HBO

Quick Take

HBO's late-night political identity is recognizably left of center, but it is not uniform. John Oliver anchors the progressive slot Sunday nights, while Bill Maher has hosted his Friday show since 2003: a liberal who regularly books conservative guests, opposes progressives on issues like trans inclusion in women's sports, and has been one of the loudest Democratic critics of his own party since the 2024 election. HBO does not market itself as politically branded the way Fox News or MSNBC do; its lean shows up through editorial choices in series, documentaries, and host selection rather than through explicit political positioning. There is no comparably durable conservative-hosted weekly program on the network. The prestige drama slate routinely features LGBTQ+ storylines that have drawn organized review-bombing campaigns, and the documentary slate (Allen v. Farrow, Q: Into the Storm, The Truth vs. Alex Jones, Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn) includes several titles operating from a left-of-center editorial vantage on contemporary political subjects. The corporate parent reads more centrist than the content brand: WBD itself states that its federal PAC giving is split "approximately evenly between the two major political parties," and the company's $4.86 million in aggregated 2024-cycle contributions is dominated by individual employee giving rather than corporate or PAC outlays.[3] All of this is now framed by the pending acquisition by Paramount Skydance, which has been characterized in trade press as a move toward less liberal editorial slant across the combined company; Paramount CEO David Ellison has said publicly that "HBO should stay HBO" under new ownership.[4]

Public Political Activity

OpenSecrets reports that Warner Bros. Discovery's aggregated 2024-cycle political contributions totaled $4,855,545.[3] That figure aggregates three different things and is easy to misread: it combines (a) WBD's federal PAC contributions to candidates and committees, (b) individual political contributions of $200 or more reported by donors who list WBD as employer, and (c) contributions from WBD subsidiaries. The vast majority of the $4.86 million figure is individual employee giving rather than corporate-controlled outlays.

Looking specifically at the PAC: Warner Brothers Discovery PAC (FEC ID C00719393) raised $59,238 in the 2023-2024 cycle and contributed $38,800 to federal candidates and committees in the same window.[5] WBD publicly committed in May 2023, in a letter to the New York State Common Retirement Fund, to disclose its political contribution practices following a shareholder proposal from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.[6] WBD's disclosure language, as captured during the 2024-cycle reporting period, stated that PAC contributions "are generally split approximately evenly between the two major political parties over the course of an election cycle" and that corporate funds are not contributed to federal candidates. The 2024-cycle FEC recipient data on OpenSecrets corroborates the bipartisan split in practice.[5]

WBD's 2024 federal lobbying expenditures were $3,140,000 across the year.[3] Lobbying disclosure filings show this activity is concentrated on telecommunications policy, intellectual property, antitrust, streaming and content regulation, sports broadcast rights, and related industry-specific issues rather than on partisan or ideological agenda items.

A 2024 analysis by the conservative-aligned 1792 Exchange reviewed major-entertainment-company executive donation patterns and reported that "top brass" at the largest entertainment firms collectively donated approximately three times more to Democratic candidates and committees than to Republicans in their personal capacity.[7] This pattern aligns with the broader political-donation tendency of the U.S. media and entertainment industry, where employee giving has skewed Democratic for years per OpenSecrets aggregated industry data. In that industry context, HBO's content-employee composition is typical rather than unusual; what distinguishes the network is the editorial visibility of those tendencies in the programming itself.

The two layers worth distinguishing: WBD as a corporate entity (PAC, lobbying, official positions) reads centrist by design. WBD as a workforce (individual giving by executives and employees aggregated by employer) skews Democratic by a wide margin. HBO sits inside that workforce, not the PAC.

Public Positions & Statements

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) rebranding, February 2025. On February 27, 2025, weeks after the Trump administration's executive order on DEI in federal agencies and amid a corresponding wave of corporate-DEI rebranding across major media companies, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would rename its DEI function to "Inclusion."[8] The internal memo, sent by chief inclusion officer Asif Sadiq (whose previous title was chief global diversity, equity and inclusion officer) and chief people and culture officer Jennifer Remling, framed the change as legal compliance rather than substantive retreat. The memo stated: "Our overarching work in this space will now be referred to as Inclusion... making this change better aligns our language with our focus throughout our company, in our industry and across our content."[8] The company also said it would adopt a "uniform and consistent application process" across talent programs.

