The specifics of HBO Max’s future are entirely uncertain, even if there’s now some clarity about the streamer’s long-rumored merger. Next summer, Discovery+ and HBO Max will join forces under one umbrella streaming service as Warner Bros. Discovery. But after the streamer yanked the $90 million “Batgirl” from its schedule, HBO Max users noticed a number of Max original series and movies had disappeared from the service without notice — calling into doubt the long-term future of all Max originals.
CivicScience recently gauged Americans’ sentiment on the proposed merger, and 12% of adults clock in at “very likely” to subscribe to the new service — with just over one-third expressing some level of interest (n=2,589). In all likelihood, current subscribers to either service may be transferred over to the new app, but it’s unclear if they’ll be getting the same movie and TV catalog as before.
The merged service will be overwhelmingly young, with two-thirds of Gen Z adults at least somewhat interested in subscribing.
At a recent earnings presentation, Warner/Discovery executives classified the viewers for HBO Max (“male skew,” “lean in”) and Discovery+ (“female skew,” “lean back”) into two general buckets. Although Warner/Discovery recently reported 92.1 million combined Q2 subscribers across HBO Max, HBO, and Discovery+, the company didn’t differentiate between services. Viewership aside, Americans familiar with the services are largely more keen on HBO Max’s content than Discovery+ – by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio.
Despite the potential for future cuts, a majority of those familiar with HBO Max’s catalog and interface view it favorably — but it widely trails Netflix in terms of preferred original content, and narrowly trails Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
Despite the company’s categorization of which users prefer which side of the business, HBO Max subscribers aren’t so one-dimensional. The service doesn’t have as much in the way of reality content as Discovery+, but Americans who watch 10 or more hours of reality shows per week are nearly twice as likely as reality show abstainers to have a strongly positive opinion of HBO Max. If they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, the modern viewer can certainly “lean in” and “lean back” in the same week.
So while it’s hard to predict the eventual scope of Warner Bros. Discovery, the conglomerate would be wise to strike a genuine balance between its joint services by preserving their existing strengths – to keep both the reality show fans and prestige drama lovers happy.
