fujishig

Oh, you're right, 6 (no, 7) shows were removed when the merger first happened:
Vinyl
Camping
Mrs. Fletcher
Run
Here and Now
K Street (which is not about Korean pop groups, apparently)
At Home with Amy Sedaris

So I should say Westworld is the first one I was actually aware of and watched.

Decker

It's a shame. Mrs. Fletcher was actually pretty good. And Vinyl was ... also a show on HBO.

fujishig

Ha, that's probably exactly what I would say for Westworld season 1... then all of the other Westworld seasons.

Decker

I'm in the minority here, but I thought Westworld S2 was also pretty good (though way lesser than S1), and the first six episodes of S4 were not bad.

fujishig

I think it started off pretty good, then just went... places. Unfortunately I never got to S4 (and probably won't unless Netflix wins the bidding war or whatever)

DJariya

I know you're super slow keeping up with shows, but Westworld was a high quality A-list show. Sorry you'll never get a chance to see the rest. The final season was actually really good.

Decker

Twitter

fujishig

Ha, in a weird way there's actually more of a priority to watch this before it leaves where there was no priority before, but I don't think I have enough time. Glad to hear that the last season was good; I realize the premise in season 1 couldn't last but I felt like it did lose something in season 2 and season 3 didn't pick it back up for me enough to stick with, but maybe someday (which is what I say about my massive streaming/blu-ray/videogame backlog).

On a side note,since we're talking about HBO Max content and stuff could be leaving any day now (half joking) is the second season of Raised By Wolves worth watching despite there being no ending?

randian

Does this mean we'll never see the back half of The Nevers? I doubt the showrunner can shop the show to other services since it's an "Original".

Taken to its logical conclusion, that back catalog titles have less marginal revenue (however measured) than residuals to pay, which is probably almost all back catalog titles at every streaming service because unlike syndicated reruns they don't generate a fresh stream of royalties, HBO Max should have no back catalog whatsoever. Only new shows, and once their first run is over cancel them after a short time for a tax write-off and suspension of residual payments. Yay, we can be back to the glory days of television pre-home-video, when it was basically impossible to watch a show after the end of its run.

maxfisher

I'm curious if the back catalog is really not that important to people, or if this is the start of a huge misstep by WB. We've paid for HBO Max since it launched, but if this is the route they're going, we'll be dropping it. We can just do a one-off month once or twice a year to binge the latest seasons of the shows we care about. A huge part of the appeal of maintaining a subscription is being able to revisit series we love or watch older shows that we missed the first time around.

fujishig

Zaslav is just cutting costs any way he can at the moment, which includes cutting off residuals and selling off series. Whether that's to somehow resell WB is still up for debate but I don't think he cares that much about the content side, at least the content that doesn't come from his Discovery stuff.

I do wonder how long the Ghibli contract runs...

RichC2

There's word that they're interested in running a Free ad-supported television (FAST) service like Freevee and Pluto TV with The Nevers likely to land on that.

A lot of the Discovery trash would do well on there, especially the TLC stuff, but they're suggesting some of the programs pulled from HBO Max will show up on there.

randian

If true then it's exactly as I suspected: for internal accounting purposes they assign their back catalog $0 revenue per subscriber, or close to it. In that model your back catalog makes no sense to carry on your paid service since it cannot pay for itself, so you move it somewhere it can earn new money.

Dan1boy

I'm seriously regretting renewing last June for the Ad-free experience, again, at full price (no discount). I'm getting much more value currently on Hulu and went ads on that one.

Will be reversing this in 2023. Besides the DC series we watch religiously, our queue is awfully tiny compared to Hulu.

Geofferson

I'm still slogging through Westworld S3. Will be in no hurry to watch S4 wherever it lands despite hearing it's an improvement.

OldBoy

Where will WW land? Are other HBO shows like The Sopranos and Oz going to leave too?

DJariya

I suppose if Netflix or Hulu really want Westworld, they could cough up the money to pay the licensing fee. But, then again, the streaming numbers for seasons 1-4 must have really sucked if WBD wants to get rid of it and avoid paying after market residuals. Other services will have to consider that as well. If no one was watching it on HBO Max, why should we pay $$$$ to add it to ours if no one was watching? I mean it sucks for creators as I said previously and I know people want streaming services to keep all their content, but if the numbers were bad?

OldBoy

This could really blow.

RichC2

There's a hold at WB on selling to Netflix right now as well. I don't know what they're doing.

Westworld was rumored for whatever free TV thing they do since it's in-house but who knows. Zaslav is wiping his ass with this brand.

fujishig

Do those free (with commercials) tv things include a lot of more adult fare (ie nudity) like Westworld, though? Asking for a friend...

DJariya

WB doesn’t have a free streaming counterpart. But some of their shows do stream free with ads on The Roku Channel.

randian

Not yet, but I can see them starting one and move all but their most-viewed back catalog there.

RichC2

To an extent, stuff like Sex Pot and Zack and Miri air on Pluto TV.

Not quite as much nudity as Westworld but they don't necessarily shy from it

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fujishig

It may not just be about streaming numbers compared to residuals, it's what they think others will pay for it. I do think psychologically when you have a back catalog that people think won't go anywhere, the urgency to watch it goes down particularly if there's no new content being made for it. People get complacent and think it'll always be there so it's not a draw. But removing it for a while and then having it resurface on a different service might still draw traffic to it so it might be a worthwhile get for another streaming service.

I mean it sucks for the consumer but I can kind of understand the thinking here, I just figured something like Westworld is high profile enough and tied to their brand that they wouldn't touch it. But I guess that's why they're renaming it too, so they don't feel compelled to keep all the HBO content.

TomOpus

I started watching S1 a few months ago but other newer stuff got in the way. I guess I might just buy the blu-ray for S1.