Where WBD's framing differed from peers: Paramount's parallel announcement explicitly cited the Trump executive order with words like "require," "must," and "comply," and Paramount eliminated certain race and gender hiring data collection entirely.[9] WBD's memo cited only "the evolving legal landscape in the United States and around the world" and explicitly reaffirmed commitments to "diverse voices, perspectives and experiences" in content and to building an "inclusive team." That is a more cautious retreat than Paramount's or Disney's parallel moves, with HBO's content side largely unaffected by the corporate language change.[10]

David Zaslav, "Republicans are back on the air," May 2023. WBD CEO David Zaslav has made repeated public statements about wanting CNN, a WBD property, to be perceived as less left-leaning. In May 2023, Zaslav publicly celebrated the booking of more Republican guests on CNN, saying a major push continued to shift the network's perception as "left leaning."[11] These comments concerned CNN specifically; CNN is a separate WBD brand from HBO and is slated to remain with the Discovery Global / Global Networks side of the corporate split rather than the Streaming & Studios side that contains HBO.

Paramount Skydance acquisition and the future of HBO programming. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison addressed HBO's editorial independence in a March 2026 investor call. Ellison said: "Casey Bloys and his team do a remarkable job at HBO. We plan for that to operate with independence so that HBO can, candidly, do what it does incredibly well. Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. They built a phenomenal brand."[4] Industry analysts have noted that the deal places HBO under ownership backed financially by the Ellison family (Oracle founder Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, current CEO of Paramount Skydance), and some trade-press commentators have framed the acquisition as a shift toward less liberal editorial slant across the combined company.[12] As of May 2026 the deal is shareholder-approved but not yet regulator-cleared, so the operational impact on HBO programming has not yet been tested.

Programming choices that have functioned as public positions. HBO's content slate has drawn organized political opposition multiple times in recent years:

• The Last of Us (2023, ongoing) has been review-bombed by online groups over its Episode 3 gay romance arc (Bill and Frank, played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett) and over its inclusion of trans character Lev in the second-game-adapted material. Lead actor Bella Ramsey told GQ that critics complaining about the LGBTQ storylines should "get used to it."[13]
• Euphoria (2019, ongoing) centers in part on a trans character, Jules, played by Hunter Schafer.[14]
• Allen v. Farrow (2021) documented the sexual-assault allegations against Woody Allen from a vantage explicitly sympathetic to the Farrow family's account; critics on the right and within film criticism noted the documentary did not give equal time to Allen's defenders.[15]
• Q: Into the Storm (2021) examined the QAnon movement from a critical, anti-conspiracy vantage point.[16]
• The Truth vs. Alex Jones (2024) covered the Sandy Hook defamation case from the families' vantage.
• Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019) documented Cohn's career as McCarthy aide and later Trump mentor.

The recurring pattern across these scripted dramas and documentaries is that HBO has greenlit and supported programming that elevates LGBTQ+ storylines and engages contemporary political controversies from a perspective sympathetic to the left. HBO does not publish formal ideological programming criteria, and the rating evidence here is the cumulative pattern of programming choices, not a network editorial doctrine.

Products & Services

HBO operates as both a linear premium cable channel and the HBO Max streaming service. The linear channel carries first-run originals, theatrical movies, documentaries, and live event programming. The HBO Max streaming service carries HBO's full library plus Warner Bros. studio content, DC films, the Harry Potter library, Discovery and HGTV factual programming, and additional Max Originals. After a confusing branding cycle in which the streaming service launched as "HBO Max" in May 2020, was rebranded to "Max" in May 2023, and reverted to "HBO Max" globally on July 9, 2025, the current consumer-facing brand is HBO Max.[17][18] As of May 2026, HBO Max offers three tiers: Basic With Ads at $10.99/month, Standard at $18.49/month, and Premium at $22.99/month, with discounted annual plans available at each level. Pricing changes periodically.

