Warner Bros. Discovery Loses 1.8 Million Subscribers Following Max Launch
Max, Discover+, and HBO lost a combined 1.8 million subscribers in the three months to June 30, Warner Bros. Discovery has announced.
Gee, take your pick: you have the bad rebranding, the yanking and cancellation of some of their best shows (seriously, Westworld? You owned it!), cancelling already completed movies (Batgirl) or raising the price and removing 4k as a default among other things.
I thought musk was doing a Speedrun on how to kill a company but didn't realize he had competition.
David Zazlav has heard your complaints and will replace all the shows he removed with reality shows focused on ruining the lives of poor people. Then you can watch someone's life fall apart and say, gee I'm glad I'm not that guy! It's great!
When I was younger I watched hoarders and honey booboo a few times and never liked them, now I know why I didn't. They're fucking exploitive as shit. Hey here are people with actual real mental problems who desperately need help. Let's profit off of that by having the whole country laugh at you!
Pulling venture bros. Only weeks after the movie launches amount how many other animated shows. Why would I stay?
Aug 12th is when it goes away. For those wondering https://comicbook.com/anime/news/the-venture-bros-max-removed-adult-swim-streaming-report/
What?!.. You mean Dr.pimple popper and Ghost Hunters are not being received well on Max?! I'm flabbergasted....
Somebody mentioned Dr. Pimple Popper to me recently and I thought they were making up an over-the-top fake reality show title. Imagine my shock when I found out that it was a real show. There's a reason I haven't watched anything aside from sports on network/cable TV in years.
If it's well received, then logically it's better to cancel it so that you can write it off of the sale. If it's poorly rated it's worth keeping because it won't be a worthwhile writeoff
Meta, MAX, X
The 2020s is the decade of shitty rebrands.
Facebook is trying to get away from the Facebook papers stink.
So I call them the meta Facebook papers from now on.
Nothing gives a company a harder boner then needlessly rebranding shit. It's the business equivalent to food corporations putting "NEW AND IMPROVED" on their same old product, while reducing the size of the product.
I hate it.
I work for a southeastern electric company that changed its logo. They have solicited ideas from employees on ways to save money. How about not waste all the time and money on a pointless logo redesign? Dumb.
‘Change for the heck of it’ gives idiot execs trying to justify their jobs a raging hard-on. It also pleases the idiots trying to maximize profits on something that’s already maximized, as if destroying brand equity will draw in ‘new customers through a fresh new look and image!’
No, it’ll only waste money on failed marketing for your rebrand, confuse existing customers, and make your business look more transient and, as a result, less likely to stand the test of time.
I think the solution is pretty obvious. Rebrand again, and split some of your content to a different service for a different subscription.
Maybe deleting some more shows off the platform and acting like they never existed is a good idea to bring some talent
No, those won’t work. We need proven solutions like increasing executive bonuses!
Not surprised.
I've had to help more than three relatives over the phone try to fix issues because of this.
A few were arguing with me that they already had the "Max" app installed and didn't understand that the HBO MAX app isn't the MAX app.
This was the stupidest fucking renaming ever since that Netflix one a decade ago.
This was the stupidest fucking renaming ever since that Netflix one a decade ago.
No, the Twitter to X renaming is the stupidest fucking renaming ever. Like, in all of human history. Only way they could have topped that would be to rename it to something actively offensive like "Shit Hitler".
Shit Hitler would have better SEO
The rebranding removed categories to watch for specific genres making it harder for people to find stuff. They are trying to make people watch what is on the main screen.
I paid for a year subscription for HBO Max last July. I got a full refund when HBO cancelled my subscription in June. Company is run by mentally challenged dip shits. Back to privacy with the extra $150 iny pocket.
I wish they had done that for me! But I did not renew my subscription when it lapsed
They pulled the 4k card. Used to be free-included, now it is an upgrade. REALLY!!
That’s what you get for erasing final space and infinity train
I think the rebranding is just aweful, but I'm still willing to subscribe to the service if it has content. What does it currently have since House of the Dragon and the Last of Us?
I haven't finished Barry, but I can just buy the last season for $20.
The righteous gemstones is lit. I also wouldn’t have max if I had to pay for it though.
White Lotus, righteous gemstones, and Tokyo Vice are great. Warrior is pretty good too.
Wait, I was looking at Max last night and it appeared that the Discovery content was available in Max. That seems like a fairly obvious explanation
That’s my thought exactly. I paid for discovery before, them immediately canceled when everything I watched there became available on Max, which I get free from my cell service provider.
