HBO became boxing’s house network, its shadow promoter, its bank teller. The network, Miller notes, scored a coup. But HBO promised to air the fight in prime time. HBO offered promoter Don King a smaller fee for the fight ($125,000 versus an alleged $750,000 from ABC). In 1979, ABC wanted to stash a heavyweight championship bout between Larry Holmes and Mike Weaver on a Saturday afternoon. HBO arrived at the perfect time to grab boxing. It was the Fox network’s good luck to rise up in the ’90s when NFL rights were ripe for the taking. A Paul Newman movie aired after the game. The network’s first program of any kind was a New York Rangers–Vancouver Canucks game called by announcer Marty Glickman. “In programming, our primary interest is in live, professional sports,” Charles Dolan, who helped create the network, wrote in a memo before HBO went on the air in 1972. One of the surprises of Miller’s book is how much of early HBO was built on sports, rather than movies or TV dramas. Bill Simmons had a show on HBO in 2016, and continues to produce documentaries for the network.) (Disclosure: HBO was an early investor in The Ringer. As far back as the ’80s, HBO Sports had a pleasant, we’re-all-adults-here vibe. Airing on premium cable without commercials, its boxing and tennis and studio shows ( Inside the NFL, Costas Now) felt like bonuses. For 50 years, game rights have been dominated by well-heeled networks and ESPN. To understand what made HBO Sports unique, you have to understand its place in the world of TV. HBO Sports isn’t the same division it was when Tyson was annihilating challengers with nicknames like “Blood” and “The Truth.” Just as he did in his ESPN book, Those Guys Have All the Fun, Miller put announcers, producers, and executives on the record to find out why. But as Miller was working on the book, HBO abandoned boxing coverage after more than four decades. In his heyday, Tyson was as important to HBO as Cersei Lannister and Tony Soprano.įor his new book, Tinderbox, James Andrew Miller reported on the rise of HBO as a prestige-drama factory. When HBO executives contemplated giving Tyson a $60 million contract extension, it barely merited a discussion. In 1989, long before HBO created The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, 20 percent of subscribers said they paid for HBO to see Tyson. When naming HBO’s greatest antiheroes, it’s easy to forget Mike Tyson.
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