Current and recent flagship originals include House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, The White Lotus, Euphoria, Industry, The Gilded Age, The Penguin, True Detective, Hacks, and Somebody Somewhere. A Harry Potter television series is in development, with HBO content chief Casey Bloys publicly noting more than 32,000 child actors auditioned for the lead roles.[19]

Founding & Ownership

HBO was launched on November 8, 1972, by Sterling Communications (then controlled by Time Inc.), making it the longest-continuously-operating subscription television service in the United States. Charles Dolan is credited as the founder; the formal corporate entity Home Box Office, Inc. was incorporated February 28, 1973. The first broadcast was an NHL hockey game between the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks transmitted to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, followed by the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion.[17][20]

The corporate parent has changed multiple times: Time Inc. (founding) then Time Warner (after 1990 stock-swap merger), then AT&T (June 2018 acquisition, renamed WarnerMedia), then Warner Bros. Discovery (April 8, 2022 spinoff and merger with Discovery Inc., led by current WBD CEO David Zaslav). Richard Plepler, the long-serving HBO CEO most associated with the network's prestige-drama era through the mid-2010s, stepped down in February 2019 after a 27-year tenure following AT&T's acquisition.[17]

Current content leadership is Casey Bloys, who has been at HBO since 2004 and has served as chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content since the 2020 WarnerMedia restructuring expanded his programming purview to include the streaming service.[21] Bloys is the most senior HBO-specific executive and oversees all HBO and Max Originals: series, documentaries, comedies, and specials.

The pending Paramount Skydance acquisition. On February 27, 2026, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Paramount Skydance will acquire all of WBD for $31.00 per share in cash to shareholders, valuing the company at $81 billion in equity and approximately $110 billion in enterprise value when WBD's existing debt is included; the $31.00 share price represents a 147% premium to WBD's unaffected stock price. The transaction is funded by $47 billion in equity (backed by the Ellison Family and RedBird Capital Partners) and $54 billion in debt commitments from Bank of America, Citigroup, and Apollo.[1][22] The deal effectively scrapped WBD's previously announced plan, dating to June 2025, to split itself into two separate publicly traded companies (Warner Bros. and Discovery Global).[23] WBD shareholders approved the merger on April 23, 2026, by a wide margin.[2] The deal is expected to close in Q3 2026 by September 30, 2026, subject to U.S. and European regulatory approval, with a $0.25-per-share quarterly "ticking fee" payable to shareholders if closing slips past that date. David Ellison, current CEO of Paramount Skydance, will lead the combined company. The Ellison family, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is providing financial backing for the transaction.[24]

Recent News

The most material development is the Paramount Skydance acquisition described above. Two secondary developments worth noting:

HBO Max recommitment to identity, late 2025. Casey Bloys publicly signaled a return to HBO's prestige-brand strategy after the period of streaming-wars volume competition, telling Puck in mid-2025 that the streaming arms race was "over" and that HBO Max would prioritize fewer, higher-quality originals over volume.[25] This is operationally significant rather than political, but it reinforces the editorial identity HBO has built rather than diluting it ahead of the ownership change.

John Oliver's on-air reaction to the acquisition. On the March 1, 2026 episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver made clear that he was unhappy with the announced acquisition. Bill Maher has not publicly opposed the deal; he is under contract with HBO through 2028.[4]

Where to Find Them

• Official site: https://www.hbo.com
• Streaming service: HBO Max, available in three tiers as of May 2026: Basic With Ads ($10.99/month), Standard ($18.49/month), and Premium ($22.99/month), with discounted annual plans available
• Available via direct subscription and through most U.S. cable, satellite, and virtual MVPD providers
• Internationally available via HBO Max across 39 territories in Latin America and the Caribbean and 25 countries in Iberia, France, Benelux, the Nordics, and Central and Eastern Europe, with additional market launches planned for 2026[2]

Footnotes

[1] Joe Flint, Jessica Toonkel, and Lauren Thomas, The Wall Street Journal, "Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery Reach Merger Deal," February 27, 2026. (Coverage of definitive merger agreement.)

