HBO Max And Discovery Plus To Merge Whether You Like It Or Not
HBO Max and Discovery Plus serve two completely different audiences: one craving prestige TV like Succession and the other demanding cheap reality sludge like 90 Day Fiance. The two don’t really blend, but thanks to the impending off-load of Warner Bros by AT&T into Discovery, they’re going to have to find a way to get along.
Variety reported today that the current plan is to merge both streaming services into one service. Why not a bundle instead? Because some suit doesn’t want a bundle, that’s why. “One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle,” Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels is quoted as saying. “We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition.” He’s on the Discovery side, so he would say that.
The most crucial thing here is the price — it can’t rise one cent or the whole thing will fail. HBO Max is already pushing the limits of what the streaming consumer base will pay for one solitary service. $14.99 didn’t move the needle at first, so they introduced an ad-supported $9.99. Absolutely no one currently paying HBO Max wants to pay over $14.99 for the kind of content Discovery makes. Mass subscription cancellations could be the result.
The only silver lining here is that it can’t happen overnight. “That’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime,” says Wiedenfels. Someone please convince him this is a bad idea.
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