HBO Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
50 free HBO trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
HBO started on November 8, 1972, with a hockey game beamed to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Half a century later it is shorthand for prestige television. This quiz covers both halves of that story: the network itself, from Charles Dolan's 'Green Channel' proposal, the first satellite broadcast and the 'HBO in Space' intro to Sunday nights and the end of HBO Boxing, and the shows that built its reputation. Expect questions on Oz, The Larry Sanders Show, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Band of Brothers, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Veep, Chernobyl, Succession, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon and more, plus a few on Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street for the family side. Difficulty runs from easy questions any subscriber will get to details for people who've read the whole history. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do the letters HBO stand for?
Home Box Office
HBO stands for Home Box Office, a name chosen to suggest a box-office ticket to first-run movies and live events you could watch at home.
Q 02In what year did HBO launch?
1972
HBO launched in 1972, going live on the evening of November 8 to a single small cable system in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Q 03What was HBO's very first broadcast?
An NHL game between the Rangers and Canucks
An NHL game between the Rangers and Canucks, played at Madison Square Garden, opened HBO's first night; the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion followed straight after.
Q 04Roughly how many subscribers received HBO's first-night broadcast?
365
Roughly 365 subscribers, all on one Service Electric cable system in northeastern Pennsylvania, received HBO's first night of programming.
Q 05Which cable executive came up with the idea for HBO while on a family vacation aboard the QE2?
Charles Dolan
Charles Dolan, whose Sterling Manhattan Cable was losing money, sketched the pay-TV idea on a 1971 ocean voyage and persuaded Time Inc. to keep backing him.
Q 06What was the codename for the HBO proposal before it got its name?
The Green Channel
The Green Channel was the working name of the pay-TV proposal; Time Inc. approved development money in 1971, and the service was renamed before launch.
Q 07Which 1975 boxing match was the first HBO program broadcast via satellite?
The Thrilla in Manila
The Thrilla in Manila, Ali vs. Frazier on September 30, 1975 (US date), was HBO's first satellite-delivered program and the start of its continuous satellite feed to cable systems.
Q 08Which sister channel did HBO launch in 1980 as a movie-focused companion service?
Cinemax
Cinemax launched on August 1, 1980 as HBO's movie-heavy sister service, owned by the same parent and drawing on the same studio film deals.
Q 09Which company owned HBO in 2024?
Warner Bros. Discovery
Warner Bros. Discovery owned HBO throughout 2024, having formed in April 2022 when WarnerMedia merged with Discovery, Inc.
Q 10On which night of the week did HBO air new episodes of The Sopranos?
Sunday
Sunday night became HBO's signature slot once The Sopranos settled there in 1999; broadcast networks had long treated the night as secondary.
Q 11Which comedian headlined 14 HBO stand-up specials between 1977 and 2008?
George Carlin
George Carlin taped 14 HBO specials, from On Location: George Carlin at USC in 1977 to It's Bad for Ya in 2008, the last airing months before his death.
Q 12Whose 1992 Bucharest concert set the record for HBO's highest-rated special?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's Dangerous Tour stop in Bucharest aired on HBO in October 1992 and drew a 21.4 rating, the highest for any special in the channel's history to that point.
Q 13Which sports show, launched in 1977, became HBO's longest-running program at 31 seasons?
Inside the NFL
Q 21Who created The Sopranos?
David Chase
David Chase created The Sopranos, drawing on his own New Jersey upbringing; HBO ordered the pilot in 1997 and the series ran 86 episodes from 1999 to 2007.
Q 22The Wire set each of its five seasons around a different institution in which city?
Baltimore
Baltimore was David Simon's home turf as a Sun reporter; the five seasons took on the drug trade, the port, city hall, the schools and the newspaper in turn.
Q 23Sex and the City was based on a newspaper column and 1996 book by whom?
Candace Bushnell
Candace Bushnell wrote the 'Sex and the City' column for The New York Observer; her 1996 collection of the pieces was adapted by Darren Star into the series, which ran from 1998 to 2004.
Inside the NFL debuted on HBO in 1977 and ran 31 seasons there before Showtime picked it up in 2008.
Q 14In what year did HBO end its boxing telecasts after 45 years?
2018
HBO aired its final boxing card in December 2018, 45 years after its first bout, with executives saying the channel was no longer a sports network.
Q 15Which children's show did HBO acquire first-run rights to in 2015, taking it from PBS?
Sesame Street
Sesame Street moved its first-run window to HBO under a 2015 deal, with PBS airing episodes months later; Netflix took over the first-run rights in 2025.
Q 16Which Jim Henson puppet series was co-produced by HBO in the 1980s?
Fraggle Rock
Fraggle Rock ran on HBO from 1983 to 1987 and was built from the start as an international co-production with Britain's TVS and Canada's CBC.
Q 17Which HBO comedy stars Danny McBride as a member of a televangelist family?
The Righteous Gemstones
The Righteous Gemstones, which premiered on HBO in 2019, stars Danny McBride as Jesse Gemstone, eldest son of a televangelist dynasty headed by John Goodman's Eli Gemstone.
Q 18Which 1997 prison drama was HBO's first one-hour dramatic series?
Oz
Oz, created by Tom Fontana, premiered in July 1997 as HBO's first hour-long drama series and ran six seasons inside the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility.
Q 19Garry Shandling's 1990s HBO sitcom was set behind the scenes of what?
A late-night talk show
A late-night talk show is the setting of The Larry Sanders Show, where celebrities played exaggerated versions of themselves as Larry's guests across six seasons from 1992 to 1998.
Q 20Which sitcom by the future Friends creators punctuated scenes with old black-and-white TV clips?
Dream On
Dream On was created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane for HBO in 1990, four years before Friends, and ran until 1996 using Universal's library of old TV clips.
Q 24Six Feet Under followed a family that ran what kind of business?
A funeral home
A funeral home, Fisher & Sons in Los Angeles, was the family business; Alan Ball created the show right after winning an Oscar for writing American Beauty.
Q 25Ian McShane's foul-mouthed saloon owner Al Swearengen was the standout of which HBO Western?
Deadwood
Deadwood ran three seasons from 2004 to 2006; Al Swearengen and Seth Bullock were both real residents of the 1870s Dakota Territory gold camp.
Q 26Band of Brothers followed which World War II unit?
Easy Company of the 101st Airborne
Easy Company of the 101st Airborne (506th Parachute Infantry Regiment) was the subject of Stephen Ambrose's book; Spielberg and Hanks produced the 2001 miniseries, reusing crew from Saving Private Ryan.
Q 27The Pacific, Band of Brothers' 2010 companion, centred on which branch of the US military?
The Marine Corps
The Marine Corps was its focus: the 2010 miniseries followed Marines Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.
Q 28Curb Your Enthusiasm began as what?
A one-hour mockumentary special
A one-hour mockumentary special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, aired on HBO in October 1999; David and the network saw it as a one-off before ordering a series in 2000.
Q 29Which director made the $18 million pilot of Boardwalk Empire?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese directed the 2010 pilot and stayed on as executive producer; Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson was based on real Atlantic City boss Enoch L. Johnson.
Q 30How many episodes of Game of Thrones aired in total?
73
73 episodes aired across eight seasons, from April 2011 to May 2019; the first six seasons had ten episodes each, then seven and six.