HBO Max and Discovery Plus Will Be Combined by Warner Bros. Discovery, Discovery CFO Confirms
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business WriterDiscovery — which is about to become Warner Bros. Discovery within the next month, when its merger with AT&T’s WarnerMedia closes — has confirmed its plans to combine its current streaming service Discovery Plus and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max into one service, rather than offer the two platforms as a bundle.Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, who will also serve as CFO of the newly combined Warner Bros.
Discovery, said Monday during the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference Discovery is making preparations to combine the two streamers, and offer ad-free and ad-lite products, marking the first time the company has actually revealed its post-merger strategy for Discovery Plus and HBO Max, amid speculation they could remain solo platforms with bundling options.
But before they are combined, Wiedenfels says the first step during integration will be some form of bundling, while the new company figures out the best way to merge the two platforms. “One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition,” Wiedenfels said. “The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that’s going to take some time.
Again, that’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime.
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