Image: Warner Bros. Discovery
After days of painstakingly painting the library of his own HBO Max streaming service, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav set out to kill today. Speaking to investors, Zaslav revealed during the second-quarter earnings call his plans to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into one big, dense ball of content that will absolutely, absolutely, contain no Batgirl movies.
Let’s be honest: It’s never great, from a PR perspective, when the graphics or language of this kind of payoff screams — which by its very nature boils down all art and entertainment to a rarefied mess of financial credits and flaws to be shoehorned into always — hungry mouth of The Investors—turn it into gen-pop for wider discussion. But Zaslav’s presentation today became the subject of extra special mockery online, particularly for a slide that purported to show the differences between the two streaming services, which will now be bridged by their impending unholy birth.
We’re told HBO Max is “male-skewed,” “scripted,” “skewed,” “date viewing” and, of course, “home of the fans.” Discovery+, meanwhile, is “female-skewing”, “unscripted”, “lean back”, “comfortable viewing” and “genre home” – which we’re pretty sure is when a classic sci-fi novel hits old sex jeans and gives you the treatment of Christian Grey. The “fandom” vs. “genre” stuff is mostly inscrutable, but we have a feeling that most people wouldn’t have baked the slide too badly if Zaslav hadn’t started with the whole “male kink” vs. “female kink” thing — especially since a ) we can name any number of HBO Max shows with passionate female audiences (and vice versa for Discovery+), and, b) all the descriptors for Discovery+ seem precisely designed to annoy the hell out of passionate pop culture fans, like, say, the people who genuinely care about your poor, crappy streaming service, David.
Zaslav also posted a slide show of the various assets from the paired streaming services, including a “franchises” entry that includes Harry Potter, DC’s superhero movies and, of course, the 90-Day Fiancé universe, a vast cosmology of TV products about marrying people in less time than most people spend brushing their teeth. (Wait, do we need to change our toothbrushes more often?)
Which is mostly dumb, but not necessarily unpleasant. But fear not: Zaslav had a rink for that too. Specifically, he had one detailing all the alleged money-losing sins committed by his predecessors, including CNN+ (which is now also absorbed by Discovery+). The most terrifying, so to speak, is this line (emphasis ours): “Approved incremental spending for projects with uncertain financial return, including Kids & Animation, CNN+, certain Turner Originals and select direct-to-HBO Max feature films.) ban a studio from spending money on TV or movies with “uncertain financial returns,” but don’t worry: Zaslav has a solution. Here’s a quick tip, kids: If someone tells their investors they’re “restructuring” the “content portfolio” of your work, it’s probably time to prepare some cover letters. The company’s CFO later confirmed on the call that a decent amount of the company’s children and animation projects are in the process of being cut.
Amid all the carnage, Zaslav and his team also laid out a timeline for the merger of the two services: We can expect them to relaunch as one entity in the summer of 2023, with no name or price points announced. The hybrid service is expected to launch in both ad-free and ad-supported forms.
Add Comment