Dennis Hof, owner of the world-famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch is wondering
if the time has come to take his late-night Cathouse series from
HBO to another network.
Hof says the cable network has been skittish about promoting the
series, and is perplexed by the network's decision given the popularity
and high ratings of the show.
Hof shared his views on the situation recently, and had this to
say: "The Cathouse is out of the bag. HBO, because of the conservative
Republican environment, wanted me to low-key the marketing on this
show. They didn't want me to do things in Washington, D.C. They
didn't want me to do things in Baltimore. They wanted me to stay
away from television. They wanted me to just do radio and the Internet.
They wanted a type of underground marketing approach. This came
from HBO's p.r. people and the producers of the show. They gave
me no support at all. They wouldn't put out a press release. They
wouldn't give out any clips to any news media. They spent no money
outside of HBO. The only thing they did was market it within HBO.
"The interesting thing about this is that they're afraid of this
conservative environment, when a lot of their success comes from
their late-night programming. My point is why are they worried about
it when HBO is a premium channel?
"It's bad enough that you've got the FCC and the Bush administration
telling us what we can watch and listen to and all that. It's ironic
that what makes HBO so successful—the late-night and adult programming—is
something they don't want to talk about.
"We beat Entourage and The Comeback on HBO. Last week we also beat
the debut of FX Channel's Overcome. We also beat Monk on the USA
Channel. "HBO's late-night programming is doing real, real well,
but they won't tell anybody. Just imagine if they would have put
the same multi-million dollar marketing campaign that they use for
Entourage for Cathouse what kind of unbelievable results they would
have had. It would have been gigantic.
"HBO's trying to re-negotiate another year of shows with me. My
concern with them is, 'How can I re-negotiate another year with
HBO when they're not proud enough to tell anyone about my show being
a total success?' It's a smash hit. The show's like masturbation
to HBO—they like it a lot, and they want to do it more, but they
just don't want anyone to know about it.
"Is it time to take the Cathouse show to another network that will
be proud of it and promote it? Or is it time to take the show and
tone down the sex a little bit and do more of a mainstream version
of it somewhere else? Either one of those would work."