some instances, conglomerates create the appearance of competition between two channels with the hopes of generating new subscribers for both as Time Warner did with HBO and Cinemax in the mid-1990s (Jaramillo, 2002). To serve the broader interests of media conglomerates, however, niche television audiences are not sufficient in and of themselves.…”

Packaging House of Cards and The Knick: How talent intermediaries manage the indie-auteur brand to sell premium television

“…Despite implying vulnerability however, the rebranding of Cinemax was an aggressive strategy enacted by Time Warner and its divisions. As Jaramillo points out, Time Warner executives have long perpetuated the seemingly contradictory image of a business under threat and one that is successful in order to persuade an ‘investor of the thriving, competitive atmosphere of media’ (Jaramillo, 2002: 20). Rather than a quantifiable difference in the textual properties of the categories of specialty independent and genre exploitation, therefore, Antholis’ comment is part of a longer history of Time Warner creating the illusion of competition among their television channels (see Jaramillo, 2002: 69–70).…”

Eles cresceram tão rápido:

“…A definição de uma marca é uma das principais estratégias para canais transnacionais serem reconhecíveis mesmo estando em territórios diferentes e sofrendo, com isso, interferências diversas dos Estados e da audiência de cada local (Sandler, 2003). Em muitos casos, a instituição dessa marca tem relação com o imaginário construído em torno dos conteúdos exibidos pelo canal, como é o caso da HBO que, desde o final da década de 1970, desenvolve a noção de uma "marca de qualidade" (Jaramillo, 2002), a qual permeia toda a sua produção original. Nesse sentido, desde que surgiu, o Cartoon Network vem construindo uma imagem descolada, irônica e autorreferente bastante pautada em sua programação e produção original.…”