davidh777

Black Canary in the comics goes way back to the 1940s and was part of the classic Justice League. Mostly a peripheral character, but one of the leads in the Birds of Prey comic.

DJariya

First round of layoffs at HBO Max. The reality TV division is being shut down. Not surprised considering Discovery probably has people doing the same jobs.

DJariya

More HBO Max content being dropped. Appears to be mostly animated shows.

DJariya

Here is the complete list of the purge

https://tvline.com/2022/08/17/hbo-ma...lmo-full-list/

DJariya

Julia Pott is the EP of Summer Camp Island, which is getting pulled.

windom

Glad I already watched "My Mom, Your Dad'...yeah, I actually did. I still need to watch season 2 of FBoy Island, which they seem to be sticking with, for now at least.

DJariya

I admit that I didn't watch any of these programs, so I won't lose any sleep for them being removed. But, it does suck for the fans of these shows and the creators who worked hard on them.

The idea that content owned by the company should be on their streaming service in perpetuity is basically a fairy tale.

Deftones

It isn't like HBO Max is getting millions of dollars to license these out. I don't get what pulling any of these animated series accomplishes.

fujishig

My kids are going to be livid, especially for Infinity Train, Summer Camp Island, and Ok KO. This is ridiculous.

Superman07

I knew there was a second season of Beforeigners getting made. I did not know it was released the end of last year into this year. Further, I didn’t know HBO Max pulled it in July. Since it was an HBO production, as far as I can tell there is no place to view it. Very disappointing!!

Red Hood

This is exactly what I don’t get. It’s not like any lf these shows are going to be next week on Netflix or Paramount + or any other streaming service. Why the fuck are they pulling them out from HBOMax? These people from Discovery are becoming even worse than the AOL crew. They remind me of the idiots at Best Buy who decided to scale back on their rewards programs and cut benefits and their defense was “because customers asked for it”. Really, who the fuck wants stuff taken away from them?

tonyc3742

Shoot, I'M livid for the loss of Summer Camp Island. Didn't like the last season as much but that show and Netflix's Baby-sitters Club were two of my favorite 'feel good' finds of the last two years (when we could use some feel-good finds.)
I liked Infinity Train too.

Magic WAS real, until Zaslav killed it.

Why? Why do this?

fujishig

Since most of these are Max originals this has to at least be partly tax/loss related, as insanely stupid as that is.

Imagine launching a streaming service, developing exclusive content for it, and then removing this exclusive content altogether.

And the creators are... not happy


I mean the last part of Summer Camp Island is basically done and held hostage now. The current state of the animation industry must be a bloodbath between this and Netflix cutting back. Oh and there goes that residual money, as tiny as that probably was.

Deftones

Yeah I forgot about the tax write off angle. Obviously what is happening here. So ridiculous.

windom

Don't they also have to pay some residuals to some of the people who worked on the shows as they continue to stream? If so, they wouldn't have to pay those residuals anymore when the shows are removed.

DJariya

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/hbo...ed-1235344286/

It looks like it's indeed to save money on residual payments for the "lesser watched" titles. This hurts actors and the content creators livelihoods. Now their work doesn't live on and they won't get paid anymore for it.

OldBoy

that really fucking sucks.

fujishig

I guess it makes sense. Most of these shows were destined for streaming from the start, so I imagine the contracts were heavily tilted towards streaming residuals, and I doubt they go by actual watches but some kind of flat fee per subscriber or something. But man, if the residuals were significant that basically just screwed over anyone involved in making stuff for them. This is all short term gain with long term consequences, which makes me think even more that this is going to be a quick sale to someone else (or piecemeal), which is just... sad.

DJariya

Twitter

DJariya

My 3 month $9.99 promo on DirecTV ends on September 11th. I'm probably going to cancel that and just sign up for the 1-year, $105 promo here. It's actually cheaper and there is a $16 cash back promo from Rakuten as well, which makes it even cheaper.

randian

I’d consider signing up for a year with the new discount but I fear most of what I watch on HBO Max is going to be canceled.

tonyc3742

If it's lesser watched...wouldn't the residuals be lower? Unless it was a flat fee.
I'm betting if they went to the creators and said, "Look, we're really hurting. Here's our choices - lower your residuals to 75% (or whatever), or we have to pull it" they'd probably agree.
Hmm, but then, that would be perceived as strong arming, which I guess it is...shame the agreement allows for "we're just chucking it".
I hate this artificial dichotomy toward either cheap bullsh*t ("reality" programming) or AAA titles. Not everything is a Stranger Things, Avengers Endgame, Game of Thrones, etc, not everything needs to be. Shoot, I just watched Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on Amazon, which is BAD, but was really funny.
And presumably, the contract which gives WBD the right to pull any content, does NOT give the content back to the creator for them to shop around or even set free or show on Youtube or something....
Yeah, a grab for a discounted year's worth of revenue seems like a panic mode.."Let's lock in some money before we do more purging", or "Maybe people will think we're worth the discount now."

Shannon Nutt

Zaslav, for someone who made all the right choices with Discovery, seems to be making some very bad ones with Warners right now - I understand that he needs to undercut a whole lot of debt, but that needs to be dealt with in what projects he greenlights going forward - instead of all this cutting and removing of content already available.

Red Hood

TomOpus

I watched all the old Looney Toons cartoons on HBO Max.They can dump the newer cartoons.