“We Are One” Concert: Is HBO Serious?

It’s beginning to look like the American people were simply the invited guests of HBO yesterday to the “We Are One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.

I cannot say these stories are completely verified (from my online searches) and it will be interesting to see what HBO ends up saying (or doing) about the matter. It seems HBO did two things Sunday:

1. First, they cut away when openly gay Episcopal Priest Gene Robinson gave the invocation at the concert. Why?
2. Second, HBO is claiming that no one–yes, that means YOU–can post or use photos or video taken at yesterday’s concert. It seems HBO paid for the rights to broadcast “We Are One” and now are exercising their copyrights to the concert. Apparently, it doesn’t matter that the concert was for the inauguration of Barack Obama and Joe Biden or that the concert was on The National Mall–which belongs to us as Americans.

I will let John Aravosis at AmericaBlog and Ben Smith at Politico.com explain the rest for you. I will add this: I have been in corporate communications for most of my career and I can only add, “Is HBO insane? Do they want their customers to hate them?” I will let you know if they contact me about the photograph posted here.

Oh, yeah… how come COMCAST never opened up the feed last night at 7 p.m.? HBO “encouraged” cable companies to offer the 7 p.m. showing of “We Are One” to all cable subscribers–not just HBO subscribers.