Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s no secret that it’s been a bumpy few months for the Home Box Office. In February, reports circulated that their much ballyhooed HBO Now streaming service wasn’t adding subscribers as quickly as they had anticipated. In April, the showrunners of Game Of Thrones, far and away the network’s biggest attraction, admitted that there will only be 13 more episodes until they pull the plug on the show. In May, longtime programming chief Michael Lombardo left the company (under alleged duress). In June, the network cancelled Vinyl, a program they had blown over $100MM creating and marketing, after just one season. So what’s going to stem the tide?
Well, it looks as if HBO might have a huge hit on their hands with The Night Of, a limited series event that our own Meghan O’Keefe has described as “your new crime obsession this summer.” The show officially premieres this Sunday night at 9PM, but you don’t have to wait that long to watch it; The Night Of has been available to watch on HBO Now, HBO Go and various on-demand platforms since June 24. Yesterday, The Wrap reported that the show has already been viewed over 1.5 million times across these various platforms, making it HBO’s most-watched show last week behind the Game Of Thrones finale.
More impressively, these pre-linear viewing numbers represent a record for the premium cable network. This kind of early success bodes very well for the show, the network, and their burgeoning digital strategy; factor in the critical praise for the show —92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing— and it looks as if The Night Of will become yet another addition to our current golden age of crime television.
