Toddarino

I know it’s been out for a while, but that sucks about Vinyl. It’s been in my queue. I assumed since it was and HBO show, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

RichC2

Hovering around $16/share after hours. Down a bit from close of the market ($17.48/share).

TheBang

HBO Max and Discovery+ merging by summer 2023, "primarily using tech from discovery+ and some programming from HBOMax"

Ad-free, Ad-lite, and Ad-only options. (<--- not clear if this is what they're going to be offering. Only that the platform can support these options)


https://variety.com/2022/digital/new...23-1235333314/

Decker

Finally, the Game of Thrones and 90 Day Fiancé Universes, united at last!

Giantrobo

Wow... I guess we'll see.

DJariya

So its not being gutted. Everyone was losing their minds over the last 2 days for nothing

TheBang

The worst slide:


That's not entirely clear yet. They brought up the scrapped Batgirl, Scoob! 2, and Wonder Twins as "projects that don’t line up with their vision for the future of their content they own"

From Zaslav: "We’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it" and the company "can't find an economic case" for expensive direct to streaming films.

Jay G.

Looking at Twitter for info on the earnings call. The combined HBO Max & Discovery+ streaming service will launch in Summer 2023 in the U.S.

Also, there's slides:

Jay G.

Edit: Twitter thread of someone live tweeting the call:

fujishig

That Baseline below Expectations slide is really revealing.

Too much exclusivity instead of licensing out their content to other services
"Kids and Animation" put in the underperforming category with CNN+, Turner Originals, and direct to HBO Max films (ouch)

Basically no risks, screw the kids, we're only licensing stuff that we think will be huge or will cost nothing and we're going to raise prices(ie: the new Netflix strategy), we'll let you rent our content through our streaming service and we hope you like Shark Week and 90 day Fiance because more of that is coming.

Mike86

I’m really kind of surprised the sequel to Scoob! got cancelled. I mean it wasn’t the best movie or anything but it seems like anything Scooby-Doo is easily sold to kids.

DJariya

So all this panic started from a Grace Randolph tweet where she really had no source to back up her rumor and click bait headlines. If you actually read The Wrap story with the sensationalized headlines, it wasn't as much a Doomsday as the net thought it was.

So from what I see, HBO Max and Discovery plus will continue to exist as separate entities until next summer. They will then merge.

The tab rumor was more bullshit from Randolph

They are in full support of theatrical content.

WBD is not canceling Max scripted content as people panicked about. But if the content sucks or doesn't perform well, then of course it's gone.

There will be layoffs, but that’s just corporate redundancy as with any merger.

Batgirl and Scoob are still dead. People are still confused why a $90M movie gets thrown away even though people who actually saw it say it sucks.

And they are dumping low viewed content that probably no one cares about.

Other than that, we won’t get a clearer picture until probably next year.

Red Hood

Those presentation slides prove that the new Discovery bosses are just steaming piles of shit. That fucking slide of HBO Max for men Discovery for women is the most tone deaf one I’ve seen in years and can’t believe that in 2022 it was put in a formal public presentation. Whoever did the “research” has to be the most Yes man in the company who created a survey with the questions that skewed in what the bosses wanted to hear. Seriously, fuck everyone involved in this. We already have had horrible 3 years with pandemic and politics and now here comes these assholes to ruin our entertainment. Fuck them all

Decker

"Men like quality programming. Women like mindless crap". I mean, it's true in my house.

TomOpus

So they're just going to run the company the way they should've been running the company.

Neil M.

Or maybe its correct and you just don't want to accept it. It is true in my house as well. My wife likes scripted television but she gravitates towards unscripted tv. I literally hate reality tv and pretty much avoid it as much as I can.

stingermck

And my wife watches hbo max every day

Red Hood

I’ve seen previous research done about this matter and it’s not accurate. Of course, it all depends on the type of questions asked but as far as a couple of years ago, the whole scripted vs unscripted pushed 50/50. Yes, more women watch shows like Bachelor/Bachelorette, Kardashians and Love Island but more men watched Duck Dynasty, Shark Tank and Bar Rescue. More women watch Greys Anatomy, Sex and the City and This is Us and more men watch Monday Night Raw and Law and Order. It all depends on the type of scripted and unscripted programming, so if the researchers went ahead with very ambiguous questions, then they got the results they wanted to hear and not the truth.

