Time Warner Discovery Execs Are Excited About Their Plan To Distance Themselves From The Popular HBO Brand And Further Dumb Down Their Streaming Service
from the pointless-megadeals dept
We’ve noted in detail how the AT&T/Time Warner/Discovery mergers have been an apocalyptic mess that aptly demonstrates the U.S. obsession with utterly pointless megadeals and the “growth for growth’s sake” mindset. Hundreds of billions of dollars later and the companies have produced a product that’s notably shittier than when they started, laying off thousands of people, cancelling popular shows, and leaving the company’s catalogs with new, weird gaps due to a refusal to pay residuals.
You’ll recall that this all began with AT&T’s disastrous $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV in a clumsy bid to dominate the video ad space. When that failed, AT&T spun off Time Warner, which was quickly merged with Discovery in yet another deal that’s been almost as bad for employees, consumers, and creators.
The latest genius move by the creatively named Warner Brothers Discovery has been to purge the HBO brand from their streaming efforts. A weird choice, given the HBO brand and its history is arguably the most valuable, recognizable, and popular aspect of the company. In a New York Times piece this week, executive justifications for the move are revealing:
“Dropping HBO from the name is cementing that ‘we’re not just a home for premium programming,’” Ms. Alexander said. “‘We’re the home for anything you want to watch.’”
The HBO brand has been synonymous with quality for fifty years. But the shift away from quality to low quality mass consumable dreck began under AT&T in 2018 and continues here. Just a continuing array of strange branding and marketing from a team of executives that have, at absolutely no point, indicated that they have any idea what they’re doing or what users want. And it shows in the ratings:
According to Nielsen, 1.3 percent of the total minutes spent by Americans using television was with HBO Max in February, a fraction of what YouTube (7.9 percent), Netflix (7.3 percent), Hulu (3.3 percent) and Amazon Prime (3 percent) garnered. HBO Max instead finds itself in the same neighborhood as Comcast’s Peacock and the Fox Corporation’s free advertising-supported streaming service, Tubi.
Keep in mind, that under AT&T this company integrated so many different dumb streaming branding names that they confused even the company’s own support employees. Now, what’s left of the company is further distancing itself from the popular HBO brand, launching a $16 a month streaming service just called “Max” sometime in May or June. HBO will continue to exist as a cable channel, for however long cable channels continue to exist.
It can’t be repeated often enough that this entire megamerger saga, from AT&T to now, involved companies spending burning hundreds of billions of dollars to make a worse product, fire untold people, cancel numerous popular programs, and even kill Mad Magazine.
Now maybe this whole gambit works out, and offering lower-quality dreck (I think often about the “Ow, my balls” TV show in Idiocracy for some reason) really works out for them. But I still tend to think its a lovely demonstration of the idiocy of pointless megadeals, which routinely harm consumers and creators so some unremarkable MBAs can get a tax break and put “savvy dealmaker” on their resumes.
Filed Under: growth for growth's sake, hbo max, media consolidation, mergers, streaming
Companies: at&t, hbo, time warner, warner brothers discovery
Comments on “Time Warner Discovery Execs Are Excited About Their Plan To Distance Themselves From The Popular HBO Brand And Further Dumb Down Their Streaming Service”
WHY?!?!?
It raises the question as to WHY Warner Bros. Discovery would remove the HBO brand, as it still provides quality programming to this day. I mean, I still watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and I think The Last Of Us was the best adaptation from a video game franchise to a linear video or film format I’ve ever seen.
And WBD doesn’t want to be associated with high quality? What’ll be the next move, rebranding the streaming service to “CrapMAX”? I mean, if they’re going to make dumb business moves, I might as well give them suggestions…
Re: have you seen what's on HBO Max?
Actual quality HBO content is the minority in an ocean of garbage. Put HBO content under the HBO tab and put the garbage elsewhere. And stop using HBO to label garbage.
Re: Re:
If a movie I want to see is on [HBO]Max, I watch it there, like I am doing now with Footloose.
Also, Aquafina is Nora From Queens is a quality show whose exclusive streaming rights is on [HBO]Max.
Those were two examples off the top of my head, so no, it’s not the case that the only selling point for [HBO]Max is the HBO Content itself. It’s just that since HBO is the best thing any incarnation of Warner Bros. has to offer, it’s idiotic from a marketing perspective.
Re: Re: Re:
Oops, “Aquafina” should be “Awkwafina”. This is embarrassing for me, especially since I saw Awkwafina perform live as a rapper before she became famous as an Actor…
Re:
Because when people hear “HBO”, they don’t associate it with Batman, Scooby-Doo, or Bugs Bunny.
“Max” is a stupid name, but “HBO Max” didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense either, given the breadth of non-HBO content on it.
Re: Re:
That’s actually a reasonable answer to my question. Though if there were any brains at WBD, they’d call it “Warner Bros. +” or “Warner Bros. Max” or something…
Re: Re: Re:
It is pretty fucking bizarre that they won’t just put “Warner Bros.” in the name.
HBO was associated with quality. Cinemax was associated with shitty softcore porn. So that’s what these guys want people to think of when watching their streaming service. Porn. Great job guys.
I think you got it backwards. MAXCrap.
Re:
That’s an even better idea than mine!
I may even upgrade my subscription if it were called that! 😜
Now HBO will remind everyone of it’s former rival Cinemax. They should just call it DumbA$$ and be done with it…
Re:
HBO created Cinemax in 1980 and still runs the subsidiary as a separate cable subscription product.
