AllThingsD » Eric Kessler

HBO Explains Why It's Not Going A La Carte Anytime Soon

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:36:01 +0000

Buy HBO without paying for cable TV? To a bunch of you, that sounds very exciting. But it’s not happening anytime soon.

On Wednesday, HBO CEO Richard Plepler floated the notion of letting broadband providers — the same people who sell you cable TV — sell HBO as a standalone add-on to your Internet bill.

It’s not the first time the HBO guys have talked about how that might work. But the pay TV company isn’t actually talking to the cable/broadband guys about doing that, according to people at HBO and at its parent company Time Warner.

So, could it happen one day? Sure, I guess. But not for a long time, because right now the current system — where HBO (and Showtime) are only available to pay TV customers who also buy a lot of other TV channels — works well for the guys who own the shows, and the guys who own the pipes.

But even if we do get to a world where HBO lets you buy HBO without paying for other cable networks, it’s important to note that it’s still not talking about a direct-to-consumer, Netflix-style proposition. Instead, it wants the pipe guys to handle all of the retailing, including the marketing that Time Warner Cable is doing for HBO right now (and was doing for Showtime a few months ago):

If you want a longer explanation of why HBO likes the wholesale/retail set up, watch this interview with HBO COO Eric Kessler from our D: Dive Into Media conference last month. He goes into extensive detail about HBO’s rationale for the status quo, starting around the four-minute mark.

Note that, like Plepler, he leaves the door open for a broadband-only option one day — but argues that the market is “too small” to contemplate breaking up the bundle today. (And if you keep watching, you’ll see why he thinks Netflix-style “binge viewing” is overstated).

[ See post to watch video ]

Winter Is Coming (Geeks, Too): HBO Premieres New Season of "Game of Thrones" in SF This Week

Kara Swisher — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:02:58 +0000

It’s no secret in Silicon Valley that the HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a big favorite among the geek set — including Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — what with its dungeons-and-dragons tone and fur-and-leather outfits.

Which is why Time Warner’s premium cable network decided to do one of its three red-carpet premieres for the third season of the hit fantasy show with a splashy event on Wednesday in San Francisco that will be teeming with digerati.

“We all thought it would be fun for the creators and the cast to come here and feel the enormous enthusiasm this community and our partners have for ‘Thrones,’” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler.

Eight cast members of “Thrones” will be attending, as will Plepler, HBO COO Eric Kessler, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and … drumroll … author George R.R. Martin.

The show is an adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” Martin’s series of popular fantasy novels, the first of which is titled “A Game of Thrones.”

No surprise — there is much swordplay in the epic. And that’s where AllThingsD comes in, since Walt Mossberg and I will be doing an onstage Q&A with Martin, Benioff and Weiss right after the first show of the new season is aired.

It’s on, or, as Martin wrote: “When you play the game of thrones, it’s either you win or you die.” Or enjoy a lovely party after.

We’ll have video of the interviews later, but here are two trailers for the third season, which begins airing March 31:

Day Two at D: Dive Into Media 2013, in Pictures and Tweets

Eric Johnson — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:30:45 +0000

After Monday’s kickoff with Nancy Tellem, Yusuf Mehdi, Anomaly Productions, David Eun and Charlie Ergen, D: Dive Into Media 2013 already had plenty of star power and great moments in the bank.

Tuesday was a parade of still more great guests — 19 in all — and the discussion online was vibrant. Here’s a sampling of what our attendees saw at Day Two of #DMedia:

You can also get the overview of the day’s events via Storify.

For HBO, a la Carte Programming Is Still a Ways Off, Says Eric Kessler

John Paczkowski — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:34:31 +0000

Eric Kessler has worked at HBO for more than two decades in various capacities, overseeing everything from program licensing to digital strategy and marketing. He’s been in the business a long time, seen the pay-TV programming evolution firsthand, and played a role in it, as well.

Put it this way, he’s the guy who came up with the slogan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” — after a decade, it remains part of the cable TV vernacular. Today, he’s got his hands full mapping out a viable digital strategy while remaining tethered to the cable-TV cash cow and fending off new rivals like Netflix and Amazon that are mounting assaults on its business.

As the first order of business at today’s D: Dive Into Media interview, Kessler confirmed that HBO’s HBO Go App is now compatible with Apple’s AirPlay, and HBO subscribers who have been pining to stream HBO shows from their iOS devices to Apple TV can now do so. “Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” Kessler said, adding that Apple TV support will follow “at some point.”

