‘Max’ Loses Millions Of Streaming Subs After Ongoing Merger Incompetence Bonanza

Failures

from the endlessly-fail-upwards dept

We’ve documented in detail how the series of mergers (AT&T—>Time Warner—>Discovery) that created the Warner Brothers Discovery entertainment empire may just be one of the most destructive, pointless, and incompetently managed “business” transactions in modern media history.

Since its beginning in 2016, the absurd saga has generated hundreds of billions in debt, saw more than 50,000 people lose their jobs, killed or sidelined numerous popular brands (like Mad Magazine and HBO), created oceans of animosity among creatives (pissed at a company that can spend billions on merger debt and bad ideas yet somehow can’t pay residuals or creatives), somehow made CNN an even bigger joke than it already was, and birthed a new “Max” streaming service that’s arguably shittier and dumber than when the whole thing started.

And not surprisingly, the customers aren’t sticking around:

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) reported an increased drop in subscribers since it rebranded its streaming service to Max earlier this year, the company said in its quarterly report on Thursday. The company lost 1.8 million subscribers in its second quarter, bringing it down to a total of 95.8 million subscribers from 97.6 million reported in Q1.

Most of these wildly overcompensated fail upward executives were fueled by a “growth for growth’s sake” mindset, pursuing pointless consolidation not to build better products or even gain leverage over competitors — but to nab tax breaks, obfuscate company finances in elaborate financial transactions, see some short term gains, and get “savvy dealmaker” on their resumes.

Of course, when it’s time to affix blame for what went wrong, the excuse is obviously always going to be something other than overpaid executive incompetence and mismanagement (inflation was the latest bogeyman). Or they’ll just deny that reality exists, such as with this bit of corporate gibberish from Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav:

“The migration to Max has gone exceedingly well with the overwhelming majority of subscribers in the US successfully transferred,” WBD CEO David Zaslav said during the earnings call. “While we have seen some expected subscriber disruption, we have experienced lower-than-expected churn throughout this process.”

You simply have to spend thirty seconds perusing the HBO Max streaming app to notice that the overall product quality isn’t what it used to be. Less emphasized are HBO’s longstanding quality programs, and everywhere you look there’s an endless array of cheap reality television programs featuring some combination of the dumbest people imaginable trying to have sex on a remote island.

It’s amusing that even this obvious effort to cater to the lowest denominator couldn’t save what ails this new media colossus. The name of the game for Warner Brothers Discovery now is to pay down an ocean of debt (that wouldn’t exist if these deals had never happened), which apparently “requires” skimping on paying writers, and selling or leasing anything that isn’t nailed down, regardless of whether such actions hurt the brand or the company’s long-term chance at success. All while it navigates an increasingly competitive streaming market and the death of traditional cable television.

When most press outlets (themselves owned by giant, unnecessarily consolidated conglomerates) cover this story, the idea that mindless consolidation is harmful (or that the execs in charge of these companies are bumbling, overpaid, self-serving incompetents) rarely warrants a mention (you saw what happened at GQ when one freelancer lightly criticized Zaslav). The inevitable layoffs and dysfunction created by mergers are portrayed as a sort of unavoidable cold calculus in a quest for scale.

Because the bumbling execs that create these consolidated disasters personally make a killing even if it harms the brand, consumers, and employees, there’s zero financial incentive for introspection. And because these same ultra-wealthy incompetents also own most major press outlets, press coverage of what actually went wrong is usually a feckless, incomplete mess. As a result, we repeat the same cycle over and over again, with nobody learning anything from history or experience.

Filed Under: cable, cnn, competition, consolidation, david zaslav, executive compensation, max, media, streaming, tv, video
Companies: warner brothers discovery