Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million subscribers in the three months following the launch of Max. The losses weren’t exclusive to the Max streaming service, though. In its earnings report on Thursday, the company reported having 95.8 million global subscribers across all of its services — down from 97.6 million at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Dumbest rebranding ever. Wait… no, I take that back. Twiter -> X is the dumbest. But HBO -> Max is way up there.
A lot of the decisions that Zaslav has made as CEO are kind of mind boggling. The rebranding, canning movies that were already past post production (Batgirl), and removing shows from the streaming service (Westworld).
They’re head scratching moments. You’d think, absent of these changes, they might not have seen such a dip in subscription numbers.
Then again, the subscription service streaming business model is shit, and some of these services are going to go under to satisfy their studio bottom lines…which are going to get another hit once the content slump from SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes begins.
Too bad though, through all the shit, there is a lot of decently produced stuff out there.
Zaslav has been cutting costs so he and other Warner Bros Discovery executives can get multi-million dollar bonuses. It’s not been widely reported, I was only able to find two articles.
Warner Bros. Discovery boosts David Zaslav pay incentives after company cuts costs
Warner Bros. Discovery Stock Upgraded by Analysts Bullish on Execs’ Free Cash Flow-Based Bonuses
Of all the decisions Zaslav has made, rebranding HBO Max to Max was actually the smartest one. HBO’s brand was being diluted with a bunch of non-HBO content and it was going to have a negative impact in the long term. Not sold on the new name, but removing HBO’s name from a bunch of lower quality content was actually a smart move.