Two years ago, the proposition seemed simple enough.
After the blockbuster merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, the leaders of the newly formed company announced plans to take two different types of programming and smash them together to form an unbeatable streaming service called Max.
HBO’s lean-in original content would be combined with Discovery’s vast collection of lean-back unscripted programming. HBO originals like “The Last of Us” and “Succession” would get people to subscribe and watch intently at night, and Discovery’s broad array of cable shows like “The Property Brothers” and “Naked and Afraid” would get them to stay and keep the streaming service running all day in the background.
“Together, they pack a really powerful one-two punch,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in 2023.
It is now clear that one of the punches never really landed.
On Monday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it would split into two companies. One will operate the cable networks, like TNT and CNN, along with Discovery’s old properties, which include the Food Network, HGTV, TLC and the Discovery+ streaming app. The other company will own HBO, HBO Max, and the Warner Bros. and DC studio businesses.
Mr. Zaslav said the separate companies would be more nimble and aggressive to “unlock value.” There’s no doubt that the change is largely in response to the reality of today’s cable business, which is rapidly losing viewership, revenue and relevance. Competing against giants like Netflix with an all-you-can-eat streaming buffet, the thinking now goes, is not a viable game plan. NBCUniversal announced a similar spinoff of most of its cable properties last year.
But it is also a response to two years of streaming viewing data from Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship service. People who subscribe to Max watch HBO content like “The White Lotus,” studio movies, older Warner Bros. series like “Friends” and “The West Wing” — and little else. With the exception of a few properties, like programs from the ID cable network, subscribers have mostly ignored Discovery’s enormous assortment of lowbrow reality shows and unscripted lifestyle content.
That is one of the major reasons the company announced last month that it would revert to the HBO Max name, putting the premium cable network, again, front and center as the consumer offering.
The name change “really is a reaction to being in the marketplace for two years, evaluating what’s working and really leaning into that,” Casey Bloys, the chairman of HBO, told The New York Times last month.
On Monday, the daily list of the 10 most-watched TV series on Max was full of original scripted content made by Mr. Bloys’s team (“And Just Like That,” “The Last of Us,” “Hacks,” “Duster”), as well as his team’s documentaries (“The Mortician,” “Pee-wee as Himself,”) and talk shows (John Oliver and Bill Maher). More passive fare, like the Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay” and TLC’s “1000-lb Roomies,” did not make the cut.
“These are vastly different products that are aimed at a vastly different audience,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school. “This is sort of like taking Hermès and merging it with Gap and saying, ‘Well, you can come in and buy the most gorgeous wallet, but also there are lots of really cheap T-shirts that will last a few days.’”
In a way, the split will essentially be a return to what HBO Max looked like about five years ago, under AT&T’s ownership before the merger with Discovery, albeit with a stronger and more stable technology backbone built by current leadership. And it could even somewhat resemble what HBO looked like on cable a couple of decades ago, when it relied on original programs (Sunday nights), newish movies (Saturday nights), and licensed movies and a smattering of HBO shows (every day).
Many of the changes to the streaming service have already happened. The app’s color scheme switched to HBO’s familiar black-and-white palette a few months ago. And on the app’s home page, HBO and Warner Bros. content is prominently placed, while much of Discovery’s content is harder to find. The HBO Max name change will roll out in the coming weeks.
There have been good returns in recent months. The streaming division is now profitable, and it added over five million subscribers in the first quarter to bring the total of 122 million. HBO Max will also be introduced in Britain, Germany and Italy next year, and the company believes it will grow to more than 150 million subscribers by the end of 2026.
In total viewing time, though, the streaming service still lags far behind Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.
Two years ago, Mr. Zaslav felt that the HBO and Warner Bros. programming would do the work of drawing in new subscribers and that the “comfort viewing” of Discovery’s cable programming would keep them from canceling. Instead, he found better returns in bundling Max with Disney+ and Hulu, a lower-priced offering that is “just crushing it on retention,” Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna, a subscriber research firm, said this year.
By Monday morning, Mr. Zaslav was telling investors of a new direct-to-consumer approach.
“We feel like we’ve found a very compelling strategy of quality,” he said. “We talk to people around the world, and we put ‘HBO’ back in for a reason — people see us as the highest-quality streaming service out there.”
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
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