The slump at HBO is apparently over.
“True Blood,” HBO’s vampire series in its second season, is pulling the channel out of a slump that began after a number of hit shows ended.
Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin in “True Blood,” a departure from the more ethically complex series HBO has run in the past.
In “True Blood,” the pay cable giant has its first hit since “Rome,” and the numbers indicate it may be the biggest thing on the channel since “The Sopranos.” If that sounds surprising, it may be because few saw it coming — inside HBO or out.
In the three episodes measured so far this, its second, season, “True Blood” has amassed viewer totals that any network, including broadcast networks, would be excited to own: 12.1 million, 10 million and 10.3 million. And HBO has attracted those viewers from an audience base about a third the size of fully distributed networks.
“This is hopefully a long-running franchise for us,” said Michael Lombardo, the president of programming for HBO.
In just about every way “True Blood” is a buoyant story for a network that needed one. Two years ago, the channel removed Chris Albrecht, the company chief executive, who had been widely credited as the creative mastermind behind the string of commercial or critical series successes at the network, including “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City,” “Six Feet Under” and “The Wire.” (Mr. Albrecht was fired after being charged with domestic abuse in Las Vegas.) Since then, the network has been fending off charges that its once vaunted programming lineup was a thing of the past.
The new creative team, headed by Richard Plepler and Mr. Lombardo, began with a cupboard mostly barren, as shows like “John From Cincinnati” failed to catch fire and one long-running quality drama, “Big Love,” had to overcome tepid support from the previous regime.
Rivals like Showtime, which had their own string of critical successes with “Weeds” and “Nurse Jackie,” began using a new term for the network: “HB-Over.”
By most evaluations, from critics and many of HBO’s own executives, “True Blood” is a different kind of series. Whereas “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” were dramatically and ethically complex, the artistic aspirations of “True Blood” seem on the surface less ambitious, as the show’s creator, Alan Ball, conceded.
“When I first pitched it, I said it’s popcorn television,” Mr. Ball said. “It has a lot going on beneath the surface, and I love the layers because I love to write layered stories. But I love the popcorn part of ‘True Blood.’ It’s just really great fun.”
He also acknowledged the elemental reason the show works: “Women love the storytelling and the romance, and men love the sex and violence.”
There is no direct relationship between successful shows on HBO and the network’s subscription base; that has remained relatively stable (about 29 million to 30 million) through the feast years of “The Sopranos” and the famine that followed.
But hit series are what keeps up HBO’s reputation as being talked-about around the water cooler, which is one crucial part of its business model. HBO’s profit is estimated at $1.3 billion a year.
The first signs that “True Blood” was working were evident in DVD sales of the first season, which, according to HBO executives, reached about one million, again HBO’s highest for a series since “The Sopranos.”
Then there is the book series, featuring the central character Sookie Stackhouse, on which the show is based. The novels by Charlaine Harris, undoubtedly fueled by interest from the television version, occupied seven spots of the top 20 on the most recent New York Times mass market paperback list.
And already the series seems to be a ratings rainmaker for HBO. A new comedy, “Hung,” which followed “True Blood” on Sunday nights, amassed more than seven million viewers in its first week.
This season, “True Blood” has a first-run Sunday night audience of about 3.6 million, up from two million for last season.
HBO counts audiences across all the platforms that wind up offering the episodes: a repeat on HBO itself, repeats on HBO2 and its video-on-demand channel, replays on digital video recorders and downloads from iTunes.That is how the numbers grow to more than 10 million. (For perspective, “The Sopranos” finished its first run with a Sunday night audience of 11.9 million, which grew to 14.2 million with the extra viewers added in.
Showtime, HBO’s chief pay-cable competitor, draws much smaller audiences for its hits: about 3.3 million viewers this year (including all platforms) for the long-running comedy “Weeds,” and about 3.1 million for the critically lauded new half-hour series “Nurse Jackie” which features Edie Falco, a former “Sopranos” star.
Mr. Plepler and Mr. Lombardo began their tenures knowing that they had a series coming from Mr. Ball, the creator of “Six Feet Under.” There were only two problems: because Mr. Ball had other commitments, they would have to wait more than a year between the time the pilot was commissioned and when the series would be seen; and the new series was about vampires.
Mr. Lombardo conceded that the first reaction at the network was: “A vampire show? Really?” But, he said, HBO had a record of backing creators it believed in, so Mr. Ball was given the go-ahead.
The show — which owes a lot to what some people do with their teeth — might not have existed at all if not for a dental appointment. Mr. Ball turned up early for one, noticed a Barnes and Noble bookstore across the street and, to kill a bit of time, wandered in and started perusing the mystery and horror shelves.
He spotted a slim volume called “Dead Until Dark,” and found himself enthralled. “I’d try to get to bed knowing I had to be up at 6 a.m., to work on ‘Six Feet Under,’ and decide I’d just read one chapter,” Mr. Ball said. “I’d end up reading seven.”
The reason, Mr. Ball said, was “the stories, which were exciting and sexy and violent and romantic.” As a Georgia native, he said he also liked that they were “authentically Southern, not cartoon Southern.”
Mr. Ball picked up the rest of the books Ms. Harris had already written. “I decided this was a television series,” Mr. Ball said. “It had elements of the Saturday matinee serial. It had elements of ‘Tobacco Road.’ It had elements of big gothic romance, and even social satire.”
To demonstrate to HBO what he wanted to do with the series, Mr. Ball wrote the first three episodes before he went off to direct his film “Nothing Is Private.”
“Alan Ball really knows how to write really interesting characters,” said David Baldwin, the executive vice president for program planning for HBO. “He can take a milieu and make it his own.”
Of course, as Mr. Baldwin pointed out, it did not hurt that “True Blood” came along exactly as another vampire series, the “Twilight” books and film, was exploding.
“I’d never even heard of the ‘Twilight’ books when we got started,” Mr. Ball said. But he added he is perfectly willing to run with the trend.
“It is sort of vampire time,” he said.
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