Everyday, I feel like we are getting closer and closer to Idiocracy.
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Warner Bros. to Replace HBO Max With New 'Max' Streaming Service
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Or Comcast customers like the plan me and my family use. I remember the day HBO Max launched nearly three years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn I could use my Xfinity credentials to log in at no extra charge!
Just makes you wonder how can a streaming service can make any money with too many ways to be not a grandfathered in.
will some of this just lapse if HBO isn’ named specifically anymore?
Why do all of these services hate single people? Give me 4k content with 1 or 2 concurrent streams at a cheaper price if you want me to stop account sharing.
Seriously, making me pay $20 for 4k? That's ridiculous. It's 2023, we shouldn't have to pay such a high premium for 4k at this point. Especially when they're rolling out 8k TVs at this point.
The CEO outlined this in some interviews. Discovery+ is profitable as a standalone. ( It was profitable before merger and still is). That way it is sticking around as a independent product. It isn't solely a popularity contest, it is does it make money issue.
HBO Max was not profitable. In part, that is why AT&T sold it. If it was a license to print profits, then AT&T had no good reason to get rid of it.
But they are not. The prices didn't change if keep the same parameters and factor in the industry norm of prices increase (not getting cheaper anywhere else either). ( the 'appears free' bundles might change ... but if there were huge money loosers ... what do you expect over long term. ). The problem that the "HBO Max" bundle has is that it needs even MORE Than just solely 'HBO only' folks to subscribe to be profitable. Not less with more fined taste.
'HBO' all by itself can't do it. Cinemax , WB movies , Discovery+ , etc. the whole kitchen sink of the portfolio needs to be present to draw enough numbers to make it work. A small handful of 'mega shows' can't prop up a full wide spectrum streaming service. The vast bulk of HBO content hours (and associated costs ) are NOT that small handful of shows.
Discovery already had a working ( profitable) service. The TimeWarner side is the service that didn't have a 'smaller' , working "even narrower" service. Also had quirky app on some platforms . etc. Despite being named "HBO Max" that service was the one that was the 'everything and the kitchen sink' aggregator. "HBO Go" disappeared a while back. ( not surprisingly. A service attached only to cable/sat provider base subscription numbers is attached to a shrinking market. )
If WB-Discovery puts this new service on a better platform where some users can be subsetted on a "HBO only" restrictive content . It is just a matter of pricing it or outsourcing it ( let the VOD of the linear service vendor handle the workload for subscribers fronted by them. ). "HBO" having to be both a content creation service and a video delivery service is just going to be more expensive than just being one or the other. If the 'hog' all of the VOD overhead then that is going to show up in additional costs. The higher the optional add-on HBO is priced the fewer folks that choose it and now spreading higher costs onto fewer users.
Bundling of content is snowballing , but "Max" isn't only one. It is basically an industry thing at this point. Discovery+ is its own bundle of stuff that not every subscriber watches every single show offering in the bundle.
If a huge block of Discovery+ users move over to the bigger bundle then Discovery+ as a independent offering could disappear. It just happens to have a good balance between subscribers (revenue generated) and costs. If its revenues drops by a huge amount it would be in 'trouble' also.
When this merger was announced last year, I wondered what would happen with Motortrend+, since it's part of Discovery Inc. It's only $4.99/mo for the ad-free service, and ad-free.
When I think of Max I think of Cinemax.
When I think of HBO I think of Sopranos, The Wire, GOT, Curb
Make it make sense. I don't care about Discovery.
After Succession is done, it's going to be at least year until House of Dragon. I can see a lot of people dropping HBO Max.
When I think of HBO I think of Sopranos, The Wire, GOT, Curb
Make it make sense. I don't care about Discovery.
After Succession is done, it's going to be at least year until House of Dragon. I can see a lot of people dropping HBO Max.
Don't forget the looming writers' strike. Apparently consumers won't feel the impact of that for up to a year because of streamers' shows already written and produced.
It's all so weird...
After dropping all the brand equity that was HBO, for something generic and not ownable, they somehow made it even dumber by throwing us a Discovery+ bone? Jesus...
