If you are a loyal HBO “Veep” viewer, you know Matt Walsh’s “Mike” character as the lovably inept communications director for Vice President Selina Meyer. After this morning, HBO executives might not be loving him as much.
“Or get your friends HBOGO number, you don’t even have to get it you know,” Walsh said in response to Fox News’ Steve Doocy urging people to watch the show on HBO or HBOGO.
“They’re going to hate you for saying that,” Fox News’ Anna Kooiman jokingly said to Walsh. “Stop it!” he joked back.
The exchange was all in good fun, but Walsh’s joke highlights a wider issue for HBO, both in losing potential customers who can just borrow their friends or families password, or angry paying customers when the network crashes.
As we reported in March, HBOGO crashed during the “True Detective” season finale; HBO said the outage was due to “overwhelmingly popular demand,” which they’re right about–there’s a lot more demand, when more and more non-paying people can log into the streaming service.
HBO’s CEO said “it has no real effect on the business” earlier this year, suggesting the non-paying HBOGO password stealers might be more inclined to subscribe to HBO when they can afford it.