At some point.

And when that day comes, might it be accompanied by a la carte programming? At some point. But Kessler argued that the time for that is still quite a ways off. The economics simply aren’t there.

“In marketing HBO, we are targeting the people who most love TV,” Kessler said. “There are 70 million households that love television. And the average HBO household watches far more TV than the average TV household. So we are targeting the people who are most likely to buy our product.”

Makes sense, but why not also target the fast-growing audience that wants HBO untethered from the TV? Simple. It’s too expensive.

“Is there a broadband segment that wants HBO?” said Kessler. “Yes, of course. But when you look at penetration rates, at disconnect rates, at infrastructure and marketing costs, the economics are just not particularly compelling … That doesn’t mean that’s not going to change at some point, though.”

So, for now, HBO Go will remain largely as it is today: You’ve got to be a subscriber to use it. That might seem unnecessarily limiting, but Kessler said HBO still gets a lot out of it, even if it’s not bringing in money as a cord-cutter subscription service. It serves an important marketing function. People who watch HBO programs on HBO Go are generally more apt to talk about it online (obviously). “HBO Go usage seems to engage people in social conversation about these shows,” Kessler said. “‘Girls’ viewership increases as more people talk about it on Twitter and Facebook.”

What about other emerging schemes for building viewership? Netflix has recently been in the news quite a bit for its “House of Cards” series, which the company released as a 13-episode bundle. That’s a strategy HBO has embraced for its archival programming, as well, and with a great deal of success. Viewers can use it to catch up on old seasons of their favorite series — obviously, there’s a great deal of value for some in binge-viewing five seasons of “The Wire” back to back.

“When we launched the browser version of HBO Go, we only had about 400 hours of content,” Kessler said. “When we launched the app, we decided to put every episode of every season up there. And what we have seen over the last two years is that the people who use the app will binge-view. They’ll watch stuff to catch up. But that’s the edge case.”

So, is it wise to give a brand-new series like “House of Cards” that stuff-yourself-silly treatment? Kessler seemed dubious. Serializing shows in the old-school TV way plays a big role in building buzz, he explained. If you offer a series in its entirety when it debuts, you forfeit that “Who Shot J.R.?” anticipation. Just think about that final, infamous episode of “The Sopranos.”

“The finale of ‘The Sopranos’ was one of the most talked-about finales in the history of television,” Kessler said. “That show was on the cover of newspapers the next day. It was being talked about on morning radio and TV. If we had distributed the season all at once, we would have lost that.”

[ See post to watch video ]

HBO to Finally Let Subscribers Stream HBO Go to TV Over AirPlay

Ina Fried — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:33:49 +0000

HBO said on Tuesday that, at long last, its subscribers will be able to stream programming from an iPhone or iPad onto their television via AirPlay.

Speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, HBO’s Eric Kessler said, “effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay” for HBO Go.

The feature is being added today as an update to the HBO Go iOS app and for Cinemax’s MAX Go App.

“Our long-term goal for Go is to be on all devices and all platforms,” Kessler said. It’s already on Xbox, Roku and other devices.

As for why the company doesn’t just get directly on Apple TV, Kessler said, “We will get on Apple TV, as we’ve said all along.”

HBO Go Is Coming to Apple TV. Why Isn't Everything Coming to Apple TV?

Peter Kafka — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:23:22 +0000

As Bloomberg reports, sometime this year, Apple TV users will be able to watch HBO shows — if they’re already subscribing to HBO via a pay-cable provider.

In other words, HBO will port its popular HBO Go app to Apple TV, just like it has already done with Roku and Microsoft’s Xbox.

For the record, no comment from Apple. And here’s a non-comment comment from HBO: “We’ve said we would like HBO GO accessible on all preferred platforms so we are always having discussions with a variety of companies.”

Anyway, when it does come, it will be a nice extra for HBO subscribers. Because HBO Go has a much deeper catalog than you can get from the HBO on-demand service you get via cable and satellite.

But that’s about it.*

And if you want to start imagining that this is a precursor to HBO actually selling itself over the Web on an a la carte basis, well, I can’t stop you. But you’re wrong: HBO isn’t ditching the pay-TV bundle anytime soon, because it thinks that bundle works really well. And so does HBO’s owner, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.

You can have a lot of fun arguing with the HBO guys about why they think that, when so many of us Internet geniuses are convinced they’re wrong. And that’s certainly going to come up when we talk to HBO president Eric Kessler next month at our Dive Into Media conference.

