Changing of the Guard: HBO's 2011 Dilemma, and Why Pacquiao-Mosley Suddenly Matters More

I’m going to get the Bradley-Alexander big preview up sometime on Wednesday. I figured I’d do something like this either Monday or today, and I didn’t want this to be the dominant thing on the site going into the fight weekend.

Arum’s quote above is precisely what I have understood their position to be.
It is not personal. It’s business.

HBO is a TV network and their executives have very little primary relationship and/or ‘feel’ for boxing. They are not boxing peolple. Moreover, like all executives, they look primarily at the bottom line and to cover their behinds.
That is simply how it is….and has been.

Todd de Bouf sees Boxing…with a capital B…. as a brand with a great history; one that has until recently been very much part of the mainstream. Not some kind os sideshow. His goal has been to get Boxing back into network TV. And like so many other ambitious business objectives, he has needed the right leverage to do so. In this case, it’s Manny Pacquiao.

If, and I say if because until it happens it’s still a bit premature to celebrate, Showtime ultimately uses CBS’s platform to promote Manny’s next fight, it will be a triumph for the sport.

Fingers crossed.

In the paragraph about Showtime’s upcoming fights, you have Froch-Dirrell instead of Froch-Johnson.

Great piece, though. It’ll be interesting to see if this gets HBO to realize that they could be doing so much better with the power and influence their wield.

As soon as this was reported, I kept thinking a lot of the same things you are saying here. This is a huge deal, and really one of those things where it’s hard to understate how much of a game changer it could be. HBO can put up whatever front they want, but they are on the verge of losing a very big piece of exclusive programming, and in very bad moods.

I just got done reading the write up buy Brent Brookhouse on Bloody Elbow about Pacquiao leaving HBO, He pretty much says HBO will have to do something and maybe that answer is MMA on HBO to take the spot of Pacquaio ? Maybe he has a point ? I can see HBO calling up the UFC/Zuffa and finally giving on there demands on wanting to produce the UFC and finally now sence they need something let Zuffa have full hands on in production ? I know Max kellerman said on his old ESPN radio show that was the only thing holding up the UFC on HBO was who would be in charge of production.

yeah man, forget hbo! they are giving us some trash. i always thought it was a conspiracy for years i couldn’t get my hands on a copy of taylor hopkins 1 & 2, nor taylor wright, and i think i kind of know why. hbo held on to those fights tight man, b/c if everyone saw it then it would see jermaine taylor, boxing’s savior in wake of de la hoya’s retiring, and the new hype of hbo getting battered around the ring, esp. in the wright fight. now, years later, when it doesn’t matter, i have a copy of it, and man does wright bang up the ‘new face of boxing" and outbox him. hbo hypes fighters and shoves it down our throats like some teenage pop idol. every story they hype up “has a great story”… victor ortiz, or anthony’s great story… then they call the fights distinctly biased towards one fighter until he gets knocked out (anthony peterson, victor ortiz, jermaine taylor etc.)… too bad he was knocked out, he was up by 500 pts on the scorecard. yeah, if hbo really cared about boxing, they’d recognize how big and important bradley alexander was, and would actually invest in a 30 min buildup show, or a 24/7, like they never did for mosley margarito, cotto clottey… the list goes on, yet they did 24/7 for maywather marquez. it’s not just about business man, it’s also about qualiyt, and show time has it man. fo’ sho!

Is it Top Rank or HBO? I’m wondering about this in respect to the CBS Fight Camp 360 shows, if HBO owns the rights to the footage how will CBS show highlights to demonstrate to the non-initiated how exciting Manny is? And if it’s the promoters who have the rights to archival footage will Golden Boy allow Shane’s fight footage to be used?

Wonderful work as usual!

People do like what they’re told to like. Network television and the media made a golfer the biggest sports star in the world.

Thomas Hauser’s article is really spot on about the decline of HBO Boxing since the mid-nineties. Through the 80’s and 90’s they really were like some Goldman-Sachs/Lehman Brothers “too big to fail” operation. But they show every sign of other huge businesses that fail. They lost touch with what their customers want and what their althletes and promoters need.

They also propped up a very stale production, including letting their commentators hang on way too long. Merchant’s act is as musty as they come these days, and he really has become a bitter, rotten old drunk. Lampley sometimes comes off like used car salesman, and other times seems like he is on the verge of a psychotic break. Does anyone really care about Harold Lederman’s scorecard anymore? It’s just another observer’s scorecard, and sometimes it’s flat out awful. Think about how long it took these guys to drop Lennox Lewis, who was painful to listen to?

I often find myself turning off the sound on my TV during an HBO broadcast. When I step back and think about that, it’s surreal. Their team is so terrible that I prefer to transport myself back in time 90 years, to the era of silent film, than to listen to the broadcast they spend so much money to produce. They could probably cut their costs by 75% to just keep the camera team in place, forego Lampley’s jeremiads about peaks and summits or Merchant’s creepy “insider humor” that is now so inside only he understands it.

It’s not just the team, though, it’s the entire format. If they want to answer Showtime, they need to dig back into the suggestion box and try some new ideas. They should really engage with the fans, invite guest commentary from other angles, and stop trying to invent “sensations” like Chris Arreola and Victor Ortiz. Part of what I like about Showtime is it is a very mature production that is geared towards adults, and doesn’t always seem like it is trying to capture this or that market.

I don’t know about the whole idea that lots of Americans consume garbage like "American Idol" and "Snooki," and therefore it should be easy to sell them on high quality boxing. That sounds a little to me like "these folks like Pop-tarts, Skittles and Jelly donuts, so I’m sure I’ll be able to sell them fillet minion and duck a l’orange."

Even in Britain, where the general demand for Boxing is much higher right now, it seems like the demand for quality fights isn’t necessarily there. I’m sure they have their own versions of "Snooki" and "Skittles" too. Didn’t American Idol start out as British Idol?

This is a great read. And it really makes me think of the possibilities of the boxing landscape. I think this is really good for us as fans… we’ll have to wait and see.

Seriously. I think it fits the criteria of good reporting.

Is Greenburg’s job in jeopardy right now? And if not, why not?

Hey Scott, now that BLH is a bigger blog and there are more people on staff, would you consider having a podcast? I ask because if you can’t do it yourself all the time, now you have other people that could fill that role as well. I really enjoy the analysis of this site, and I’m not one of those people that has internet on their phone, so in the gym or on the bus I could definitely listen to a boxing podcast.

not to toot my own horn but ive been saying how horrid hbo has been for 10 years, ive ranting on here for about 3 years about their horrid and bias commentary. they have an elitist snobbery about them i never ever liked. its now catching up to them.

they need a big big overhaul imo. now is the time. the writing is def on the wall.