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The premiere US, pay-TV cable company HBO has done more than most to define what 'original programming' might mean and look like in the contemporary TV age of international television flow, global media trends and filiations. This article adopts a cultural sociological approach to make sense of the structure of the cultural field in which the company operates, framed between 'culture' and the 'market', between exclusive, qualitatively distinct television content and corporate intent. It elaborates on the ways in which the company imposes a vision of an élite TV culture on the field, in and through producing distinct divisions ad infinitum, to validate the taste values of those who validate HBO. In creating incessant divisions in genre, authorship and aesthetics, HBO incorporates artistic norms and principles of evaluation and puts them into circulation as a succession of oppositions – oppositions that we will explore throughout this article.

HBO and the Aristocracy of Contemporary TV Culture: affiliations and legitimatising television culture, post-2007