But here’s another question: Why isn’t everyone on Apple TV right now? Or more precisely, why doesn’t Apple open its box to outside developers, the same way Roku has?

Opening up the platform to the rest of the world sure seemed to work well for the iPhone (recall that the App Store didn’t show up until the iPhone had been in the market for a year). But, right now, Apple TV has a grand total of nine outside apps (one of which comes from The Wall Street Journal, which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

Why hasn’t Apple let a thousand TV apps bloom? Dunno. I get the sense that Tim Cook and company are very particular about the way Apple TV apps look and work, down to the pixel. But you can be very serious about quality control and still manage to get more than nine apps on your box, if you want to.

So there has to be another reason. But maybe not a permanent one. If I had to bet, I’d say we’ll see Apple open up its TV box a whole lot sooner than HBO goes a la carte.

*Apple TV is pretty portable, so, depending on the way that HBO and the pay-TV guys handle their login/passwords, I can imagine a scenario where you bring your box to someone’s house who doesn’t have HBO, and set it up so you can watch “Girls” on their big screen. That would be nice, too.**

**It will be interesting to compare and contrast the video quality that HBO Go/Apple TV/broadband delivers versus an HD cable picture. On the cheapo set + Time Warner Cable set-up that I’ve got at home, I’ve noticed that “The Daily Show” on Hulu/Apple TV is good, but notably a bit more “computery” than the picture I get via Comedy Central’s HD feed.

Game On! Xbox Bosses Mehdi, Tellem Come to Dive Into Media.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:41:39 +0000

You can spend lots of time speculating about what happens when the TV and the Web finally converge. But if you want to speed things up, just ask Microsoft, which is already watching it happen.

Redmond is facing all sorts of challenges, but its Xbox is a clear success, not only as a gaming console, but as an Internet-connected entertainment device, which gives users access to video services like Netflx and HBO Go, and, increasingly, cable programming from the likes of ESPN. Microsoft says Xbox users now spend more time consuming media than playing games.

Which is why we’re very excited to bring two key Xbox executives onstage next month at D: Dive into Media: Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who is building a new production studio for the device.

Mehdi is the man running marketing, strategy and corporate development for Xbox, and he’s the guy who links the console up with all the studios, networks and publishers who are creating content for the device. Prior to this job, he oversaw Microsoft’s media presence on the Web.

Tellem, a veteran TV executive, is the former CBS president now tasked with creating new programming for the device. She’s building out a Hollywood presence for Steve Ballmer, and her hire last fall was Microsoft’s most aggressive move into the content business so far.

They’re joining a stellar lineup of speakers Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen.

And, yes, we’ll have yet more names to announce in the coming weeks. But if you want to see these folks in person, register now, and we’ll see you soon.

Meet the Man Who Wants to Blow Up the TV Business: Dish Network's Charlie Ergen Comes to Dive Into Media

Peter Kafka — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:44:54 +0000

Charlie Ergen brings TV into 14 million houses, which means he’s got a very nice business that has made him a billionaire.

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

Old Media, New Tricks: The New Republic's Chris Hughes and USA Today's Larry Kramer Join Dive Into Media

Peter Kafka — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:00:03 +0000

How do you take a print publication with a famous name and a fraught business outlook, and transform it for the digital age?

Ask Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer.

Hughes, one of the original Facebook friends, used a bit of his newfound wealth to buy the storied New Republic earlier this year. A few months after that, Gannett put Kramer, a longtime digital media pro, in charge of its iconic USA Today.

Those are two very disparate publications, but they share a similar challenge: It’s very easy to find the stuff they’re best at — political opinion and general news — for free, all over the Internet. So how do you get readers and advertisers to pay attention, and/or money?

There’s a very good chance Hughes and Kramer won’t solve that one by February, when they appear at our D: Dive into Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California. But we’ll get a very interesting progress report. And since they’ll be onstage at the same time, we should get a very entertaining conversation, too.

Kramer is a former reporter and editor who ended up building and running big Web businesses — most notably MarketWatch, which he sold to CBS in 2005. He then stuck around long enough to help the TV giant embrace digital, via deals like the ones that put March Madness on the Web and CBS TV shows on iTunes. For a smart overview of his challenges at USA Today, see Ken Doctor’s take from earlier this year.

Hughes, quite famously, was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates at Harvard, and became Facebook’s first marketing and PR head. Then he joined Barack Obama’s first presidential run, where he played a key role in the campaign’s pioneering use of social media. Now he’s trying to revamp a 98-year-old magazine that used to play a key role in Washington politics; for more on that see this excellent New York magazine profile.

