HBO Sets Up Digital Shop in Seattle
Cable TV service Home Box Office is opening its first dedicated software-development office to work on mobile apps and other digital products. But HBO's new techie outpost isn't in Silicon Valley but instead in Seattle.
Context & Ripple Effects
HBO's move from licensing its brand on devices to writing its own code has been a decade-long drift: mobile HBO plans surfaced as early as 2008, and by 2010 the network was preparing a site to stream shows and movies directly. The HBO Go apps for iOS, Android and Xbox followed in 2011–2012, but the engineering behind them was never HBO's own trade.
The Seattle office is the first time HBO commits to dedicated, in-house software development — and notably outside Silicon Valley, where Amazon and Microsoft's engineering base gives it a hiring pool. It lands three months after HBO made the Nordic region its first market where programming is sold without a pay-TV subscription, a sign the network is building the technical muscle that direct-to-consumer distribution demands.
First-order effects
- HBO's app roadmap — HBO Go updates, new mobile products — moves under its own roof, ending reliance on outside contractors for the products subscribers touch daily.
- Seattle's engineering market gains a premium-TV employer bidding against Amazon and Microsoft for mobile developers.
Second-order effects
- In-house capability makes it cheaper for HBO to run experiments like the Nordic no-cable offering in more markets, pressuring US cable distributors whose exclusivity HBO Go still depends on.
- Rival premium networks and Netflix face an arms race for entertainment-software talent, raising engineer compensation across both coasts' media-tech hubs.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, premium networks structurally become software companies — with Game of Thrones already the most pirated show of 2012 precisely because non-subscribers lack an easy legal route, owning the codebase is the precondition for selling directly to viewers the cable bundle doesn't reach.
The trend: Premium television is internalizing software development as distribution shifts from the cable bundle toward apps and direct-to-consumer services.