HBO Max removes a lot of its own content

HBO Max is preparing itself for the merger with Discovery+ and is already removing a lot of its own content from the streaming service.

HBO Max streaming service is now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. In time, the service will disappear and merge with Discovery+. Wanting to cut costs, Warner is pruning the offer with the blunt axe.

The imminent merger between HBO and Discovery should bring cost savings and the hope that more subscribers will feel at home with the soon-to-be merged streaming services.

Many own series

It is understandable at first sight that expensive films and series from other studios have to disappear in order to cut costs. But strikingly enough, there are also many own productions among the fallen range. You would say that it is precisely those that can stay, that money has already been spent, right?

That turns out to be a bit different. HBO Max is indeed the owner and rights holder of these productions, but also loses costs in keeping them online.

royalties

Such as paying royalties to the casts and crew of all those films and series. They are apparently contractually obliged to do so as long as the production is offered in the streaming service. HBO Max expects to save about 100 million a year through this promotion. A nice step towards the 3 billion dollars that they will have to find in total.

HBO and Discovery

A HBO spokesperson reports to CNN that it’s all part of bringing the content together on one platform.

We will be making changes to the content offerings available on both HBO Max and Discovery+. This means that some content will be removed from both platforms.

Saving costs is of course nice, but it can also cost subscribers for both streaming services. There are now so many services on offer and you can only spend your hard-earned money once. Then you would rather give that to a streaming service that does invest in its content and cares about its paying customers.