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos and The Person From “Arrested Development” We’d Like to Name But Can’t (Yet).

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

Netflix Content Boss Ted Sarandos Comes to D: Dive Into Media, With a Mystery Guest in Tow

Peter Kafka — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:09:27 +0000

Netflix started out as a DVD-by-mail service, then morphed into a streaming service for movies, and then a streaming service for TV shows.

Now it’s a bit of everything: Old and not-so-old TV shows, movies you haven’t heard of, movies you have heard of, and starting next year, TV shows that Netflix is making for itself.

The man in charge of all that is Ted Sarandos, who negotiates all of the Silicon Valley company’s deals with Hollywood. So he’s a perfect guy to bring onstage for our upcoming D: Dive Into Media conference, which is all about the confluence of tech and media.

And appearing onstage alongside Sarandos will be … well, we can’t come out and say who, exactly. (Believe us. We’d like to. And we will! But not today. Hollywood is an odd place.)

But we can tell you that it’s someone intimately involved in Arrested Development, the much-loved Fox comedy series that Netflix is reviving next year.

So that should be fun! And informative, too: Sarandos can explain what it’s like to haggle with partners who can’t figure out if they want to cash your checks, or kill you off, or both. And … person to be named later can explain what it’s like to create a big TV show for a digital-only audience. Among other things!

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

The Hardware Guys Meet the Content Guys: Intel's Huggers, Samsung's Eun Coming to D: Dive Into Media

Peter Kafka — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:00:15 +0000

At our D: Dive into Media conference in February, we’ll be talking to people who make amazing content, the people who make a living selling amazing content and the people who help distribute all of that stuff.

But if you want to figure out the future of media, you also have to talk to the people who make the boxes and gadgets you’ll use to consume all of that content.

That’s why we’re very happy to hear at Dive into Media from two heavyweights with important new roles: Intel’s Erik Huggers, corporate vice president at Intel Media, and Samsung’s David Eun, executive vice president for global media.

Intel’s chips have been powering entertainment boxes for a long time. Now the company is reportedly getting ready to plunge directly into the pay-TV business itself by trying to cut deals with cable programmers and rolling out a next-generation set-top box of its own.

Huggers, who used to run the BBC’s digital efforts, is heading up that push, but hasn’t talked about it publicly yet. For now, the company says his efforts are “focused on exploring new ways to access, interact with and share the latest in digital entertainment.” We’ll get a chance to figure out what that really means when he gets on our stage.

And Samsung is already a huge deal in the media world, given its position of power in both the TV and mobile markets. Eun, a tech and media veteran (Google, Time Warner, NBC, AOL), is supposed to leverage that clout to bring software and services to his company’s devices.

Now he’s trying to expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley, where he’s opening up a new outpost in an effort to build out digital content and services. His Dive appearance will be his first public opportunity to make his case to tech and media hotshots.

Huggers and Eun are joining an all-star lineup in February. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith.

And we’ve got more great names to announce very soon: Watch this space. In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference, which will be held Feb. 11 and 12 at the stunning Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.

More Heavy Hitters Sign On to D: Dive Into Media 2013 -- HBO's Kessler, Live Nation's Rapino Join the Cast

Peter Kafka — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:14:09 +0000

Last month, we announced our second Dive Into Media conference, and you guys told us you liked what you heard. Thanks! Here’s Act Two: We’ll have top executives from HBO and Live Nation joining us in February.

A reminder: Dive Into Media is our one-night-plus-one-day look at the way the media business is grappling with the challenges, and opportunities, that the whirling world of technology presents. That means thoughtful but lively conversations with a stellar cast of movers and shakers, and a chance to learn about new players, as well.

So far, we’ve announced that Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines President David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora and Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose will be joining us on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, just south of Los Angeles.

And here come two more moguls:

Eric Kessler is HBO’s co-president, and by the time you see him onstage, he’ll be the pay channel’s COO. He’s the guy who has mapped out HBO’s distribution and marketing strategy since 2007, which means he’s the guy behind the company’s much-praised HBO Go service/app. That also means he’s the guy to complain to when you insist that you want to watch “Game of Thrones” on your iPad without subscribing to cable. Kessler can explain why HBO says it has no interest in doing that — for now — even as it experiments with digital distribution outside the U.S.

