Last August, it was already hinted that the HBO Max and Discovery Plus platforms would merge due to a corporate merger, and this will happen at the end of May: the new service will abandon the name HBO and will simply be called Max.
In large corporate life, it is not unusual for entire groups of businesses to be bought and sold. Thus, it wasn’t entirely surprising that, in the summer of 2018, communications giant AT&T bought Time Warner Media, not three years later selling the company then called WarnerMedia, which later merged with Discovery media. Of course, this is secondary for us viewers, because we hardly know these companies, while the brands they belong to are in the case of Warner, HBO, CNN, or Eurosport, while in the case of Discovery, in addition to Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, or Science Channeled more. And since most companies are starting to build their streaming platforms as TV viewing habits change, when two companies merge, something has to happen to their digital services as well.
David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, in August 2022 He said, although HBO Max has a competitive offering, it has “performance and customer problems”, and on the other hand, according to him, the technology structure of Discovery Plus is better, so expect that HBO Max content and Discovery Plus technology will be integrated in the summer of 2023. Finally, you don’t have to wait until summer: the new platform, Max, will be launched in the US on May 23. The HBO series Game of Thrones, Euphoria, and The Last of Us will also be shown simultaneously as the Harry Potter and DC films, as well as real-life titles from Discovery. Among the new shows, the new Harry Potter, Batman and Brainiacs movie series seems to be the most interesting, but there will also be a reality show in the house of a human-sized Barbie. It all starts at ten bucks a month in America, if 1080p is enough, the two devices, and we’re willing to watch commercials, but it’ll cost twenty bucks, about seven thousand forints, with 4K pictures, Atmos sound, four parallel streams and a hundred Downloadable movie at the same time.
So, starting at the end of May, one of the most popular brands in television, HBO, will be just one menu item in a massive stream of content.
Considering that the company has spent decades building that “this isn’t TV, this is HBO,” it seems like an odd decision to throw away such a big business; CEO of the broadcast company justify this, said that HBO offered “exciting and innovative entertainment” for adults, but that Max should open up to children and families and, in the name of HBO, parents “don’t want to leave their kids out there”. The specialist no longer worried about why they did the same with the anonymous “Max”, and also whether they thought about what Disney was doing, that is, in addition to Disney + they also kept their platform called Hulu alive, and sold the two in a package. Just as much as Warner Max will take it.
(picture: Oleksandra Bardach/Unsplash)
