In 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery merged HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming app called Max, with the puzzling decision to remove the HBO from the streaming app’s brand. Surprise, almost exactly two years later, the company is reversing course and returning to the HBO Max name.
Here’s how the press announcement is finessing the flip-flop:
“Returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach — leaning heavily on consumer data and insights — to best position itself for success.”
So trashing a respected brand, only to realize “whoops, bad idea,” is now “boldly iterating” their “strategy and approach.” That sounds a lot like business school baloney, but you’d think with all the MBAs that surely make up the executive ranks that someone could have foreseen the problems of a pointless rebrand.
Back in 2023, the company’s streaming chief JB Perrette said that lopping off “HBO” from the streamer’s name meant Warner Bros. Discovery would be able to “better elevate and showcase our unparalleled array of other content and brands that will be key to broadening the appeal of this enhanced product.” My theory? They worried viewers who gravitate to the more downmarket Discovery content were turned off by the prestige sheen associated with HBO, and more likely to sample HBO shows if they were accessing them through just-Max.
Guessing that didn’t pan out. And at least this repurposed meme below, provided by WBD, acknowledges the humor (ridiculousness?) of the back and forth.
The business prerogatives of streaming often leave me scratching my head. Some shows from WBD (“Succession,” “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us”) are HBO shows, and are available to watch both on the company’s cable channel and its streaming app. Other shows (“Hacks,” “The Pitt”) are Max shows and are only available via streaming. By the way, if you’re an HBO cable subscriber, that also grants you free access to the streamer. (The costs of a cable and streaming subscription are roughly the same for a standard package).
So why the distinction? Who knows? What are audiences supposed to make of this distinction? Who knows? Will WBD realize this is yet another confusing choice and make all of its original HBO shows available to anyone who is forking over money to the company each month?
My final question that will inevitably be left unanswered: How much was spent to rebrand HBO Max as Max … and now back again? Whatever the figure, I’m sure it’s cold comfort to anyone who has been laid off from the company in the last two years. For anyone keeping score, WBD CEO David Zaslav’s annual pay went up in 2024, with a total package worth nearly $52 million.
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.
