HBO still means something in this town — and it should.

The letters officially stand for “Home Box Office,” but they really stand for “prestige TV.” In its heyday, HBO brought us “The Sopranos” and “The Wire,” and later “Veep.” More recently, “Game of Thrones” and “Succession” have been compiling viewers, subscribers, and Emmys. It’s been a good run that it is still running.

As dominant as HBO has been among the premium-cable (sometimes called “pay-TV”) competition, it has been forced to pivot to streaming — like everyone else.

HBO actually jumped into the streaming game earlier than you might think. HBO Go launched in 2010, and HBO Now launched in 2015. The real entrant to the growing market came in 2020 with HBO Max. At the time, Warner Bros. parent company WarnerMedia was still under AT&T. David Zaslav ended that era when he merged his Discovery, Inc. with WarnerMedia in April 2022. With the merger of media company came a merger of their streaming services. Soon, HBO Max was born (and initially ridiculed for its name).

Dropping the “HBO” was symbolic to many people in the creative community — and not in a good way. The HBO brand and the Max brand have since been further separated and individually defined. Basically, HBO is the home to dramatic tentpoles of a cinematic scope, made by television auteurs; Max serves a broader audience.