‘Max’ Unsurprisingly Loses Streaming Customers After Several Years Of The Dumbest Decisions Imaginable
from the consequences... dept
We’ve documented in detail how the whole AT&T–>Time Warner–>Warner Brothers Discovery merger process has been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku by over-compensated executives clearly out of their depths.
After paying a premium for the HBO brand just to deprecate it, steadily eroding the quality of their streaming catalog (how many reality TV shows can there be involving people having sex on an island?), firing countless employees, cancelling popular shows, raising prices, and implementing all kinds of new restrictions, execs at Warner Brothers Discovery unsurprisingly saw 700,000 subscribers head for the exits last quarter.
It’s, of course, not good enough for Wall Street to create a profitable product people like. The need for improved quarterly returns at any cost always creates a sort of self-cannibalizing doom cycle. It’s made worse as the sector consolidates in order to chase short-term tax benefits.
Max is now deep into this process of enshittification, consistently charging more money for worse product, while creating pricing funnels to try and drive people to the most expensive plans possible if they want access to basic features like 4K. The value erosion is near constant, as Wired illustrates:
“Last January, Max increased its prices from $15 to $16 for its ad-free version. But then in May, when HBO Max became Max, the company announced its Ultimate Ad-Free tier, which costs $20 and includes 4K streaming. Not too bad, especially when you consider Netflix’s Premium tier is also now $20 per month. Max, though, recently emailed its legacy HBO Max customers letting them know that although they’d been allowed to have 4K at their previous $16-per-month price tag, that deal would be ending in December. Suddenly, Max doesn’t seem quite as worth it—especially when it’s ad-supported plan is only $10.”
At the same time, executives at these companies want to drive everybody to ad-based tiers because ad revenue has more growth potential than subscription revenue, given the saturated market. But that risks making the underlying product more annoying overall (see Amazon’s decision to charge customers who already pay $140 for Amazon prime, an additional $3 a month to avoid ads).
Revenue at Max was up 5 percent during the year, but that’s not necessarily a sign of health. Another dumb decision made by the brain trust at Warner was to begin selling access to their existing HBO content catalog to competitors, which is providing a big boost of money up front, but comes at the risk of further eroding the company’s market share longer term.
Warner Bros Discovery remains saddled in debt and run by the kinds of folks more interested in short term tax tricks than long-term brand quality. It couldn’t be more obvious these folks want to push their luck and consolidate the sector until streaming closely resembles the mess that was 90s cable, at which they’ll retire and their companies will be disrupted by better options, as the silly cycle continues in perpetuity.
Filed Under: competition, max, streaming
Companies: warner bros. discovery
Comments on “‘Max’ Unsurprisingly Loses Streaming Customers After Several Years Of The Dumbest Decisions Imaginable”
This is a fine time to remind everyone that David Zaslav is an enemy of culture and the arts. I pretty much have to think he’s a Republican.
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During the 2020 election cycle, Zaslav donated over $240,000 to Democratic politicians and PACs, as well as $5,600 to Republican senator Jim Risch.
So not so much.
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Nah, fuck him anyway.
If Stephen T Stone believes that David Zaslav identifies as a Republican who are we to correct him? You’re not trying to claim that Stephen is wrong, are you? That’s as bad as deadnaming someone.
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Sad that our government is a slave to monied interests rather than those of society. This will probably not end well if allowed to continue.
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Thanks for sharing your point of views.
Too bad they have all that debt.
Maybe if they sold off their streaming business entirely, and became solely a catalog and a content creator?
Re: that's the fate of the losers
All the power in streaming is going to be in the hands of the few companies that are gatekeepers between content and paying customers. That’s why there’s been a mad scramble to mimic Netflix but these companies waited too long. The winners will be Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Disney, maybe Warners, probably not Paramount, definitely not Peacock.
The losers will license content to winners, but consider how Netflix can make something a hit or hide it where nobody will ever see it. If they can take some old show like Suits and make it a hit just by promoting it to their audience of a quarter billion people, they have all the power and can hammer down the licensing costs to bare bones.
And what will the content creators do about this, cry? They either get their content on a big platform or they’ve got nothing. No wonder they scrambled to avoid that fate but not all of them can make it.
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What they should be doing to escape the clutches of the studios and publishers, form a cooperative to run a streaming service, and deal with collecting and disbursing income. It could be set up so that it covers its own costs, but not be a profit driven publisher, as those take profit away from the actual creators.
Um… I’m not a subscriber, so I’ve gotta ask, is that hyperbole or has HBO actually become a hard-core sex channel?
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I am, and I assure you that there’s nothing hard-core about Max (unless you count the way they screwed up their various apps when they rebranded to Max)
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Thats always been HBO.