Michael Rapino is the CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s most powerful events and ticketing company. Live Nation does more than $5 billion a year in revenue — if you sat in a concert hall, stadium or club in the last year, you probably contributed to his take. Even as digital has decimated other industries, live sports and music remain remarkably strong, which is why Rapino has lots of upstarts at his heels. He’s also trying to turn a company with famously creaky technology into a much more nimble player.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now, you can find registration information here.

HBO Digital Head Alison Moore Talks About HBO Go and More! (Video)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:26:23 +0000

Earlier this week, HBO co-Presidents Eric Kessler and Richard Plepler hosted a cocktail party in San Francisco, along with a screening of HBO’s latest original film, “Game Change.”

The idea of the event was to get the Time Warner-owned premium cable channel some much-needed cred among the tech press in Silicon Valley, as well as to talk up its slick and well-done streaming service, HBO Go.

Kessler said that HBO would soon be adding Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to the many connected devices to which HBO Go now distributes the channel’s content. So far, the HBO Go app has been downloaded six million times and is available via cable operators.

Alison Moore, SVP of digital platforms at HBO, talked about that and more in this video interview I did here:

[ See post to watch video ]

HBO Headed to iPad, but Not Netflix

John Paczkowski — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:17:42 +0000

Netflix (NFLX) subscribers hoping to stream HBO series through the company’s Watch Instantly service may have a long time to wait. The deal that would allow them to do so is looking increasingly more unlikely. Evidently HBO would prefer to keep its programming–along with films from Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures to which it holds the rights–to itself. “There is value in exclusivity,” HBO co-president Eric Kessler told Bloomberg. “[People] are willing to pay a premium for high quality, exclusive content.”

Especially if they’re cable subscribers. HBO has about 29 million of them, and they generated $3.9 billion in sales for the company last year. So rather than seek out new distribution outlets–even those willing to pay close to $1 billion for the privilege–the company plans to expand the ones it already has. Soon we’ll see the HBO Go online video service rolled out to all major cable providers and supported on new devices like Apple’s (AAPL) iPad. Which is great for current and future HBO subscribers, but disappointing for folks hoping to do all their video viewing through a single streaming service.

HBO Go Is Nice, But It Won't Help Cord Cutters

Peter Kafka — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:29:10 +0000

The new “HBO Go” site, which lets you watch some 600 hours of the pay cable service’s programming on the Web, looks nice.

And if you’re a Verizon (VZ) Fios TV subscriber and you pay for HBO, you’ll get access to it for free starting tomorrow. But if you don’t want to wait–and you’re both a Comcast (CMCSA) and HBO subscriber–you can go to Comcast’s Fancast.com and watch the same programming there. It’s all the same stuff.

So to be clear: HBO Go isn’t really a new service. It’s a new site and player*, which perches on top of the same “TV Everywhere” strategy parent company Time Warner (TWX) has been pushing for a year or so. Which you can boil down to: If you pay the cable guys to watch it on TV, they’ll let you watch it online, too.

You can debate the merits of this strategy and whether the programming guys would be better off selling their stuff directly to consumers and skipping the cable middlemen altogether all you want. But the cable-first strategy isn’t going to change anytime soon.

HBO’s aim is to be both “consumer friendly” and “affiliate friendly,” HBO co-president Eric Kessler explained today. Translation: The company wants to make sure it gets paid by the cable guys, who get paid by you and me.

But couldn’t there be some fee I could pay HBO to just go directly to the Web, even at a premium of the price for a regular TV subscription? Nope, says Kessler, who then repeats something you often hear from the cable TV industry:

“The scale of the audience that wants to watch HBO that isn’t buying television, it’s a very small audience.”

Meanwhile, HBO Go points out the difficulty would-be online competitors like Netflix (NFLX) and Apple (AAPL) et al will have providing consumers with what they want when they want it: A lot of the digital rights to the stuff they want are already locked up by the likes of HBO during various “windows.”

One other point: Networks like HBO and cable providers like Comcast both want to be the viewers’ gateway to online video, for obvious reasons. But viewers won’t care whether they’re watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO’s site or via Fancast; they just want to watch that episode where Marty Funkhouser tells Jerry Seinfeld a really dirty joke.

So someone–it could be the cable guys themselves or a start-up like Clicker–needs to build a comprehensive TV Guide for the Web. And then hope that they’re right about all those people who are happy to keep paying for TV.

*Because you now need to ask this with every consumer tech rollout: No, HBO Go won’t work on the iPad. Because the site’s player is built with Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, and Apple wants nothing to do with Flash.