[2] National Public Radio, "Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve $110B merger with Paramount Skydance," April 23, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/23/nx-s1-5793628/warner-bros-discovery-paramount-skydance-merger

[3] OpenSecrets.org, "Warner Brothers Discovery Profile: Summary," accessed May 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/warner-brothers-discovery/summary?id=D000094854

[4] Bobby Burack, OutKick, "What Does Paramount-WBD Deal Mean for HBO's John Oliver and Bill Maher?", March 2, 2026. https://www.outkick.com/analysis/what-does-paramount-wbd-deal-mean-hbos-john-oliver-bill-maher

[5] OpenSecrets.org, "Warner Brothers Discovery PAC Contributions to Federal Candidates," accessed May 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/warner-brothers-discovery/C00719393/candidate-recipients/2024

[6] Andrew Ramonas, Bloomberg Law, "Warner Bros. to Reveal Political Spending After NY Fund Proposal," May 8, 2023. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/warner-bros-to-reveal-political-spending-after-ny-fund-proposal

[7] 1792 Exchange, "Corporate Bias Ratings Report: Warner Bros. Discovery," updated April 2, 2024. https://1792exchange.com/company/warner-bros-discovery/

[8] Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, "Warner Bros. Discovery Will Refer to DEI Efforts As 'Inclusion'," February 27, 2025. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/warner-bros-discovery-dei-efforts-inclusion-trump-mandate-1236149287/

[9] Todd Spangler, Variety, "Warner Bros. Discovery Renames DEI Group to Refer Only to 'Inclusion'," February 27, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/biz/news/warner-bros-discovery-scale-back-dei-inclusion-1236322594/

[10] Loree Seitz, The Wrap, "Warner Bros. Discovery Renames DEI Group to Focus Solely on Inclusion," February 27, 2025. https://www.thewrap.com/warner-bros-discovery-renames-dei-group/

[11] Ted Johnson, Deadline, "'Republicans Are Back On The Air' On CNN, Cheers Warner Bros. Discovery Chief David Zaslav," May 18, 2023. https://deadline.com/2023/05/cnn-republicans-warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-1235371510/

[12] Wikipedia, "Proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance," accessed May 14, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_acquisition_of_Warner_Bros._Discovery_by_Paramount_Skydance

[13] Sandy Schaefer, SlashFilm, "Bella Ramsey Says Critics Of The Last Of Us's LGBTQ Storylines Should 'Get Used To It'," February 5, 2023. https://www.slashfilm.com/1198698/bella-ramsey-says-critics-of-the-last-of-uss-lgbtq-storylines-should-get-used-to-it/

[14] GLAAD, "Where We Are on TV: Summary of Cable Findings 2023-2024," accessed May 14, 2026. https://glaad.org/whereweareontv23/summary-of-cable-findings/

[15] Sam Adams, Slate, "Allen v. Farrow's Directors on How Making the Series Changed Their Minds About What Really Happened," March 15, 2021. https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/woody-allen-mia-farrow-hbo-documentary-interview.html

[16] Wikipedia, "Q: Into the Storm," accessed May 14, 2026. (Documentary background and reception.)

[17] Wikipedia, "HBO," accessed May 14, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBO

[18] Wikipedia, "Home Box Office, Inc.," accessed May 14, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Box_Office,_Inc.

[19] Variety, "Casey Bloys," accessed May 14, 2026. https://variety.com/exec/casey-bloys/

[20] New-York Historical Society, "HBO in the Archives: The Early Days of a Groundbreaking Network," July 21, 2023. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/hbo-in-the-archives

[21] Warner Bros. Discovery, "Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content," accessed May 14, 2026. https://www.wbd.com/leadership/casey-bloys

[22] Warner Bros. Discovery, "Warner Bros. Discovery Sets Shareholder Meeting Date of April 23, 2026 to Approve Transaction with Paramount Skydance," March 26, 2026. https://www.wbd.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-sets-shareholder-meeting-date-april-23-2026-approve-transaction

[23] Warner Bros. Discovery, "Warner Bros. Discovery to Separate into Two Leading Media Companies," June 9, 2025. https://www.wbd.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-separate-two-leading-media-companies

[24] Dade Hayes and Jill Goldsmith, Deadline, "Warner Bros Discovery To Split Into Two Companies, Streaming & Studios And Global Networks," June 10, 2025. https://deadline.com/2025/06/warner-bros-discovery-to-split-into-two-companies-1236427927/

[25] Matthew Belloni, Puck, "Casey Bloys on Moving HBO/Max Past the Streaming Wars," May 2, 2025. https://puck.news/casey-bloys-on-moving-hbo-max-past-the-streaming-wars/