Dennis Hof, owner of the 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 reluctant to promote the series despite the high ratings of the show.
"'The Cathouse' is out of the bag. HBO, because of the conservative Republican environment, wanted me to low-key the marketing on this show," Hof said. "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."
Hof continued, "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.
Hof noted that "Cathouse" beat out HBO's "Entourage" and "The Comeback" in ratings last week
The "Cathouse" series began airing in June.
"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," Hof said. "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."
HBO was not available for comment at press time.
