About a month ago, I told you all my concerns about HBO Max. In my opinion, it’s the best streaming service out there, but not for long. Warner Bros., recently part of AT&T, has been offloaded to Discovery Networks and that means that Discovery now owns both Discovery+ and HBO Max. I haven’t been terribly kind to Discovery+. It’s a fine streaming service with a lot of content, but a lot of it’s very repetitive. There are probably 5,000 episodes of House Hunters, and that doesn’t count the dozens of similar shows that are also available on the app. On the other hand, HBO Max has rapidly become known as the home of a lot of very high quality curated material. The two apps could not possibly be more different in their outlooks.
Enter David Zaslav
David Zaslav from Discovery is now in charge, and he’s made it pretty clear how he wants to proceed. In separate action in the last week, he’s axed several direct-to-streaming releases, announced that Magnolia content was going to be on HBO Max, and finally in an earnings call stated that HBO Max and the Discovery+ app would both be dead by next summer. They’ll be replaced by a merged app that he claims is going to be the best of both.
Except, it seems like the internet doesn’t believe him. Instead, here’s a quick roundup of the opinions that seem to be circulating:
1. It’s not about the customer, it’s about the stockholder
It’s pretty easy to attribute all of this to cost cutting and profit taking. The cancellation of Batgirl, a made-for-streaming film that cost $90 million and was almost done, is being seen as a way to take a massive tax writeoff. So, in short, a tax break is more important than providing entertainment. Obviously, you have to control costs if you’re going to stay in business, but let’s be honest this is a crummy way of doing that.
2. Zaslav hates streaming
There’s ample evidence in what Zaslav has said to back this up, but I’m going to put a more positive spin on it. Yes, HBO Max has been seen as one of the few shining successes in the “transition from pay-TV to streaming app” game. Discovery+ hasn’t. I think that’s because of its lack of original content, but that’s my opinion. In effect though, what Zaslav is saying is that pay TV is still important, theaters are still important, and putting out streaming-only content just strangles these other distribution methods. It’s sure to make folks at DIRECTV and Xfinity feel good, but I’m not sure it really makes sense to the average person.
3. Discovery has serious “not invented here” syndrome
Zaslav claims that HBO Max is a buggy app, and that Discovery+ has better content and a better experience. I couldn’t agree less. At the moment, Discovery+ is still a buggy mess for me, while HBO Max is perfect. Not only that, Discovery+ is LOUD. At least 8dB louder than any other app. And that’s incredibly annoying.
He wouldn’t be the first executive who just wants to clear out everything that a competing team has done, but it’s pretty rare for that strategy to work for anyone. Yes, you do have to reduce staff and not be redundant, but the internet seems to think that HBO Max got it right and Discovery+ didn’t. A good executive would see that.
4. Discovery thinks they’ll get out of a long term deal with AT&T
As part of its own synergy, AT&T offered HBO Max for free with most of its unlimited plans. This must have led to quite a few accounts that weren’t making any money for HBO Max. Now, Discovery isn’t really affiliated with AT&T’s cellular business, but it’s inherited all those people who get HBO Max for free. By killing off HBO Max and replacing it, they’ll probably end this benefit for AT&T subscribers, but how many will really stay with the new service and start paying for it? That’s the real question.
Personally…
I tend to want to believe that these TV executives know what they’re doing. HBO has been a premium, top-notch service for close to 50 years. The people at Discovery would surely want that to continue, right? I really really want to hope so. Right now the news seems really dire for people who like HBO Max and don’t like Discovery+. I count myself as one of those people. But then, the streaming world is pretty big, and if HBO Max vacates its position as the top quality streaming app, someone will step in to take it. Streaming customers, myself included, are a fickle lot, and I suspect that whatever the new app is, we’ll go there instead.
