Come at the king … HBO changed TV for ever, but is its crown under threat in the age of streaming and Trump?

It gave us Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and The Wire. But as HBO Max comes to the UK and with new ownership imminent, the network that reinvented television is fighting to stay itself

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t’s not TV. It’s HBO.” It might have seemed like a hollow brag at the time, but this aggressively assertive tagline marked the beginning of a new era in small-screen entertainment. The slogan was a statement about what the US cable network aspired to be but, also, a tacit rejection of what most television still was in 1996. It seemed a brave opening salvo: after all, at that point, there wasn’t yet much basis for it.

HBO (Home Box Office) had begun life in 1972 as a subscription service touting a mixture of films and sport. But by the late 80s, this offering was growing stale; threatened by proliferating networks, the protectiveness of big studios and increasing competition. Original, made-for-TV content was the obvious way forward. But how to find a niche?

As streaming service HBO Max launches in the UK this month, a similar question could be asked, but for entirely different reasons. What, in 2026, is HBO’s niche? There is no shortage of potential platforms for so-called prestige television now. As a direct consequence of HBO’s trajectory over the past three decades, TV now has status and huge Hollywood names routinely appear on the small screen. But with Paramount’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, which owns HBO – and the suggestion that eventually HBO Max and Paramount’s streaming service could merge – can HBO retain its unique flavour?