Did you watch the interview and did you feel like you came away with a good comprehension of HBO's business model?

Here's what I picked up

• When he says that the "internet-based model is a fad", he's specifically referring to the fact that 95% of households in the US own a television and that people are not sitting over their computers watching TV and there's no indication that behavior will change, regardless of the delivery model.

• HBO is a network, and cannot instantaneously establish an infrastructure to handle things like customer payments, customer service, technical support, etc. This prevents them from currently offering a standalone model. They benefit greatly from the fact that the cable companies do all that work for them.

• The goal with HBO Go was simply to create added value to their HBO product and extend the life of subscription cycle. They are allowing users to watch how they want and by offering every HBO show in their library. The library is a big part of it, because they've found value in older shows. He was saying that 70% of HBO GO viewing is original series, compared to 30% on TV and 44% On Demand.

• Selling their shows to Netflix or Hulu makes no sense for their business. Although they are different business models, they are still competitors to some extent. He compared it to them selling shows to Showtime - why would they? (again, their goal is subscribers)

• Looking at all those considerations, the cost for them to support a standalone business model would drastically increase the price of the service for those customers and they would probably not add many subscribers as a result.

So why should they offer a standalone model or change how they're doing business? Besides the fact that a lot of people who don't have HBO are bitching about it and pirating their shows (the fact that HBO runs a successful business is NOT justification for pirating shows, IMO).