Andrew Orr
HBO Max and Discovery+ are expected to merge and debut as a new, unified streaming service on Wednesday, with tiers costing up to $16 per month.
To develop a single streaming service, WarnerMedia, a part of AT&T, merged with Discovery in a $43 billion merger in May 2021. Discovery CEO David Zaslav stated in 2022 that the new package would combine HBO Max and Discovery+ to compete with services like Apple TV+ and others.
Details of the new service, which is reportedly called "Max," will be revealed on April 12, according to The New York Times. Sources say the Max streamer will have multiple subscription tiers at different price points.
One of the tiers is said to include an ad-free plan, which is expected to cost $16 per month. This is the same price as the existing HBO Max membership without ads.
The Max service will have HBO series like "The Sopranos" and "Succession" joining Discovery series like "Dr. Pimple Popper" and "Fixer Upper." Sources say that after announcement, it will take a few months to become available.
Reportedly, the company will keep Discovery+ alongside the new service instead of shelving it. The objective is to prevent losing a substantial chunk of Discovery+'s 20 million customers who might not want to pay more for access to the content.
It's unclear how existing subscribers will migrate from HBO Max to the new service once it's available. That's a topic that executives will likely discuss on Wednesday.
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9 Comments
Honestly, this does not make much sense.
HBO Max will become just Max, and will have the combined content of HBO Max and Discovery+. Max will cost the same as HBO Max does now.
Meanwhile, Discovery+ will continue as a stand-alone service with the same content and price as it has now.
So... HBO Max changes its name and gains extra content, and everything else remains the same.
From the viewer's end, current HBO Max subscribers won't need to change anything, unless they're also currently Discovery+ subscribers, in which case, they'll cancel their Discovery+ subscription. Current Discovery+ subscribers who aren't also HBO Max subscribers won't need to change anything either, unless the smaller price bump between that and the new Max service is worth it to cancel Discovery+ and get the combined Max service.
From the business end, it sounds like a net loss, since the gains from the D+-only subscribers who pay a little extra to upgrade will surely amount to a lot less than the loss from subscribers of both who drop D+.
Maybe that'll work, but there will still be lots of D+ holdout subscribers who will be angry that they have to pay more to keep their content after D+ is cancelled, and angry again when Max goes up a year later. And subscribers from the HBO Max side will still know a year later that the price increase is because of Dr. Pimple Popper, which they will never have watched even once since it became available to them.
The real question on a lot of minds is whether AT&T wireless subscribers that receive HBOMax as part of their plan will continue to get MAX as part of that or whether AT&T drops it because it's a different service now...
My question is, Will current HBO subscribers (through cable or satellite tv) be able to access the upgraded Max service for free? Would I be able to cancel my current Discvery+ subscription?
I really don't get the MAX branding. HBO is a name that I trust when it comes to original content, not Cinemax, so moving to MAX seems confusing, at best, and potentially harmful to the many decades of excellent original programming under the HBO moniker.