HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop the trusted HBO brand smh.
Netflix is well positioned, but a player like Disney is also setup to acquire other streamers as they fall over from cost structure issues. I think we're about to see mass consolidation.
Finally, I'm kind of sad that I think the content 'golden era' is likely coming to a close. Cheap money and the fighting for subs led to more money being spent on content relative to what subs paid than at any other point in history. If nothing new was ever made again, I think the list my wife and I already have to watch is longer than time we have left living.
Its been very hit or miss for me with HBO Max originals. HBO (they do brand them differently) originals are still stellar, for the most part.
If the new Velma show is any indicator of what HBO Max wants to do as run of the mill content though, I'm wondering how long it'll hold up as a premium streaming service.
Warner didn't even unlock their entire backlog of Looney Toons cartoons on their own streaming service, which would bolster its brand and make it more sticky
Agree. Sticking a bunch of questionable content under the HBO brand (which Max is certainly piggy-backing on) is more proof of the incompetent management.
Even though I benefit, I think it was also dumb for them to give away HBO to any AT&T subscribers (maybe internet only?). HBO was something I used to pay for.
FWIW my understanding is that WB withholding the Looney Tunes backlog is entirely due to the fact that there's a lot of problematic (e.g. racist, sexist) material in there that they're understandably worried about. I completely agree with you otherwise.
Disney+ got around this problem by just adding disclaimers to the content. They did this for all their questionable content, and if people reported it (IE they missed something) they were quick to add it.
It seems Disney+ isn't scarred by this at all (it definitely doesn't dominate the public conversation around it), so perhaps there is a lead in here?
"In June 2020, it was announced that the U.S. versions of the ride would be receiving a new theme based on Disney's 2009 film The Princess and the Frog.[2][3] The new ride, which will be titled Tiana's Bayou Adventure, is scheduled to open at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom in late 2024"
There is racist content made by Disney that is not available on Disney+.
The stuff that WB removed from HBO Max is more comparable to Song of the South (which is completely unavailable) than to Dumbo (which has disclaimers).
This would hold more water if they weren't also trying to vault or bury a bunch of their other animated content, and sell off their back catalog for easy money.
> HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop the trusted HBO brand smh.
The Kool-Aid right now seems to be WBD is pure evil but from my perspective they're making smart and necessary moves precisely to avoid what the OP article is predicting.
And say what you will about Discovery, their frugality or their content, but at least they're a media company. I will still take that any day over a telco, especially AT&T who has done the most "evil" historically of any telco.
It's quite funny to see so many people donning rose-tinted glasses for the short-lived AT&T era. As I remember it at the time, you had near-weekly articles lambasting AT&T higher-ups as being out-of-touch baffoons. A revolving door of executives. Existential dread over resolving debt. (Sound familiar?) Pretty much the only consumer goodwill came from Project Popcorn, and that made Jason Kilar persona non grata in Hollywood.
You can't please everyone, least of all when Wall Street gets involved. I think WBD will be fine, they traded under $10 last week which is insane to me considering their assets and what I believe their trajectory to be in 3-5 years' time. And people like DC and Cartoon Network. People like Euphoria and The White Lotus. And people seem to really like trashy reality shows. HBO Max will be fine.
PS- On the rumored topic of HBO Max changing its name to just "Max," it's a good call. Tying the HBO name to a service which is only 50% HBO at best did not make sense at the time and still doesn't make sense today. "HBO" and "Home Box Office" mean nothing internationally, either. Save the "trusted HBO name" for the prestige content which actually deserves it.
At this point, I think HBO Max has become known enough that just calling it "Max" won't cause tidal waves of confusion, and will correct their original naming mistake for the service. Plus, it's cleaner[1]. Yes please.
This decision would be enough to cancel my HBO subscription, but apparently it's bundled into our cable package so I don't directly pay for it anyway.
HBO has broken the core contract of branded services (i.e. you get access to everything they make), making the value of a subscription much more difficult to understand. I can go back and watch 7 seasons of Arli$$ from 1996, but not the West World episodes released last year?
I will say I am curious how they plan to market a service where you can't use recent hits in your advertising, because they are no longer available...
No one is going on a spending spree right now. But, if someone asked me after consolidation who would be the last ones standing, it would be Netflix and Disney.
I agree with you 100% on that. I just disagree that Disney is well positioned to take part in consolidation. They might be able to pull off some content licensing like Netflix used to do. But right now, the only thing holding Disney afloat is the parks. And they've certainly upset some fans to make that statement true.
Industry experts (including insiders at Disney) note that breakeven was approximately 1.5 billion (the 2 billion came from Cameron), accounting for marketing expenses, the theaters' share of ticket sales, and the fact that the bloated number includes the entire filming costs for Avatar 3 and a quarter of Avatar 4.
So Avatar 2 has earned Disney a profit of at least $250m and it still has several more weeks without any competition. And Avatar 3 will have a far lower break-even point.
I switched from Netflix to Prime a year or so ago, and a few months ago to HBO Max, and they're all basically the same: a handful of good movies and series I haven't seen, some more mediocre but watchable stuff, and a lot that doesn't interest me or is just awful. I get that they want to serve as large an audience as they can get, but it doesn't keep me on their platform. The only plus of HBO Max is their low price for a 1 year multi-screen subscription.
HBO Max is great, but it's tied to a terrible management/company anchor. Rumor is now they are going to drop the trusted HBO brand smh.
Netflix is well positioned, but a player like Disney is also setup to acquire other streamers as they fall over from cost structure issues. I think we're about to see mass consolidation.
Finally, I'm kind of sad that I think the content 'golden era' is likely coming to a close. Cheap money and the fighting for subs led to more money being spent on content relative to what subs paid than at any other point in history. If nothing new was ever made again, I think the list my wife and I already have to watch is longer than time we have left living.