People have been telling HBO for years that they would pay for a stand-alone streaming subscription to the network — access unfettered from a cable or satellite television package. One of them is Jake Caputo, a Chicago-area web designer who created a website called Take My Money, HBO! in June 2012 to "bombard the @HBO and @HBOGO Twitter accounts with tweets stating how much money people would be willing to pay for a standalone HBO Go app," he wrote on his blog.
Last week, HBO's social media team began responding to those tweets — tweets in which people had told the company what they'd pay for a cable-TV-free HBO package, if only one were available. Some of them went as far back as the time when Caputo launched Take My Money, HBO! back in 2012.
HBO answered the call yesterday with the launch of HBO Now. The streaming service is currently available through Apple TV and iOS devices, as well as to subscribers of Cablevision's Optimum broadband internet, and will be released on Dish Network's Sling TV soon. An HBO Now subscription costs $14.99 per month.
Caputo and all his cohorts said they'd pay for HBO if they could. Now that they can, HBO brought back some enforcers to collect on those promises: Paulie Walnuts and Big Pussy Bonpensiero from The Sopranos. The company flew Caputo to New York so it could interview him about Take My Money, HBO! — and so the Soprano crime family's henchmen could hassle him for the cash in his wallet.
The Sopranos, along with tons of other HBO series, is available on HBO Now.