Only a newbie with no history would jettison the brand value of HBO. It would be like the Rolling Stones replacing two members and calling themselves the Drivers. Actually, the Stones have replaced two members and they still call themselves the Stones!
It's well-known in the music business that if you go solo you're not exactly starting from zero, but close. You'd think everybody would know you're the lead singer, but they don't. You'd think everybody would know that HBO is Max, but they won't. Just like they have never activated the free digital HBO Max app that comes with their cable TV subscription. Hell, if Warner Bros. Discovery were a tech company, it would sunset HBO on cable. Otherwise you risk an aged audience which dissipates and is too unworldly to migrate to the app. Steve Jobs specialized in ripping the band-aid off. Sure, people complained, but today Apple is the world's most valuable company. You push people into the future. Imagine if the last season of "Succession" was only on the app, people would find it.
But Warner Bros. Discovery's research said otherwise. That the poor Discovery+ reality TV watchers were turned off by the elite HBO. Not only is that ridiculous, streaming television is not politics, this is the same kind of research that had Coke reformulating its flagship brand as New Coke. Talk about a disaster. Furthermore, Diet Coke is the flagship brand these days, evolution happens, pay attention.
Everybody knows that when it comes to streaming television subscriptions it's all about hit product. Word of mouth that garners viewers. Without "Ted Lasso," Apple TV+ is dead on arrival. I wish Zaslav talked about new programming as opposed to this business nonsense. This is the man who eliminated shows and a brand name movie based on some cockamamie financial engineering. When it comes to streaming TV, brand is everything. Subscribing to a streaming service is not a financial decision, it's an emotional decision. Which is why all these paid ad services miss the point. If someone wants the programming, they'll pay. Otherwise you're just cannibalizing your profits. Mercedes-Benz stopped importing its A-class to America, the company decided to stop making cheap models and focus on the expensive ones, where the profit is. But Zaslav? He's bottom-feeding, appealing to the watchers of reality TV. Have you ever heard someone say they subscribed to a pay service to watch a reality show? I never have. Reality TV is mostly a time-killer, a guilty pleasure, very rarely is it appointment TV. You can live without the latest Bobby Flay competition show, but not the latest "Succession," or "Stranger Things."
Where is the vision?
That's what made Netflix a powerhouse. The paradigm was established and other companies eventually replicated it but Netflix is still the big kahuna, the one with the most subscribers. And Netflix is viewer-centric. Dropping all episodes at once. Didn't we learn this at the advent of this century, with music? Give the public what it wants or be ready for it to abandon you. Turns out people only wanted the hits, i.e. Napster and then the iTunes Store. But artists kept saying they wanted to make an album-long statement and labels said the economics didn't work and along came streaming where you can do what you want and the public was satiated and the business rebounded.
There are good shows on HBO Max that no one knows about. Especially "Love Life." An adult "Friends." Zaslav could have focused on how to get the word out, but instead he's glad-handing, worried about the Street and missing the point. Who cares if "Love Life" is a couple of years old, so was "Breaking Bad" when it was blown up on Netflix.
This is what is wrong with television and this is what is wrong with music. Those in control never had skin in the game, they're managers, not entrepreneurs. They're anti-risk. Reed Hastings was all about risk, and he had vision, to switch from DVDs by mail to streaming. Do you remember when he announced that? The public screamed! The same public that today doesn't even own a DVD player. You get ahead of the public, that's how Spotify won, that's how you will win, by providing something that people can't even conceive of as opposed to trying to drag them back to the past.
In order to win in the streaming game you need fresh new product. This is something that has never been Zaslav's focus. You've got to spend to win in entertainment. Sometimes you even have to bet the farm, as Hastings did. The only way Max works is if there's fantastic new product. However, HBO puts out a very limited amount of product. It tries to focus on great, but sometimes it misses, and you never know what will appeal to some people. Streaming is not about mass, but satiating the niches. The goal is to get people to continue to subscribe. There might be one hot show on a streaming service, but when it's done, you disconnect. What has HBO got? As for Apple dribbling out product week by week, it's because it's got so little of it, and not all succeeds. The goal isn't to satiate the press or the oldsters still watching week by week on cable, but the youngsters coming up, who hate commercials and want it all and they want it now. Why frustrate your customers? Give it to them all at once and then give them something new. And despite conventional wisdom, when you drop all the episodes at once you foment word of mouth, the early adopters spread the word. Forget about the water cooler. Not only do people not show up at the workplace, these people who find out about it late are like those who used to buy the CD two years after it came out. They didn't go to the show, or at least not the next one, they didn't automatically buy the next CD, they were casual customers, Luddites. Streaming TV is all about the active consumer.
Forget about legs. How long do movies play in theatres these days? They open on thousands of theatres to satiate demand. But streaming TV wants to frustrate this? And when you binge...you remember what happened from episode to episode, it's a more rewarding experience.
But you can't convince the suits. With history in the entertainment business. Who were disrupted by Silicon Valley to begin with. You need outside vision. And as Clayton Christensen detailed, you have to disrupt yourself. Where is the disruption in Max? it doesn't even roll off the tongue. Worst case scenario, they could have called it HBOD. Like SiriusXM. People could use all the letters or just the first three, but why get rid of the essence of the brand?
Insane.
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