Look up “Its not Porn, its HBO”
The last thing on HBO will be John Oliver blowing the last of the companies money on something involving nudity, and New Zealand.
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I think this is a rip at Discovery’s 20+ spinoffs of 90 Day Fiance and their ilk.
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While I’ve only heard the name, Wikipedia doesn’t say anything about there being sex on that show. In fact, it says one person refused to even discuss sex on camera, and another didn’t want to have sex before marriage (which, given the “fiancé” title, suggests it wouldn’t have happened during filming).
I have to call you on that one. While there are likely a ton more people on the Republican side that are enemies of culture, you’re in danger of the right wing, “all Democrats are Communists/Socialists” type of myth. Not all Republicans are the enemies of culture, just like not all Democrats are the white knights of culture.
Capitalism is essentially an Ouroboros.
Don't pay yearly
Just cancelled my Max subscription. Unfortunately, I was on the annual payment plan. They don’t refund, though they do allow me to continue to stream until my annual subscription expires. If only I could find something there to watch.
Re: 1-2 months each will do it
Max is probably good for 1-2 months per year. If you wait and come back in a year, there will be more watchable stuff there. That’s true of all the streamers, including Netflix. At this point, Netflix is making less watchable stuff than Max or Hulu, maybe even less than Disney. They’re 1 month/year at most.
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TV in general seems to be a much more overtly “throwaway” thing than it used to be. Out of nowhere, I see some series has released a new season, I watch it over a day or two, and it’s forgotten till next year. Sometimes I wonder why I bother; so little of it is memorable.
I think I know why...
I happened to be subscribing during the HBO Max/Max transition. I knew it was happening so when I clicked on the HBO Max app and it didn’t work, with no instructions what to do, I wasn’t too surprised. On a hunch, I deleted it, searched for an app called “Max,” installed that, logged in and everything was just fine.
How many people would know to do that? Most people wouldn’t even know about the transition so how would they know to search for “Max.” They would just think the stupid thing is broken and cancel their account.
The right way to have done this of course is for the HBO Max app to magically have new graphics that say Max. If it’s in the same place and designed to look similar enough, it shouldn’t cause confusion. Ideally, many people would not even notice. Who really looks at an app anyway.
And before that, I had a hard time getting HBO Max to take my money because their interface couldn’t handle the fact that my credit card number security code had changed, which is a routine thing that happens when your credit card renews.
They’ve got a lot of problems that have nothing to do with whether Max is a good name or they have good content, in the tech and customer service departments.
Satellite
Damn, makes me happy that I spent less than EUR 150 for a small satellite dish and decoder 10 years ago and I still have tons of free German and English channels. Streaming when they had big film catalogues was great, but focusing mostly on series? Guess I am in the wrong demographic.
We are Dealing with SOP
So they purchase up the Next Companies that compete with them.
Get backing from the gov.
Condense and Ruin the Whole thing.
Start reducing Employment
Get backing from the Gov.
Take and absorb All the good stuff from the companies INTO the main company.
Get backing from the Gov.
Then get credits for LOSS, with Taxes.
Fire more people.
Keep the good workers, fire everyone else. Consolidate into the Original corp. That has higher prices and Less Selection, and had Lost Tons of Customers Previously.
Write the Whole thing off as a loss, and get a tax credit. And raise the stock prices, trying to make the corp look BETTER to investors.
Yeah, well, the ’90s were so much more fun for watching movies, during the first few years of DirecTV.
Prime is $12 a month now full in. That’s unlimited advert free streaming of hundreds of thousands of movies and tv shows, AND unlimited free shipping.
Max, via Amazon, is under $10, half the standalone price. In fact, all channels in Prime are below the standalone price.
Generally, people who complain about content are the minority. Generally! Your show was cut because it WASN’T popular enough. Not because it was. Or they don’t like that the world isn’t free.
Prime is a hell of a deal!
10 years ago you’d be paying for each title. Today you get them all. For one low price.
You seem to forget that renting a movie used to cost $4 for a disc or tape. That renting a tv show would cost $20 a season. The cost of production didn’t go down.
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Well, camera technology has changed significantly, like no film and all the processing required, eliminating those costs. Also, streaming has a much lower cost than producing DVDs, along with the logistics to get them into the shops. Also, any high end PC can handling the editing, rather than requiring a complex and expensive film editing suite.
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Yes, and the big movies from Hollywood studios keep costing more anyway.
Regardless of who its consumed it still costs money to make. And films tend to be made to make money, so more films can be made. At $1 per view a film needs what, 100 million views to break even?
is this the future yet
Time wasted…