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from the pointless-megadeals dept
We’ve noted in detail how the AT&T/Time Warner/Discovery mergers have been an apocalyptic mess that aptly demonstrates the U.S. obsession with utterly pointless megadeals and the “growth for growth’s sake” mindset. Hundreds of billions of dollars later and the companies have produced a product that’s notably shittier than when they started, laying off thousands of people, cancelling popular shows, and leaving the company’s catalogs with new, weird gaps due to a refusal to pay residuals.
You’ll recall that this all began with AT&T’s disastrous $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV in a clumsy bid to dominate the video ad space. When that failed, AT&T spun off Time Warner, which was quickly merged with Discovery in yet another deal that’s been almost as bad for employees, consumers, and creators.
The latest genius move by the creatively named Warner Brothers Discovery has been to purge the HBO brand from their streaming efforts. A weird choice, given the HBO brand and its history is arguably the most valuable, recognizable, and popular aspect of the company. In a New York Times piece this week, executive justifications for the move are revealing:
“Dropping HBO from the name is cementing that ‘we’re not just a home for premium programming,’” Ms. Alexander said. “‘We’re the home for anything you want to watch.’”
The HBO brand has been synonymous with quality for fifty years. But the shift away from quality to low quality mass consumable dreck began under AT&T in 2018 and continues here. Just a continuing array of strange branding and marketing from a team of executives that have, at absolutely no point, indicated that they have any idea what they’re doing or what users want. And it shows in the ratings:
According to Nielsen, 1.3 percent of the total minutes spent by Americans using television was with HBO Max in February, a fraction of what YouTube (7.9 percent), Netflix (7.3 percent), Hulu (3.3 percent) and Amazon Prime (3 percent) garnered. HBO Max instead finds itself in the same neighborhood as Comcast’s Peacock and the Fox Corporation’s free advertising-supported streaming service, Tubi.
Keep in mind, that under AT&T this company integrated so many different dumb streaming branding names that they confused even the company’s own support employees. Now, what’s left of the company is further distancing itself from the popular HBO brand, launching a $16 a month streaming service just called “Max” sometime in May or June. HBO will continue to exist as a cable channel, for however long cable channels continue to exist.
It can’t be repeated often enough that this entire megamerger saga, from AT&T to now, involved companies spending burning hundreds of billions of dollars to make a worse product, fire untold people, cancel numerous popular programs, and even kill Mad Magazine.
Now maybe this whole gambit works out, and offering lower-quality dreck (I think often about the “Ow, my balls” TV show in Idiocracy for some reason) really works out for them. But I still tend to think its a lovely demonstration of the idiocy of pointless megadeals, which routinely harm consumers and creators so some unremarkable MBAs can get a tax break and put “savvy dealmaker” on their resumes.
Filed Under: growth for growth’s sake, hbo max, media consolidation, mergers, streaming
Companies: at&t, hbo, time warner, warner brothers discovery
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