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
The name was chosen to suggest a 'ticket' to movies and events you could see at home.
Q 02In what year did HBO launch?
1972
It went live at 7:30 p.m. Eastern on November 8 to subscribers of a cable system in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Q 03What was HBO's very first broadcast?
An NHL game between the Rangers and Canucks
The 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion followed straight after the game.
Q 04Roughly how many subscribers received HBO's first-night broadcast?
365
All of them were in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on channel 21.
Q 05Which cable executive came up with the idea for HBO while on a family vacation aboard the QE2?
Charles Dolan
His company Sterling Manhattan Cable was losing money and he needed a way to keep Time Inc. invested.
Q 06What was the codename for the HBO proposal before it got its name?
The Green Channel
Time Inc.'s board approved it in November 1971 with a $150,000 development grant.
Q 07Which 1975 boxing match was the first HBO program broadcast via satellite?
The Thrilla in Manila
Ali vs. Frazier on September 30, 1975, made HBO the first TV channel in the world to transmit by satellite.
Q 08Which sister channel launched alongside HBO's parent and shares its movie contracts?
Cinemax
HBO and Cinemax were among the first two US pay services to offer multiplexed channels in 1991.
Q 09Which company owned HBO in 2024?
Warner Bros. Discovery
The business unit sat inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan.
Q 10On which night of the week did HBO begin airing its prestige series in 1998?
Sunday
Broadcast networks neglected the slot, and The Sopranos and Sex and the City made it a habit.
Q 11Which comedian headlined the most HBO stand-up specials, 12 between 1977 and 2008?
George Carlin
His first, at USC, was the first televised performance of 'The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television'.
Q 12Whose 1992 concert in Bucharest remains HBO's highest-rated special?
Michael Jackson
HBO reportedly paid about $20 million for the rights.
Q 13Which sports show, launched in 1977, became HBO's longest-running program at 31 seasons?
Inside the NFL
Showtime picked it up after HBO cancelled it in 2008.
Q 21Who created The Sopranos?
David Chase
He got the greenlight in 1997; the show ran 86 episodes from 1999 to 2007.
Q 22The Wire set each of its five seasons around a different institution in which city?
Baltimore
Drug trade, the port, city hall, schools and the newspaper, in that order.
Q 23Sex and the City was based on a newspaper column and 1996 book by whom?
Candace Bushnell
Darren Star created the series, which ran 94 episodes from 1998 to 2004.
Q 24Six Feet Under followed a family that ran what kind of business?
Q 14In what year did HBO end its boxing telecasts after 45 years?
2018
Executives concluded that 'HBO is not a sports network' and refocused on scripted shows.
Q 15Which children's show did HBO acquire first-run rights to in 2015, taking it from PBS?
Sesame Street
Netflix acquired the show in 2025 after Warner Bros. Discovery dropped it.
Q 16Which Jim Henson puppet series was co-produced by HBO in the 1980s?
Fraggle Rock
It was designed from the start as an international co-production with Britain's TVS and Canada's CBC.
Q 17The famous 'HBO in Space' opening sequence borrowed its fanfare from which composer's symphony?
Dvořák's Ninth
The twelve-note signature was adapted from the Scherzo of the New World Symphony.
Q 18Which 1997 prison drama was HBO's first one-hour dramatic series?
Oz
Tom Fontana's show ran six seasons and paved the way for everything after it.
Q 19Garry Shandling's 1990s HBO sitcom was set behind the scenes of what?
A late-night talk show
Celebrities played exaggerated versions of themselves as Larry's guests.
Q 20Which sitcom by the future Friends creators punctuated scenes with old black-and-white TV clips?
Dream On
Marta Kauffman and David Crane made it for HBO from 1990 to 1996.
A funeral home
Alan Ball created it 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
Swearengen and Seth Bullock were both real residents of the 1870s South Dakota camp.
Q 26Band of Brothers followed which World War II unit?
Easy Company of the 101st Airborne
Spielberg and Hanks produced it from Stephen Ambrose's book, 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
It followed Marines Robert Leckie, Eugene Sledge and John Basilone.
Q 28Curb Your Enthusiasm began as what?
A one-hour mockumentary special
Larry David and HBO originally saw the 1999 special as a one-off.
Q 29Which director made the $18 million pilot of Boardwalk Empire?
Martin Scorsese
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
Eight seasons between April 2011 and May 2019.