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HBO has long been partnered with cable and satellite providers. With the sudden jump in direct-to-consumer models like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more, they may be looking to make that move!

Time Warner (who owns HBO) CEO Jeff Bewkes didn't release an official statement, but he did sound optimistic when discussing the option.

Yes, it’s a really good question. Many of you have asked it. And we ask it all the time and are always looking at it.

  

What we’ve basically been doing, we’re looking at the market. We’ve been looking at our ability to service customers and our distributors. And basically up until now, it looked to us as though the best and main opportunity was to focus on improving the penetration, the offering, the servicing, the interface, the monetization of HBO through the existing affiliate system. And part of the reason for that was, first of all, there were some real places of opportunity and underperformers there. Secondly, the broadband-only opportunity up until now wasn’t again looked to us to be really at the point where it would be smart to move the focus from one to the other.

  

So now the broadband opportunity is getting quite a bit bigger, and the ability of the plant to deliver something robust is getting stronger; and so the question you’re asking is becoming more viable, more interesting. What we’re trying to do is basically make sure that we’ve done everything we can with our distributors to take advantage and have them take advantage of what customers they could have. And we’ve got to keep looking actively. We’re seriously considering what is the best way to deal with online distribution, but I don’t have anything to announce about it today.

I know quite a few people that still have cable or satellite only because they couldn't get HBO any other way.  And people can't miss their Game of Thrones!

Would you consider paying for HBO as a direct-to-consumer product?

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