Re:
…rival?
Re:
HBO owns Cinemax. They are not rivals. Cinemax existed to hold content hostage when it roated off hbo and for raunchy adult fare.
maxplus prime now with new ultimate ad-free viewing tier! already ad-free? well not good enough anymore, fucko!
Can’t wait to see the tax write-off Zaslav’s going to pull when this plan fails.
more enshitification
This is just more of what Cory Doctorow has termed the “enshitification” of companies. If you haven’t read his article, it dovetails nicely into this one: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
'HBO implies quality programming. We're not offering that so...'
The HBO brand has been synonymous with quality for fifty years. But the shift away from quality to low quality mass consumable dreck began under AT&T in 2018 and continues here.
It actually makes perfect sense when you think about it, if people see HBO and think quality and that is not what they are increasingly going to be offering then they’re just trying to avoid any potential legal issues arising from customer confusion and claims of fraudulent advertising by making clear that ‘quality’ is not going to have anything to do with what their customers are paying for.
Isn’t it also still going to exist as a company that makes TV shows? I only ever had access to HBO, the channel, via the official free previews and unofficial “black boxes” of the 1990s (back when TV channels mattered, but few people were willing or able to pay for the premium ones). I have, however, seen their logo on a lot of shows over the past 15 years. To me, that’s all it really ever meant, and the name of the streaming service just seemed like an effort to leech off the popularity of an unrelated brand.
Just waiting so I can join the shareholder class action lawsuit!
Between HBO and Max, it’s hard to understand why they would drop “HBO”.
Re: Stupidity
The why is because an out-of-touch CEO thought it would be a good idea. They even had a focus group say so.
Re: Re:
That Focus Group was spot on about the CEO being out of touch.
And the Discovery brand is so well thought of that they’re making it available on Max for streaming. But not adding it to the title. I remember when I liked a lot of the Discovery line-up. There’s nothing so good that a CEO can’t eff it up!
Re:
To be fair, that’s actually part of our late-stage capitalist nightmare: A CEO can fuck things up so badly that they end up being booted out of the building with a golden parachute while everyone else is left to clean up after the mess without receiving anywhere near the same amount of compensation. “Funny” how there’s often more wealth to be found in destroying things than in creating them.
Re:
You can say “fuck” here.
they're protecting the HBO brand
I subscribe to HBO Max. There is a lot of stuff that doesn’t merit the HBO brand there. Even something like, say, Ben-Hur (the original). A legendary movie, but not really HBO is it? And of course there’s plenty of actual schlock as well.
HBO should be a tab within a larger and more general service. If we only want real HBO content, we go there. Keep misusing it and pretty soon it’ll mean nothing at all.
Max means nothing at all. That’s why it was chosen as the overarching brand.
Re:
What good will a brand that “means nothing at all” do for a service that already struggles to gain ground against streaming titans like Netflix and Hulu?
Re:
Oh, it means something to people who spent their teenage years looking for titties at 2 AM.
Re: Re:
Funny thing is, both HBO and Skin—sorry, Cinemax got rid of all the softcore porn years ago on both their linear cable channels and their pre–HBO Max streaming services. Whatever value Cinemax/“Max” had as a late-night softcore porn depository is long dead.
Re:
Isn’t that exactly what Home Box Office was created for?
How many Elons does it take to...
So how many Elon Musk twittescapades is that? Five?
Quality?
I had HBO 40 years ago, and all it had was the same crap over and over again, with decent movies on Friday and Saturday nights. It was the bottom-of-the-barrel movie channel, and was made slighly more tolerable by its “made for HBO” television shows (and there were only a handful of these that were good, which is why we can all name them).
Now every streaming service has their own shows, and I can’t think of any from HBO that are more “quality” than anyone else’s.
Re:
Can’t lie. HBO was one of my favorite premium channels. So many great stand-up comedy specials. It usually landed the most watchable theatrical movies and a lot of their original movies and series are worth watching.
And the Starship Intro is a musical masterpiece. I thought it was cool that HBO had filmed the making of the music and the logo way back in the early 1980s before DVD-like extras were a thing.
Life imitates 'Ow My Balls'
One more signpost that life is imitating “Idiocracy”: There is a real-life “Ow My Balls”-like show. And wouldn’t you know it, a Warner Bros. Discovery channel (TBS) runs it.
No, there isn’t testicular trauma turned into sport, but this is merely less worse. UFC head Dana White branched out into a professional slapping league.
That’s the sport. Two men just stand there taking turns slapping each other until one falls or loses their balance. It appears the show is on hiatus — ratings were atrocious — but the league is probably not formally dead.
It didn’t help the league that Dana White gave a demonstration of it by slapping his wife at a New Year’s party. Plus, traumatic brain injury experts say the league is a CTE factory.
Re:
Good god, Mike Judge really is a modern-day prophet…
Re:
As late as the 18th century, at least, there were pinching championships in England. Participants had to pinch each other, progressively exerting more force, until one side had enough and cried “uncle”.
Putting idiots through physical ordeals for fun and profit isn’t news. Hell, going back to gladiatorial times, it’s not even recent. Did Dana White decide to be patted on the back for this initiative?
What happens to the HBO shows
Will the original HBO shows, such as Deadwood, the Sopranos, and Game of Thrones, still be available on their streaming service?
If not, do the execs realize that this could lead to higher piracy rates? Or are the execs counting on this and they’ll claim their new service is failing because of piracy? Yet they’re the ones who removed the shows and forced piracy in the first place!