Warner Bros. Discovery has the entertainment industry, its viewers and the general public on the lookout with its latest announcements. To begin with, he announced the cancellation of “batgirl”, a film already in post-production and with a budget of 80 million dollars that will never (or so it is said now) see the light; same destiny suffered”Scoob!: Holiday Haunting”, whose premiere was announced for December 22. The films would go directly to HBO Max and would be part of its original content. The new conglomerate has announced that by 2023 it will launch a new platform that will unite what was previously offered through HBO Max and Discovery +. Among many questions that are in the air, an essential one is, what will distinguish the new service?
Discovery content is niche. The main brand is documentary and additionally has food channels (Food Network), reality (HGTV), travel (Travel Channel), and golf. HBO Max, for its part, offers fiction through Warner Bros, Cartoon Network and original productions between series and movies with titles such as “The Fallout”, “Kimi”, “Father of the Bride”, “Peacemaker” and “Minx”, in addition to all the DC Comics productions and the Harry Potter saga. The new management has indicated that it will not invest in low-key productions and that its content will be released in theaters, which implies that the originals are over.
Given this scenario, the merger integrates content that does not go to the same market segment. One reason for this has to do with the fact that it is more functional and economical to support a platform with two, but is it attractive to users? The directive indicates that there will be a subscription without commercials, with partial commercials or with commercials. It is another element that puts her at a disadvantage.
Disney + has family content, adult content is on Star + and you can have both for a special price; Netflix has a variety of content, but it is distinguished by the number of premieres and its originals, Amazon Prime has a large catalog, access to other services and also its originals. Will a platform with fiction and documentaries, none of which is original content, be attractive? The truth is that it sounds like a cable service where they give you a package of channels that always ends up including several that don’t interest you. Is that what one looks for in a platform?
The only advantage that can be seen at the moment is that of having the content in one place and consuming it as desired, but in the face of competition that releases at least a couple of original titles every week, if not a dozen (Netflix), such as whether it ends up being called the new HBO Max – Discovery+ ends up being very unattractive. It is too early to make a final decision, but for now the swan song for HBO Max heralds the end of a short time with pain and a taste of loss.