Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service Max becomes HBO Max — again
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It’s not Max, it’s HBO Max.
Warner Bros. Discovery has decided its streaming service Max would once again benefit from being associated with the most prestigious brand name in TV history. The company announced Wednesday that the service will go back to being called HBO Max starting this summer.
The fan-favorite studio show survives as part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s legal settlement with the NBA.
In a statement, WBD said the change was a response to an audience desire for quality over quantity.
“No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content,” the company said.
The streaming service was initially called HBO Max when it was launched in 2020. HBO was stripped from the name in 2023. At the time WBD Chief Executive David Zaslav said the name change was aimed at broadening the audience.
But in an era when the consumer is swamped with choices and a high volume of TV series and movies, WBD gave up a distinctive brand name that has long been associated with high quality and culturally resonant programming, recent examples being new seasons of “The White Lotus” and “The Last of Us.”
The streaming service known for ‘Hacks’ and ‘The Pitt’ has introduced a paid sharing feature to crack down on freeloaders.
Casey Bloys, chairman of HBO and Max Content, told the audience at the WBD upfront advertiser presentation in New York that the HBO brand tells consumers the service has “programming worth paying for.”
Bloys pointed out that he still has a drawer full of stationery with the HBO Max name “from the last time around.”
HBO’s legacy as cable network was built on being a premium service that required an additional fee on a household cable bill. Such groundbreaking series as “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones” and “Sex and the City” put the channel at the vanguard of creativity.
But as streaming overtook cable TV as the destination for scripted TV shows and movies, the HBO name was at risk of becoming a relic.
Max has dropped the original Warner Bros. cartoons from its lineup, which our TV critic says leaves us with the pastiche and is similar to removing books from a library.
Media companies are deciding that their cable network names are the best option for their direct-to-consumer streaming services.
The Walt Disney Co. decided it was best to call ESPN’s standalone streaming service by its familiar name. The new streaming service from CNN, which will launch this fall, will also simply be called CNN without a plus sign or any other designation that separates it from the core network.
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