HBO Loosing Ground.

The Star Ledger, has an article on how HBO started cable series, but can't brag this year about how far ahead they are of the other cable networks.

The age of entitlement is over. The channel's less glamorous subscription cable rival, Showtime -- which has traditionally played Donovan to HBO's Bob Dylan -- has earned buzz with such series as "Queer as Folk," "The L Word," "Huff," "Barbershop" and "Weeds." Sci-Fi Channel's best miniseries ("Taken," "Dune," "Children of Dune") and series ("Farscape," "Battlestar Galactica") have earned it a rep for making genre fare that's worth taking seriously. FX stumbled with "Over There" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but it scored big with "The Shield," "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," black comedies whose main characters tend to fall into one of two camps, redeemable and irredeemable brutes. TNT has "Closer" and "Wanted," USA has "Monk" and "The Dead Zone." And Comedy Central and Cartoon Network have established themselves as safe harbors for dangerous minds. (The latter's "Adult Swim" block of nighttime programming is as close to avant garde art as TV gets.)