The headline of the Warner Bros. earnings call. Discovery was something very much… people were concerned about: HBO Max and Discovery+ join forces in a new service. The company will roll out this new offering – which has not yet been named – to US consumers in the summer of 2023, with Latin American expansion later that year and European market launch in 2024.
The company aims to merge several offerings such as critically acclaimed script shows such as “Succession”, “Euphoria” and HBO Max’s upcoming “House of Dragons” and unscripted shows such as “90 Day Fiancé” and “Fixer Upper”, among others. a service . This is probably to better compete with Netflix, which has a slew of scripted and unscripted shows to its name.
Warner Bros. Discovery starts this merger process by placing content on both services. Discovery+ will begin showing CNN originals under a new tab starting this month, and HBO Max will be getting some reality shows from Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network starting September 30.
The company also admitted that both HBO Max and Discovery had shortcomings from a product perspective, with the aim of the new product addressing those issues.
The HBO Max app has a notorious reputation for being a buggy app with a lot of issues: the app crashes and crashes on Roku; can’t remember subtitle settings on Apple TV; and the content is sometimes inaccessible. HBO Max’s app ratings — 3.7 in the Google Play Store and just 2.8 in the Apple App Store — reflect customers experiencing multiple issues. In an interview with Protocol in April, Sarah Lyons, head of product at HBO Max, admitted that the company rushed its apps despite knowing they had bugs in 2020.
On the other hand, Discovery+ app performance is good, but it lacks features like offline viewing and parental controls.
“HBO Max has a competitive feature set, but has had performance and customer issues. Discovery+ has the best performance and consumer ratings, but more limited features. Our combined service will focus on delivering the best of both worlds, industry-leading features with world-class performance,” said Jean-Briac Perrette, CEO and president of the company for global streaming and gaming, during the call for profit.
The company mentioned that in addition to merging existing services, it is also exploring an ad-supported free offering for people who don’t want to pay a subscription fee. The company will reveal more details about this plan at investor day later this year. Notably, rival streaming company Netflix will also introduce an ad-supported version of its service next year.
In recent days, HBO Max has faced a lot of criticism for silently removing titles from its service and canceling high-budget projects like “Batgirl”.
The announcement of the merger with HBO Max-Discovery+ confirms a report from The Wrap about a major shift in streaming strategy at Warner Bros. Discovery that could lead to layoffs days before earnings results. However, the company made no mention of people-related restructuring during its earnings call. We’ve asked the company for comment and we’ll update the story if we hear anything.
Aside from the major app merger, Warner Bros. Discovery claims it has 92 million combined subscribers – 76.8 million from HBO and HBO Max and 24 million from Discovery+. The company posted revenue of $9.8 billion, well below analysts’ estimate of $11.91 billion.