\n\t\t\t\t\tHappiness and Crackhead are leading the charge for regional content on local streamer, but there are hopes to commission Australian titles.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
HBO Max is now over a year old in Australia and yet to announce an Australian commission.<\/p>\n
And while there are hopes to address that gap, so far it is New Zealand acquisitions which are leading the charge for regional content.<\/p>\n
John Beohm, Senior Director, Content HBO Max Australia & NZ, said, \u201cWe\u2019ve been really lucky to pick up some great New Zealand stuff. The New Zealanders are producing some really interesting and distinct content at the moment \u2013 we had Happiness Season One last year, and we will have Season Two later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Happiness stars Rebecca Gibney as the mother of Harry McNaughton, playing Charlie, a rising Broadway director who helps her amateur theatre production and features original songs by composer Luke Di Somma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a beautiful series. It\u2019s hard to pull off a musical, but I definitely think they\u2019ve done it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other one is Crackhead which again just feels if HBO had made a New Zealand show it would be Crackhead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creator Holly Shervey stars as party girl Frankie who enters a \u2018luxury\u2019 clinic but soon discovers that it\u2019s less sanctuary and more a run-down lock-up full of fellow misfits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt told a really distinct story. I almost got flashes of Wentworth a little bit when I was watching. I don\u2019t know if that one\u2019s returning, but we\u2019re really happy with how that\u2019s gone,\u201d says Beohm.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as HBO and Warner Brothers supply an amazing slate to us, there are still gaps in the schedule. We\u2019re out there trawling the world looking for distinctive, interesting content that can sit alongside HBO. Thankfully New Zealand\u2019s provided a few of them to us recently.\u201d<\/p>\n
That leaves an Australian commission as the next big turning point in the life of the local streamer.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously streaming quotas have come in, but it\u2019s always been our ambition to have local content. Whether it\u2019s Stan or Binge or anyone, I don\u2019t think any local service thinks they\u2019re going to reach their potential without local content. We feel the same. So, hopefully we\u2019ll have more to talk about soon,\u201d he assures.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile what is the HBO Max programming strategy for releasing content? Is it a binge drop or a week by week proposition?<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of content that we acquire or that we pick up, we\u2019re usually at the mercy of the home broadcaster.\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s rare that we would want to change that, just because everyone gets upset, and there\u2019s usually not a good enough reason to not go day and date with the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cHBO for 50 years, have been rolling out shows weekly but they\u2019ve continued that into the streaming world, and honestly, it\u2019s kind of my preferred way to watch a show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you actually can get a lot more buzz and noise out of a show by going weekly. I think about shows like Succession or Heated Rivalry, and if you just drop the whole thing at once, those really big moments will get lost. So, weekly is definitely our strategy at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
And when does premium content drop, is there a preferred day of the week or time of day?<\/p>\n
\u201cMost HBO content goes out Sunday night in America, so Monday morning in Australia. It\u2019s either between 11am and 1pm so it works out really well for us, in that you can watch it at lunch, or it\u2019s ready for you when you get home,\u201d says Beohm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only consistent thing that\u2019s different to that is our big films which usually go out, I think, at 3am in the US. So that means it\u2019s like 5pm the same day for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happiness and Crackhead are leading the charge for regional content on local streamer, but there are hopes to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-766769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}