Discovery+ Still Merging With HBO Max, But Will Also Remain Standalone
Hey, remember when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that they were planning to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into one streaming service? As it turns out, they are still planning to launch that service later this year, but with one major caveat — Discovery+ will not officially go away once the merged platform has been released.
According to The Wall Street Journal, HBO Max will be completely absorbed into the new platform and Discovery+ will have a significant presence. However, not all of Discovery+'s offerings will be available on the still-unnamed platform. In a separate piece from Variety, insiders claimed that the reason for this was pricing. Neither HBO Max nor Discovery+ is particularly expensive, but users can subscribe to Discovery+ without ads for a mere $6.99 per month and with ads for $4.99. For comparison's sake, HBO Max without ads costs $15.99 per month and its ad-supported counterpart is $9.99 monthly.
This news comes as WBD also prepares to enter the world of FAST streaming channels. The company recently sold off some of its programs, such as "Generation" and "Lovecraft Country," to free streaming platforms like Tubi in preparation for their own similar venture. That platform's release window has not been confirmed, but will likely launch sometime later this year.
Making it make sense
According to the original Wall Street Journal report, WBD also decided to keep Discovery+ as it stands due to its customer base. Around 20 million subscribers currently pay for the platform, which hosts original programming and pre-existing ones from channels like TLC and Food Network. Insiders argue that the Discovery+ customer base is less likely to want to pay for an extra service with content they don't want just to access the content they do.
However, Variety last confirmed that as of November 2022, the total number of subscribers across all WBD streaming avenues was around 95 million. This means that HBO Max and HBO have accounted for substantially more subscribers than Discovery+, making the decision to prioritize the latter a bit confusing. It's likely that the customer base of Discovery+ is less likely to want to pay extra money for the combined service than HBO or HBO Max subscribers, but that's still unconfirmed. That being said, what is known is that WBD CEO David Zaslav had overseen the creation and growth of Discovery+ before the company merged with Warner Bros.
It is unknown when either the new streaming service or the FAST channel will be available to consumers. However, the combined platform will likely arrive sometime in the spring and, according to Variety, could be named Max. More will likely be revealed when the company holds its fourth-quarter earnings call on February 23.