1y ago

Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It

www.wired.com Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It

Once a fan favorite, Max shed 700,000 subscribers in the past three months, even as it made money. That might work for Warner Bros. Discovery, but what about viewers?

Maybe (HBO) Max Just Isn’t Worth It::Warner Bros. Discovery's latest earnings call reveals Max shed 700,000 subscribers in the past three months, even as it made money. That might work for Wall Street, but what about viewers?

Television @lemmy.world

Balancing raising prices with losing customers

www.wired.com /story/warner-bros-discovery-max-loses-subscribers/

21 6

69 comments

I just for the life of me cannot understand why all these companies thought it was a good idea to invest the time, money, resources, infrastructure, maintenance, and so many other things into developing their own service. Instead of just pawning off their content to some other sap who has to do all that shit for you. And making them pay you a pretty penny because you know they want your content. It's just such incredible short-sightedness from companies that are constantly just chasing the biggest dollar. Like if anyone thought about it for a minute, all these companies would see that it wasn't worth it to develop these services. They got scared cuz Netflix made some of its own good content. But realistically, if they just calm down they would have realized that Netflix can't make bangers forever. And they're still going to be invested in buying content from you. These big company should have gotten together and figured out how to reduce the price of cable so people fucking sign up for it and keep watching the mass amount of fucking ads.
- "Man, selling books online is so much hassle, we'll let Amazon do it for us..."
  Borders Books, 2001.
  
  The difference is, Borders wasn't creating books. They were just the middleman. It would be more like if individual publishers decided to all start their own book stores to compete with Amazon.
  
  To be fair, they also did a Borders Rewards program that didn't cost anything. They didn't change the prices of the books, but they gave them huge discounts. Which meant the 40-50% of can't from Borders cut. And they pushed them HARD. Everyone had coupons. It was thought that this would get them loyalty over Barnes and Noble. It took maybe a full quarter for them to realize and backtrack the huge discounts, but it was too late. People used them for the coupons, and then bought everything else online or at Barnes and Noble. It was a fast track to profit loss.
  Source: I worked there before the Amazon partnership, and after the board admitted they needed to walk back the rewards.
  Amateurs making key decisions.
- Yep. Costs a bunch of money upfront and ongoing to operate a streaming service, and even more to make even just an alright one. Plus you split consumers which will naturally give you and competitors fewer subscribers over all. All of that just to get paid directly instead of just getting free money, even if less per-view.
  
  much less per view. They tried this initially. Studios had stuff on Netflix remember? Back when netflix was worth subscribing to.
  This was because netflix was just some free extra money on the side, kind of like selling a tv show to a foreign network. But then netflix ate into their actual money from network broadcast. So now they need to get serious and charge netflix a license fee for the show that reflects that.
  They upped the license fees for the show and netflix just didn't pick them up. All your favourite shows dropped from netflix and the studios had to build their own services.
- They saw Netflix was making a lot more money from their content and wanted s piecd of that pie. Now they’re slowly realizing it takes quite a while to get there.
  
  Yeah but Netflix paid them for that content so it their fault they didn't ask for a "fair price" or something. Also I guess they wanted to fuck over the artists by fudging with streaming numbers and pay them nothing.
- I'm pretty sure that's how Hulu started. A joint venture through several companies to stream all their shows. Problem is once Disney got in everyone else tried to spin up their own and cash out of Hulu.
  It'll be investing to see what alternatives crop up one piracy makes it's comeback.
- They all hoped their own service would dominate and incorporate all competition.
  
  Which is short-sighted.

Once they fired the old CEO that partnered with Warner Brothers and had a streaming-first mindset, the service has gone way down hill. Most of the new content is dumb shit like syndicated reality shows.
I may tune back in for the occasional series releases like Rightous Gemstones, but then I'm out.
- It seems like the interface took a nose dive too. It’s a lot more sluggish and harder to find new things to watch.
  
  The interface absolutely became way worse overnight. You're right about that.

