You Get The Max For The Minimum

(if you consider $9.99 a month minimum)

On May 23rd, 2023, HBO Max will wither away into those golden names of yesteryear such as Epix (now MGM+), IMDb TV (now freevee) and CNN+ (now missing with no forwarding address). With last year's merger of HBO and Discovery Networks, both HBO, with HBO Max, and Discovery Networks, with Discovery+, had separate streaming services. So now it was time for executives of both companies to get down to some real work – how to save their jobs.

I can see it now, a conference room filled with coffee and pastries as the marketing gurus made their pitch. The lights go down and a single slide comes up:

With much handshaking and backslapping, the VP of Marketing says to the Art Director, "You’re a Rock Star!”. Then, the VP recalls the Super Bowl ad for Workday and quickly retracts that statement because he'd rather not get beat-up by Ozzie Osbourne or Joan Jett.

In any event, as you can tell from the above, on May 23rd, HBO Max will change its name to just Max. The good news for the new Max subscribers is that much of the content from Discovery+ is being migrated to the new-named streaming service and for now, there will be no price increase unless you have been watching HBO Max on a 4K TV. I’ll discuss pricing for Max in two paragraphs.

As for programming, it appears that the new Max is going to attempt to be a Netflix killer. Not only will content from Discovery+ appear on Max, but in addition, owner Warner Bros. Discovery is adding a bunch of new content. WBD executives promised 40 new shows and seasons every month on Max. The biggest new shows announced included "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight," a new "Game of Thrones" spinoff, produced by George R.R. Martin, and a live-action "Harry Potter" TV series, executive produced by J.K. Rowling. Some of the other new shows and films include: A series about Colin Farrell's Batman villain "The Penguin"; "It" prequel series "Welcome to Derry"; a new "Big Bang Theory" spinoff; and an unscripted series with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jason Bateman.

Prices remain the same – sort-of. The current ad-based price of $9.99 a month and ad-free price of $15.99 are the same. However, there is a two-screen limit. That is, only two different screens will be able to simultaneously watch MAX. Screen sharing has been the bane of existence for streaming companies. The good-old days of giving my sister my username and password for one service in exchange for her giving me the same information from another service are coming to an end. There is one new pricing tier of note. If you want to watch Max in 4K with the latest in Atmos surround sound, the monthly price moves to the new "Ultimate” plan of $19.99 a month. That new pricing adds a third screen-share. You’re going to see more and more streaming services charge extra for 4K streaming and better sound. I’ll write about that in an upcoming post.

For those who watch Discovery+, at first it looked like Warner Bros. Discovery was going to deep-six the service. However, for now, at least in the United States, anyone currently subscribed to Discovery+ will have the opportunity to continue using that app as a standalone service with essentially no changes. The Discovery+ price will remain unchanged at $4.99 for the ad tier and $6.99 for the non-advertising version. It appears that the number of screens shared will be the same at four. So, if you subscribe only to Discovery+, nothing is going to change at all. Or you can migrate to Max for $9.00 more a month (ad free) or an extra $5.00 a month for the advertising version and essentially get all that HBO stuff.

So, what else? Existing subscribers to HBO Max do not need to do anything. The HBO Max app will become Max on May 23. On that day, users who have HBO Max installed on their device will see it automatically update to become Max or they will be prompted to download the Max app. All existing profiles, settings, watch history, and lists from current HBO Max plans will migrate to Max at launch. WB Discovery will send existing HBO Max subscribers an email with more details on Max and the transition.

On April 11th, 2022, WarnerMedia. and Discovery Networks merged into Warner Bros. Discovery. On April 14th, 2022, the stock was trading at $25.89 a share. As of this writing, the share price is $14.04. That is not a good year's work for CEO David Zaslav. This is not a test, it’s an actual alert as to whether Mr. Zaslav can guide the company into the future.

I started Lower Tech Bills after I retired from the radio business because I found myself with the time to do the research in order to keep up with the future of the Television, Cellular and Internet industries. I’ve been able to save households from hundreds to even thousands of dollars with some of those savings ongoing. For a free look at your bills, email hmwellsradio@gmail.com or visit lowertechbills.com because you may not have the time to do all that research, but I do.