In my household, we barely watch any reality programming with the exception of cooking shows. Everything else is scripted even though my wife and I differ on the shows we watch. She tends to like shows like The Americans and I watch superhero shows and wrestling. We both love Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Cobra Kai, Stranger Things and Game of Thrones. Programming is so varied right now that this whole scripted vs unscripted thing is just bullshit. What I know for certain is that unscripted TV cost cents on the dollar compared to scripted one and Discovery, like many other companies, just care about money and the bottom line and not quality. Love Island may cost them $1M for
the full season while something like Chad will cost them $20M. Even if both are equally successful in ratings, these execs will cut Chad and run with Love Island since it will
cost them very little compared to the other. It all becomes quantity over quality

New Lurker

I guess my brain just works different here, but how in the world can that be your takeaway? They said the platforms will merge using mostly Discovery Plus tech. That's much closer to HBO Max ending up as a tab on Discovery Plus than any other takeaway. It's not going to be called Discovery Plus, but it's the same tech. For all intents & purposes it's just Discovery Plus with a new name and an HBO tab.

There isn't much clarity yet being so far out. But the benefit of HBO Max is you get HBO (digitally) plus a whole bunch of freebies. If it's no longer HBO Max, who's to say you will still get HBO live (digitally)? Discovery Plus doesn't do live airings for all of their first run content like HBO Max did for HBO shows does it?

My main gripe about all of this is I really like the HBO Max interface. I really like the HBO Max branding. HBO Max is far more successful as a streaming service. Merging them is certainly not a bad thing if they did it the obvious way, migrated all of Discovery Plus' content over to HBO Max. But they are scrapping the wildly well liked app to use the tech for an app that isn't wildly liked. It's hubris. It's a pissing contest. It's an 'our brand is bigger and better than the brand we bought' fallacy. It doesn't inspire consumer confidence.

It seems like a financially motivated change. 'Hey if HBO Max doesn't exists anymore, than traditional HBO customers and those grandfathered in for free through AT&T are screwed and will have to buy this new app to get the same content'. It's not a positive outlook based on how they are prioritizing things. At least from the way I interpreted it.

Artman

I stood up and cheered after hearing the plan and seeing the slides. (you know which ones!) Finally someone with the balls to make some hard decisions - and not give a damn what the loud but irrelevant voices online say about it. You have to punch back hard against them, and he seems like the person to do it!

Red Hood

You want a cookie for seeing a slide that almost came from the 1950’s? Why don’t you say it out loud instead of playing coy? You love that the dipshit running this is going “anti-woke”. Come on say it and don’t hide behind “those slides”. HBOMax was a pretty successful streaming service with their “woke” content that doesn’t align with those slides. Same with Disney +. On the other hand, almost no one gives to shits about Discovery + and that streaming service is hardly known even with the programming that aligns with “anti-woke”.

But yeah, keep telling us how those slides are going to make an already very successful service better, when in fact they promise to do everything the opposite

Red Hood

Jay G.

Are we even sure it will have a new name? That's to be announced, it could literally end up being called Discovery+.

Looking it up, Discovery+ has live "channels," but they don't correspond to the cable channels. Still, they have the tech to do live streaming built into the app/service, so it's possible they could do that for HBO shows.
https://streamingbetter.com/discover...list-work-how/

We'll see about the traditional HBO customers, but the AT&T customers are being paid for by AT&T. So it's up to AT&T whether they stop providing it to customers or not, and they could likely decide that without a name change. That said, many other carriers offer at least a free year and/or a discount for various streaming services, so it may be in AT&T's interest to keep offering the service for free, even if the name changes.

Toddarino

All the broads I know don’t even watch tv. They’re in the kitchen all day.

fujishig

Grace Randolph aside, the rumors weren't far off.

1. The two are going to merge and Discovery seems to be coming out on top.
2. There's a focus on theatrical releases
3. The scripted programming rumor I think is more a result of seeing what they've done with their other products, mainly TNT and TBS, and how many things they've already cancelled, including the CW slate. They want cheaper programming is the bottom line.
4. If something doesn't seem like a big money maker, it's cut. Now that may seem like a "duh" thing, but if you think about it for a second, think of all the programs/movies that came out that weren't supposed to be bonafide hits out of the gate that were allowed to grow. If you just chase after the money your content is going to suffer and you're going to run franchises into the ground with sequel after sequel. Like he holds up Ted Lasso as this big success but would he greenlight a Ted Lasso?
5. HBO Max/Discovery is going to purge a ton of content. I love how they spin it as hey, it's less stuff to scroll through. But really they want to monetize it and they don't want to create, say, a Disney Plus where they're the goto place for WB content.
6. They are basically saying it was a mistake to subsidize the cost of HBO Max the way they've been doing, so prepare for Netflix-style increases.

Good for the bottom line, sure, but I would think few of us here care that much about the bottom line. Terrible for subscribers. But we'll see, if this more focused approach can actually get them to have a DC cinematic universe that isn't in "Crisis" mode, then cool. But my fear still remains that they'll do something stupid like outsource their comics division to save money.