- A different kind of pirate!
- There are difficulties with pirating. I had friends over to watch the Singles Inferno 2 finale, but didn't have Netflix so I torrented it. The download made it to 95% before stalling. The video player on my roku tv would move on to the next episode whenever it encountered a glitch, so it was unwatchable.
  I'm sure it works better for good shows, but if you want to watch trash, pirating isn't as easy as it used to be.
  
  Pirating is way easier than it used to be, you just can't expect torrents to be grabbed immediately. Modern setups like an *arr stack with a bunch of configured trackers (or even better, usenet) will find basically anything you want, trash included, with enough seeds to avoid stalls. The niche stuff might need to run for a day or two, but it'll finish.

I’m kinda over paying for it. I really only got it for Jon Oliver and it’s basically free on YouTube so idk. Also on my computer I click on my Max bookmark and it’s like “hey we’re not HBO max anymore! Now it’s just Max! Redirecting you now…”
What? Am I going crazy? What is even the point of that.
- Rebranding is a way of indicating that they’ve done something (hopefully worth paying more for) without really doing anything at all. Great way for a new executive to make a non-decision.
  
  They did do something though, dropped a lot of content and added in shitty reality shows. I didn't renew a few months ago when the price went up and the quality of content went down.

It never was. I canceled after the end of Game of Thrones and never saw a point in paying their extremely high prices. Just like my house never had HBO growing up, I saw no need to get it now

Honestly I stopped playing video games a few years back and picked it back up during the writes strike. Dropped like $4,000 on a 7800x3d/4090 build. Cancelled all my steaming services , HBO Netflix, all of em, and signed up for game pass instead. I'm done watching stuff on them, if a series comes out I really want to see I'll grab my wooden leg and eye patch from the back of th closet.
- I commend you on taking your own entertainment in your hands, but I also find it ironic that you cancelled your streaming services which cost nowhere near 4 grand. If you drop 50 a month on subscriptions, it would take about 6.6 years to spend 4 grand, but it's much more complex than that and I totally think that a gaming setup is worth so much more than streaming so I get it.
  
  After 6.6 years of streaming, you will also own absolutely nothing.
  
  You realize I didn't build my PC because I stopped watching streaming I built my PC because I wanted to build a new one and get back into gaming. You realize this computer will last years before I need any sort of upgrade? Lmao I swear some people are just so insufferable with their "insights". I stopped paying for streaming because it's expensive and there was nothing to watch, now that the writers strike is over I don't care because I spend my time gaming instead which I actually enjoy more.
  
  If you're wondering why your comment is downvoted despite being a reasonable insight, it's because any remark in this community that even remotely contradicts a comment endorsing piracy is immediately treated to this hivemind behavior.

I waited for the service to be available in my country for a very long time, now I don't care 🏴‍☠️

Well yeah, I've watched the new season of Harley Quinn, what else am I waiting around for?
- Our Flag Means Death is pretty good.

I don't know, because all I do is pirate. I used to use Netflix five or six years ago, but it went to shit enough where pirating just became easier again.
- Where does one find a decent eBook torrent server. Asking for a friend who reads. He speaks Canadian, you wouldn't know him.
  
  Does it have to be a torrent server?
  Why not use something like https://annas-archive.org/
  
  Most public libraries have OverDrive. While not torrented, you can get lots of ebooks for free! (if there's a way to "keep" them from overdrive I'm not aware of it)
  
  myanonamouse
  Amazing site.

When I saw that Blue Beetle was out on physical before streaming, I just went ahead and pulled the plug.
I prefer physical anyway, and if they aren't streaming the newest content, what's even the point?
- Because it's a lot cheaper and more convenient?

Fuck em

In the east EU I am paying 4,66EUR monthly for HBO Max service, which we share in 5 households. That is under 1EUR for each household. I will gladly pay that instead of downloading whatever already is on HBO Max.

They're still fairly cheap in Europe and I really looked forward on getting to see their content a couple of years back, but now it looks like most of it could just as easily be shown on another platform like Disney or Netflix. There's no real depth in most of it. I'll keep hanging on watching shows like Insecure, but I wonder whether I'll keep the account in future.
- I’ve subscribed to them once a month each year these past three years, literally only to catch His Dark Materials. Now that that’s over I don’t see what else they have to offer.

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