I specifically dropped it because of how stupid the name change is.
I'm in Mexico, and both the Roku and Firestick apps stopped working completely because of "we're currently not available in your region"... which I used to be in, but not anymore, it's still not working and that was what - two months ago?
"As a valued customer, your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line for our next available operator."
Yeah, right. Fuck you.
I just stopped watching movies and tv shows.
It is always changing software and features, available content and prices. It is exhausting to keep track of it all, I just wat to click play and relax.
Additionally, everything they made is tailored to keep me watching and wanting more, they don't care about quality of content, just manipulation.
Thank you very much, I am not their target audience.
Lost 2% of subscribers for a, what 10%-20% price hike? Loss of the need to serve 4k to the MAJORITY? Worth it.
I’m one of ‘em.
I submitted feedback at the end, and suggest others do as well.
I probably would be one of them, but I paid for a year subscription last November. Once that's up, I'm probably dumping it for some other service, at least until House of Dragon and The Last of Us come back.
HBO MAX was my favorite service when it launched. It's slowly lost good content and added shitty low quality reality shows in their place. It still boggles my mind that a company like Discovery could purchase Warner Brothers.
I also subbed for a year and never got a refund. My sub is good through October.
I didn't either, and I did mention it to customer service because I've had so many problems with the thing since it switched. The most aggravating one being that I can't watch new HBO content on mobile, only tv because I just get a black screen. But old HBO shows work fine, and so does anything not made by them. But all of it worked before they switched to Max. I've gone back and forth with them over and over and gotten no explanation and no fix. I've tried everything. Besides, I had no idea when I paid for a year of it they were going to suddenly rebrand to being all about reality shows and home remodel shit. So fucking sick of companies pulling shit like this. It's like we now have to constantly keep from being scammed by the companies we use every day.
You probably got a refund for that sub, I did and I purchased mine around last November
It is difficult to mess up a brand like HBO. Maybe they managed it.
I cancelled. Their app breaks every other time I try and play something forcing me to restart it. It's trivial but the first few times I thought my brand new TV was shitting the bed, but nope. Only happens on Max. Fuck 'em. If I wanted the shitty Discovery programming I would have signed up for it.
I just wanted HBO. Not HBO plus superheroes. Not HBO plus trashy reality TV. What even is the brand at this point?
When they became HBO Max it was fine, I guess, because all the HBO shows I actually cared about were still there.
But when I load the app and all I see is reality TV, and then they start removing HBO shows I hadn't even gotten around to watching, I decided to cancel and watch Barry before my subscription ran out (great show, not on Blu-ray).
I'll just buy the handful of series I want to follow on Blu-ray instead. WB is good about that. I picked up House of the Dragon on 4K (already watched it but I enjoyed it) and will pick up The Last of Us and probably Chernobyl on 4K at some point.
Bye, HBO. You were a great brand until executives who didn't understand your brand or your demographic decided to mutate you into something else entirely.
Oh, by the way, good luck attracting future talent when the prospect that a series they work hard on might suddenly disappear forever, along with their residual payments, all because an accountant decides it makes the books look better.
Yep. I still have my subscription going because I have friends/family on it, but now that I've finished Succession, I don't really use it at all.
It's a real shame what happened to HBO, and I don't think it's ever coming back. Surprisingly Apple TV+ is the closest thing I've found in terms of what made HBO appealing in the first place, and as sad as it is, I think that is solely due to the fact that Apple TV+ is really just a passion project for the company, who do not need to rely on it as a revenue stream to survive. But it's still not quite there.
Hopefully all of the industry strikes dismantle the current big players and allow more production-oriented companies to thrive. Though I doubt it because reality TV does not require union writers/actors to survive and that's what these companies are banking on surviving off of.
For me, this saved money. I get Max for free with my phone bill and having the WB Discovery library rolled in to Max means I don't have to pay the additional services I had used prior to binge trash TV like 90 Day.
lmao
The amount of garbage presented to you on their homepage makes me just immediately want to close the app. After browsing for 30 seconds, I always wish I did immediately close it. I paid for a discounted annual subscription last October, I won't be renewing.
I'm surprised that they lost so many subscribers. Stupid rebrand or not, the new service has a lot more for everyone. It certainly felt like there was content there that an entire family of all ages could enjoy, not just folks in two or three specific demographics.