The upcoming Warner Bros. Discovery merger will have long-term effects on their streaming services. As the merger comes to a close in the coming month, their services HBO Max and Discovery Plus will eventually be combined to a single service.
While Disney, their main competitor, offers a wildly popular bundle plan for Disney Plus that includes Hulu and ESPN, that's not the approach Warner Bros. Discovery wants to take. They plan to offer a short-term bundle for HBO Max and Discovery Plus, but the long term plan is to create a single service.
Per Variety, news of the two streaming services being combined was announced by Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels during the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference. "One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition,” said Wiedenfels, who is also set to serve as CFO of the newly combined Warner Bros. Discovery. “The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that’s going to take some time. Again, that’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime."
On one hand, this seems like a good deal for the consumer. As convenient as the Disney bundle is, their services are currently a bit of a mess. They have no idea what should be on Disney Plus or Hulu, and they have countless properties on neither. The international versions of Disney Plus fare better, as their Star selection allows more variety on the service, but it still leaves much to be desired. HBO Max is currently the best streaming app to date, since WarnerMedia has thrown everything under one roof. Once the merger goes through, it only makes sense they'd want their one app to be the best possible deal.
But on the other hand, this whole thing can seem like an absurd joke. HBO Max is still a young service, and it was created to make services like HBO Go and DC Universe redundant. The idea that within a year we'll have to again install a whole new app just sounds embarrassing. Besides, it's not like Discovery Plus has ever been on the same level as HBO Max. Their reality TV certainly has an audience, but compared to the countless demographics HBO Max caters to, it feels like small potatoes.
This merger in general is an odd one. WarnerMedia is an infinitely bigger company than Discovery. So the implication that Discovery is of equal or greater value feels strange. The reality is, this is only happening so the current parent company AT&T can avoid WarnerMedia's potential post-Covid stock troubles and focus on rebuilding their retail efforts. So any fans hoping that this decision is made out of creative decisions are sorely mistaken. While certain internet warriors are already pestering Discovery executives about changing the DCEU schedule, the chances of them having any interest in that are slim to none.
The Warner Bros. Discovery merger is set to come to a close within the month.
Source: Variety