HBO-the pay-cable channel that generally comes up with the most creative, most interesting and most challenging original movies, specials and first-run series-has come up with a novel concept to explain what it does: Quality noise.
When HBO executives try to assess the success of one of their projects, it`s not ratings they`re looking for; it`s noise. That`s what Bob Cooper, senior vice president of the HBO Pictures division, tried to explain recently to television critics in Los Angeles.
From the time it got into the original-movie business, Cooper said, HBO knew it had to make pictures that were different from what viewers could get free from ABC, CBS and NBC.
So it set some standards: HBO would make fewer pictures than the networks do, less than half as many. It would spend more on each one than the networks do, almost twice as much. And it would choose topics that networks wouldn`t, or couldn`t, do.
With those objectives, Cooper explained, HBO needed a different way to measure success. Enter quality noise.
”Another way of putting it is, we evaluate our movies by ratings, by your reviews and by awards. We think each and every one of those criteria really determine whether a movie is successful or not,” Cooper said. ”That`s all part of quality noise.”
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Because HBO has different needs and goals, its approach actually increases the odds for success, Cooper said, even in an endeavor that always is unpredictable.
”We don`t have the same volume as the networks, so we`re not cluttered, and we can take our time on each movie,” he said. ”And, quite frankly, because we`re not spending as much money on the features as movie studios, we can take greater risks.”
Cooper told of a conversation that drove home just how out-of-the-ordinary HBO`s operations are.
”Last week I was with the head of a studio who said, `I spend my time trying to persuade actors to take millions of dollars more than they`re worth to make movies I don`t want to make, and I do it for one reason: fear. I`m afraid that if I don`t get them, some other studio is going to make it, and this lousy movie will become a hit.`
”Fortunately, we really don`t think that way. We don`t really operate out of fear. We operate out of a bit of fun and trying to figure out how we can do things a little differently,” he said.
Noise becomes the measuring stick.
”Something like a `Josephine Baker,` a few days before it aired, we unilaterally at HBO declared it a success,” Cooper said. ”Before the ratings. Meaning, if the ratings weren`t good, we felt it had noise out there. People were talking about it. It felt like an event. Without huge ratings, we would still consider it successful because there was a sense that you didn`t blink and it was gone.”
The same principle was at work in HBO`s decision to pick up and run with the ”Stalin” mini-series, which stars Robert Duvall in the title role and will air later this year.
”We just said, `This is a movie that we ought to make. It just feels noisy.` It`s a great excuse.”
There is a bottom line and, for cable services such as HBO, it comes down to the decisions of non-cable subscribers to sign up for service and the decisions of current subscribers to continue service.
”The value of quality noise is that we believe it helps give meaning to the word HBO,” Cooper said. ”It has to do with quality, with feature-like feeling, with some sense of importance, with a sense that people read about us and hear about us. That could attract subscribers who otherwise might not join HBO.
”People who don`t have a chance to actually watch something can read about it and say, `You know, this is an important service. I didn`t get a chance to watch it, but it still feels important, so I shouldn`t disconnect.` These are the values of noise to us. Its impressions. Its size. Its impact.”