This feels like yet another scenario for which not a single person was asking. It's almost like they didn't conducted a second of user research.
Downgrading me to 1080P and charging me $1 more per month? Cancelling.
That was my first thought. This is even more brain dead than Anheuser Busch branding their beer with Dylan Mulvany. Are marketing grads even dumber than back when I was in business school?
From collider
Although no name has been officially picked for the relaunched platform, reports say that Max is still being strongly considered. Whatever the name is, the HBO branding will almost certainly be scrubbed from the title. The Wrap recently confirmed a report that insiders at Warner Bros. Discovery were concerned that the HBO name was a turnoff to potential new customers. That notion is particularly confusing considering the streamer remains among the top five most-subscribed streaming services in the country with 76.1 million users and HBO as a whole has stayed at the cultural forefront with its acclaimed programming.
Warner Bros. Discovery Will Have More Information on the Future of HBO Max Soon
Warner Bros. Discovery will reveal more details of the HBO Max relaunch on April 12 with the new platform expected to roll out in the weeks thereafter. Additionally, the company is expected to give an update on its previously-proposed FAST service. Ever since mass cancelations began under their umbrella, plans have been in place to create a competitor to streamers like Freevee, Pluto TV, and Tubi in order to house content outside their paid platform. In the interim, shows like Westworld and The Nevers have been shipped off to third-party FASTs to keep them around while cutting costs.- - - -
Sounds like a lot more emphasis to me placed with expanded content to be exclusive to this new service tier. Also the mention of generating a competitor to streamers to house even more content outside Max’s paid platform, that will a nice addition for people that like watching those older content like PlutoTV. I think 1 year after the HBO max with Discovery the WB has realized they need to change what they currently have and by removing HBO from the naming dissolve previous deals that allow AT&T and other HBO deals like the Comcast example from essentially free access after the first year of this WB plan for Max.
There is so much offered now, something impacting financials has to be accomplished by a year from now to remain a good competitor to both Netflix and Disney +.
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Unlike Netflix, Max does provide an annual option to drop it to be roughly $16.66 a month.
Warner Bros. Discovery's Stock Dips 6% Following Unveiling of Max Streaming Service
It's almost like the shareholders have something to say about the decision to tether Max to a toxic franchise...
movieweb.com
On Wednesday, April 12, Warner Bros. Discovery gave an expansive presentation on its plans to overhaul HBO Max into Max, launching in the U.S. on May 23, and teased new projects from its warhorse properties. In the year leading up to yesterday's presentation, WB Discovery's stock values suffered as Wall Street reacted to post-merger changes, cost-cutting, and management realignment. And now the company has slowed its role with cost-cutting measures, hurting workers and diversity in the process; it's turned its sights on profit-making.
Wall Street’s verdict on WB Discovery’s new plans is still not in, but investors' immediate reaction to yesterday's announcements shows the company has a long way to go in sorting out its profit centers in streaming. When a struggling company announces its decision to re-invest in high-ticket programming with an allegedly large and guaranteed fandom (e.g., Game of Thrones, Harry Potter), you'd assume there would be a coinciding increase in confidence in the brand that would translate into higher stock values—but that's not how shareholders acted on April 12. Instead, WB Discovery's hour-long presentation on its Burbank lot led to the company ending the day with a dip in shares by the close of trading.
This branding move is colossally misguided. It will go down in marketing textbooks with all-time boners like “New Coke” and “Nova”.
I’m currently taking over/under bets on how long before they switch branding again to something even less elegant but transparent like “Max with HBO”.
120 days.
I’m currently taking over/under bets on how long before they switch branding again to something even less elegant but transparent like “Max with HBO”.
120 days.
What happens if the goal was diassociate HBO not as a valued asset, but to break deals in a years time with grandfathered perks not expected to continue past this latest increase profit margins effort for WB casting aside its chains? Sure you’re likely to see new offers for same customers just not like completely free for other video providers like Comcast.
Idiocracy > Nostradamus any day of the week. It's extremely scary just how accurate the movie is becoming.