HBO Max to be renamed Max in a bid for a bigger streaming audience

Warner Bros. Discovery is stripping "HBO" from the name of its streaming service, which now will simply be called Max, signaling a new era for the company's digital ambitions.

The name change, unveiled Wednesday, comes as Chief Executive David Zaslav seeks to broaden the audience for the company's nearly three-year-old online video service.

During a briefing with reporters, Zaslav and his team said that the HBO name, while one of the premier brands in television, may have unintentionally alienated mainstream audiences.

The move prompted consternation among the HBO faithful.

"The reason there is so much emotion by this name change is because HBO stands for something much bigger than just HBO Max," said Eunice Shin, global head of media and entertainment for consulting firm Prophet. "HBO was premium cable, and it was always known for having the best talent and the best programming."

The shift underscores the fact that the executives who took control of the prized assets last year in the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. had been running the smaller Discovery, known for populist reality TV fare, Shin said. Their focus has long been to entertain mainstream audiences rather than HBO's affluent coastal crowd.

"The power shifts and the dynamics have changed," she said.

Warner Bros. Discovery executives were quick to downplay any concerns that HBO would be diminished by the changes. Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, said the name change should work in HBO's favor in the long term.

"What I am most concerned about is protecting the HBO brand," Bloys said. "It was not designed to be for mass audiences. It is a premium brand. And the more that you ask the HBO brand to take on, with more programming, the further it stretches it."

The makeover is part of an effort to meld HBO's prestige programming, including "Succession" and "The White Lotus," with Discovery's mainstream fare such as "Property Brothers," "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" and "Murder in the Heartland."

"Max is the one to watch," Zaslav said from a stage at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. "This is our time, this is our chance and everything is possible. For our company, this is our rendezvous with destiny."

"It's streaming's version of must-see TV with huge cultural impact," he said.

The service will debut May 23 in the U.S. Subscribers will be charged $15.99 a month for an ad-free version and $9.99 a month for one with commercials — the same amounts that HBO Max charged previously.

A premium tier with high-quality streaming that allows four devices to stream concurrently will cost $19.99 a month.

Current HBO Max subscribers will have immediate access to the new service. Executives also indicated they were evaluating ways to eventually fold CNN and sports onto its streaming platform.

Zaslav — who took the reins of the combined company last April — is attempting to turn the page after a bruising year punctuated by thousands of job cuts, controversies created by canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in content, and a lagging stock price.

Warner Bros. Discovery's stock fell 6% to $14.06 on Wednesday.

The dramatic cuts were meant to slim the company, which has about 38,000 employees, and whittle down its nearly $50 billion in debt. The huge debt load came courtesy of Discovery's purchase of WarnerMedia, previously owned by AT&T.

The Max revamp comes as Warner Bros. Discovery and other legacy media companies recognize that, while the future lies in streaming, they are struggling to make their streaming businesses profitable.

Warner Bros. Discovery's direct-to-consumer television units — HBO Max, the linear HBO channel and streaming service Discovery+ — lost $1.6 billion in 2022, according to regulatory filings.

Media companies want streaming to ultimately replace the lucrative fees the firms have traditionally received by selling their channels to the cable bundle. But customers have been canceling their pay-TV packages at alarming rates.

Warner Bros. Discovery has financial exposure to cord-cutting because of its ownership of cable channels, including CNN, TBS, Cartoon Network, TBS and Animal Planet.

Executives have assured investors their streaming services — which currently has more than 96 million subscribers — will be profitable in two years. Zaslav and J.B. Perrette, who runs the streaming business, said key goals were to improve the consumer experience and program recommendations.

They also want to reduce "churn," where subscribers cancel after watching their favorite shows and movies. Zaslav hopes to get new customers to sign up and then stick with Max for months, if not years.

Trying to maintain the subscriber base was one reason the company decided to keep the current pricing for the offering, despite adding dozens of new shows from the Discovery channels. Perrette also said the company needed to do a better job attracting parents with small children by promoting its kids' programming.

Concerns about the name change recharged a debate that occurred when AT&T was in charge four years ago and executives began building the streaming service. At that time, some worried that the name HBO Max would tarnish the HBO brand. But executives knew they needed some muscle to compete against such powerful brands as Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime.

Executives linked HBO with Max to signal to viewers the service would have more content, including popular mainstream programs like reruns of "Friends."

The move to just Max has been in the works for nearly a year, ever since Zaslav and his lieutenants assumed control. Aside from the name change, the Max logo will be cerulean blue instead of HBO Max's purple.

The company also announced upcoming programming, including an ambitious decade-long "Harry Potter" series based on the J.K. Rowling books, another "Game of Thrones" prequel and a comedy derived from "The Big Bang Theory."

"Ultimately, it's about consumers," Shin said. "Dropping HBO might be a shock, but it's not anything consumers can't get over."

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to continue to sell Discovery+, which features HGTV, Food Network and TLC shows, as a stand-alone streaming service.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.