HBO has brought us nearly 50 years of riveting movies and TV shows; the behind-the-scenes stories are equally compelling. Journalist James Andrew Miller, who has written definitive oral histories of media institutions like Saturday Night Live and ESPN, tells Recode’s Peter Kafka about his newest work: Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers. Inclu ... Show More
Today
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
AI companies have spent years telling us that we’ll be able to use them to go shopping for us, or book us airplane tickets, or get us awesome restaurant reservations. None of that ever materialized.But in the last few weeks, services like Instinct and Meta’s Muse have made that p ... Show More
40m 52s
Sep 11
The Atlantic’s CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Nicholas Thompson runs one of the few media companies that can say things are going pretty well: The Atlantic is profitable, growing, and boasts 1.6 million subscribers.But that's today. What comes next is the bulk of our conversation: Thompson — a big AI guy — tells me what The ... Show More
54 m
Sep 2
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of data centers. Now most Americans are actively opposed to them.It’s a head-snapping change — one that is befuddling tech bosses, and forcing some politicians to quickly change their tune.It’s the second part that I wanted to talk to ... Show More
53m 20s
Dec 2021
"Tinderbox" author James Andrew Miller on HBO, streaming and the future of TV
James Andrew Miller, author of the new HBO oral history "Tinderbox," shares what he learned through his interviews with five decades of network executives, stars and producers. HBO created a "whole new pathway for people to experience television," he says. But now it is under tre ... Show More
47m 22s
Mar 2022
HBO: Present, Past, and Future TRAILER
After spending more than three years working on his latest book, “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers,” replete with 757 interviews, Origins host Jim Miller decided he hadn’t had enough, and has returned with new interviews to further explore one of the world’s mos ... Show More
2m 27s
Feb 2022
State of Play: The Streaming Wars — with James Andrew Miller
James Andrew Miller, an investigative journalist and the author of Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers, joins the pod to discuss how the entertainment legend has differentiated itself over the years, as well as the state of the play of the streaming wars. Follow Ja ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 2022
Netflix vs. HBO: The TV Rivalry of the Century
Since its launch nearly 50 years ago, HBO has revolutionized and disrupted the television ecosystem, but for the past 15 years it has been challenged by a new disruptor, Netflix. Matt is joined by Felix Gillette from Bloomberg News and John Koblin from The New York Times to discu ... Show More
33m 25s
Feb 2018
Netflix vs Blockbuster - HBO Gets In The Ring | 5
We take a step back to explore how a little company called Home Box Office went from serving B-movies to 325 homes in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania to become the juggernaut that we know as HBO. In the process, HBO, become the standard by which all other cable companies would have to ... Show More
26m 25s
May 2020
TV Critic James Poniewozik on the Murdochs and 'Succession' | 11
James Poniewozik, watches TV all day and gets paid for it. Dream job, right? James is the chief TV critic at the New York Times. He’s also the author of “Audience of One: Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America.” On this episode, he explains how Rupert Murdoch brought a ... Show More
34m 31s