HBO: From Hitmen to Hitless?

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True Blood creator Alan Ball (left) with actors Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin Michael Grecco

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When The Sopranos creator David Chase had Tony Soprano kill a rival while visiting colleges with his daughter, Meadow, Albrecht told Chase it was a mistake to make the daddy-mobster so ruthless. Chase argued that was exactly who Tony was. Albrecht let the scene stand, and it became one of the series' most memorable moments. Albrecht also wanted to call the show Family Man; he worried the title, The Sopranos, would make viewers think the show was about opera. Chase prevailed. "Chris would change his mind," says Gavin Polone, executive producer of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Tell Me You Love Me. "I don't know many executives who have that kind of confidence."

In 2002, Albrecht was named HBO's CEO, adding financial and strategic duties to his portfolio. In retrospect, says one senior Time Warner (TWX) executive, the promotion may have not been the right decision because Albrecht had less time for programming.

In the summer of 2006, Albrecht suffered a rare misfire when he put on the air a half-hour show called Lucky Louie starring stand-up comedian and writer Louis C.K. Filmed before a live audience, the show looked very much like any ordinary sitcom on a broadcast network. It didn't feel HBO-ish, and the critics skewered it. The show was canceled three months later. Meanwhile, inside HBO, it was widely known that Albrecht, who later admitted to attending AA meetings for years, was drinking again. Some executives say they first discovered this when Albrecht began having wine on the corporate jet. His colleagues worried it was just a matter of time before Albrecht did something to jeopardize his job.

Then on May 6, 2007, came word he had been arrested. Albrecht and his girlfriend, Karla Jensen, had gotten into a fight outside the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. (Albrecht pleaded no contest to battery; he and Jensen and are now engaged.) "I was at a shopping mall in Palm Springs that Sunday morning when I got the call," recalls an HBO executive. "I just knew this was not good, not good at all."

Albrecht's intensely loyal staff hoped the whole thing would blow over. And their boss seemed to hope so, too. In a statement on May 8, Albrecht acknowledged his relapse and apologized to his colleagues: "I won't let you down again," he wrote in an e-mail. But the next day, the Los Angeles Times reported that in 1991 HBO had settled with another girlfriend who accused Albrecht of choking her.

The revelation came at a particularly awkward moment. Jeffrey L. Bewkes, who served as HBO's CEO from 1995 to 2002, had recently been named the next CEO of Time Warner. He wasn't due to take charge officially until January of 2008, but Bewkes was only days away from his first annual meeting as CEO-in-waiting. Time Warner's shareholders were already apoplectic over a stagnant stock price. The last thing Bewkes needed was a public-relations incident on the eve of his coming out. He persuaded Albrecht, his friend of 20 years, to step down.

Albrecht so personified HBO's modus operandi that it was hard for his colleagues to accept that he would no longer be reading scripts and developing programs. "People had been at HBO for decades, so it was like they had just found out one of their relatives was in a car accident and had died," says Jim Moloshok, who was Albrecht's top executive for digital initiatives and is now executive chairman of children's online ad company GoFish Network (GOFH). Staff wept in their Santa Monica offices; some asked to go home early. An era had ended.

OUTSIDER OR INSIDER?

Bewkes had a choice to make. He could promote someone. Or he could bring in an outsider who'd shake up HBO. Plenty of people in Hollywood thought he should seize the opportunity to inject fresh blood into HBO's cozy culture. After all, HBO's creative team had been in place since the mid-1980s. They hadn't had a really big hit since Six Feet Under debuted in 2001, and The Sopranos finale was only a month away.