Max is going to be HBO Max. Again. Here’s what that really means.

Remember when HBO used to be called HBO, and then it became HBO Max, and then it became Max?

And how everyone except the people who owned the iconic TV brand thought it was a terrible idea to demote an iconic TV brand?

Turns out everyone was right.

Warner Bros. Discovery, the company that owns Max, now says it will rebrand the service and call it… HBO Max.

That’s the brand it operated under from May 2020 — when it had a different owner — through May 2023. That’s when current ownership flipped the name to Max, which it’s now ditching.

And if you think that’s a pretty funny example of sweaty corporate pivoting and flailing — the kind of stuff that regularly got flayed on HBO’s “Succession” — you are not alone. The folks at WBD also acknowledge the silliness of the whole episode, and are distributing a mea culpa meme to poke fun at themselves:

So that’s the fun part. There is some more serious stuff going on behind the scenes, though.

For starters, this is yet another acknowledgment that the thesis behind the merger of what used to be called WarnerMedia and Discovery hasn’t panned out. The thesis was that combining HBO’s programming with reality TV programming would make a streaming service with broad enough appeal to take on Netflix.

Not that the WBD folks are saying that exactly in public. But you can read between the lines in the press release announcing the change, where the company says its streaming service is thriving because of “investment and re-focusing the strategy on the programming that is working best like HBO, recent box-office movies, docuseries, certain reality series, and Max and local originals, and de-prioritizing other genres that drive less engagement or acquisition.”

Translation: We thought HBO was a brand that meant a lot to some people but not much to a much bigger group of people. Whoops! Turns out people like HBO. Also, they like other shows made by HBO people, that for some reason weren’t called HBO shows, like “The Pitt.” And they do like a few things from Discovery, like “90 Day Fiancé.” But a lot of the Discovery stuff — think Food Network and other lifestyle programming — really isn’t working on a service that also brings you “The White Lotus” and we’re done pretending that it’s a good idea.

It’s also important to recognize that WBD’s rebranding of its streaming service isn’t the only acknowledgment that things haven’t gone as planned.

It also did that late last year, when it reorganized the company, doing an on-paper separation of its studio and streaming business — the stuff it thinks is going to grow — from its old-school cable networks like Discovery and TNT.

That move was made so WBD could one day split itself up for real, echoing what Comcast is already doing. CNBC reported last week that the split could come “in the not-too-distant future.”

If that happens, don’t expect a funny meme to accompany the announcement. But it’s still going to be the same story: The people who insisted that pushing two companies together was a good idea will be telling you that they’re better apart, after all.

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