This is the best summary I could come up with:

During an earnings call, the company’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, attributed the downward trend to “overlapping subscriber bases between Max and Discovery Plus” as well as “expected churn” following the end of The Last of Us season 1 and the series finale of Succession.

CEO David Zaslav had something similar to say, noting that “while we have seen some expected subscriber disruption, we have experienced lower than expected churn throughout this process” — a process that involved asking HBO Max subscribers to download a new Max app to their devices in order to continue using the service.

Zaslav has previously hinted at incorporating news and sports into Max, and rumors suggest that it could add live CNN broadcasts to the platform.

As Hollywood producers as well as writers and actors butt heads over the use of AI and streaming residuals, Zaslav said it’s “important” that the strike gets settled soon.

“We’re hopeful that all sides will get back to the negotiating rooms so that the strikes get resolved in a way that the writers and actors feel they are fairly compensated and their efforts and contributions are fully valued.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and Writers Guild of America are set to have their first meeting since the strike began on Friday.

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I swear that companies are really misunderstanding how most people interact with brands, or I am. But given recent events, I think it’s the companies. On another topic, for reasons I cannot fathom, Schwans home frozen food delivery is re-branding from Schwans’ (which is hard for me to spell, but easy to say) that it’s been since the 1950s and is widely understood and recognized. What are they re-branding to? It sounds like they got right up to date with mid 90s Internet company branding, going with Yelloh! (I think). No one wants to say Yelloh!. It looks stupid, and somehow more out of fashion than their old logo.

We’ve got whatever the heck is going on with Twitter/X, we’ve got this (Yea, no one recognizes HBO, that’s OLD./s) The Great Courses Plus renamed Wondrium (which is again, giving up a rather well known brand in some niches with an obvious idea that it’s slightly different as a subscription). At least this doesn’t entirely sound / look stupid, and they added content when doing it, but still.

I probably could go on, but just… why? IDK - have you ever looked at an existing brand and thought - oh, that’s too dated? Usually companies pull this stuff to “trick” people into thinking it’s a different company, like when Blackwater became whatever, or Jeep etc became Stellantis. Such self owns.

Kinda like rebranding Twitter into X

It’s pretty ironic how companies will spend so much money on advertising to gain brand recognition, but then throw it away on a whim.

The quality of the entire thing went down sharply too.

I want to pay for max so I can watch warrior season 3 and let their BS algorithm know there’s interest in it and not cancel it outright. They don’t even allow subscribers from my country UK so I have no choice but to pirate. They also have not released the season 2 bluray yet and I’m not gonna get the season 1 one if I’m just gonna end up with an incomplete collection cause this company is just allergic to taking my money.

I agree that these changes have all been incredibly stupid and devalue one of the few remaining producers of quality TV (HBO), but I think that this is missing the point. The key is this:

Notably, the loss in subscribers didn’t seem to affect streaming revenue. It grew to $2.73 billion this quarter, marking a 13 percent increase.

In other words, fill up the service with cheap / easy to produce reality crap and hike up prices over time. Revenue goes up and costs go way down. People drift away but you keep growing the bottom line, at least for now. The shareholders rejoice and the consumers lose.

Bad Faith podcast had an episode on the strike a couple weeks back. The guests (strikers) talked about how Zaslav renaming HBO to Max is right inline with their intent to churn out “good enough” content to increase profits rather than increase quality. They likened it to a signal to Wall Street to improve their share value.

I was a subscriber and there was no smooth move over to max. I had to keep resetting my password every time I logged in and then eventually couldn’t get into either site even moments after a reset. Eventually said fuck it and cancelled.

If it’s anything more than barely inconvenient to use your service I’ll spend my money elsewhere

Idk if it’s necessarily related to the name but haven’t they been getting rid of a ton of beloved animated shows?

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LOL you can’t even have a conversation with this name.

“Oh I’ve been watching this awesome new show, it’s so good.”

“oh yeah, where can I watch it?”

“max”

“…???..”

“it’s on max”

“what? max what?”

“it’s the old hbo, it’s just max now though”

“hbo renamed themselves to max?”

"no … but … "

“okay nevermind”

Got rid of omniverse but gained myth busters

Very dumb rebrand. I like all the trashy TLC content don’t get me wrong, but changing the name was completely unnecessary.