HBO Max was renamed Max, and Warner Bros. Discovery lost subscribers

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 437 points –
HBO Max was renamed Max, and Warner Bros. Discovery lost subscribers
theverge.com

HBO Max was renamed Max, and Warner Bros. Discovery lost subscribers::Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2023 following HBO Max’s rebrand to Max. The company now has 95.8 million subscribers across all of its services.

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In all seriousness, why the hell would a company already branded the "Home Box Office" run away from the moniker in the era of at-home online movie binging. You have some of the most intuitive psychic real estate shy of Twitter, a company whose name will never be changed because the brand recognition is so high. Who could have possibly gotten you to believe changing it to something as vague and ill-suited as Max was a good idea?

Not to mention all the happy nostalgia from their PRIMARY TARGET CUSTOMERS who were kids in the 80s and still fondly remember the HBO feature presentation intro.

Just reading that got the tune in my head

I hear Coca-Cola is going to rebrand itself to New Coke this year. Can't fail!!

It would be more like if Coca Cola randomly decided to rebrand itself as Piss.

Right?! My first thought was "Max? You mean like Cinemax? Did Cinemax buy HBO??" Well, turns out, the OPPOSITE is true. In what world is Cinemax the more valuable brand than HBO???

What’s the most baffling to me is that WB owned HBO and Cinemax when they created HBOMax, but they chose not to include Cinemax content.

I guess these days among the executive class, it’s just really cool to purposefully mismanage your IP.

It's because they didn't buy Cinemax to combine them into a bigger more valuable brand with more IP. They bought out Cinemax to eliminate the competition. And they did it around the same time that all the streaming services started taking off, so they obviously got their asses kicked by Netflix. Cable TV as a whole has really suffered since Netflix and Prime got really big.

Because they want to bog it down with shitty titles (quantity vs quality) to appear more competitive with more programming and don't want to degrade the HBO brand.

What brand is left after you've renamed the flagship service?

Its not like HBO Premium is some extra tier of service.

At the same time they made the name change they also eliminated a bunch of content and highlight a lot more of the reality stuff that might not have the same draw.

They freaking cancelled Westworld when it only had one season left in the story.

Sorry to repost. I immediately tossed in a thing about the rebrand and then saw this, so I'm hitting it again because it frames the rebrand as knowing and deliberate (as opposed to a fuck up).

Bad Faith podcast had an episode on the strike a couple weeks back. The guests (strikers) talked about how Zaslav renaming HBO to Max is right inline with their intent to churn out "good enough" content to increase profits rather than increase quality. They likened it to a signal to Wall Street to improve their share value.

I fell out of Bad Faith after the Other Host had a run in with Chris Hansen. Might have to give it another shot.

It comes across as if it was a business decision without regard for their customers....without the basic understanding that their customers ARE their business.

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