Later this summer, streaming service Max, formerly HBO Max, will become HBO Max, formerly Max. Warner Bros. Discovery announced Wednesday that it will re-re-re-brand its flagship streaming platform to the name that actually makes sense. So, welcome back HBO Max…for however long this lasts.
When WBD first launched HBO Max back in 2020, it had its own naming nonsense to contend with. The platform was set to displace several other streaming offerings that the company had at the time, including HBO Go and HBO Now, as well as Warner Bros.’ then-parent company AT&T’s own streaming offering AT&T TV Now. So while HBO Max was a sort of solution, there was still confusion as to which platform was the flagship offering. It almost would have made more sense to drop the HBO name then and just go with Max right off the bat, though they would have lost the HBO branding that draws so many people in.
Instead, they opted to kill off HBO from the name in 2023, going to just Max in an attempt to signal that the platform has more to offer than just HBO programs. At the time, the company was doing a soft pivot into opening up its content offerings, serving up more kid- and family-friendly options.
So did that work? Hard to say, but context clues would tell us no. Earlier this year, the company announced it was ditching a lot of its high-profile kids’ programming, including getting rid of Looney Tunes and opting not to renew its deal with Sesame Street. The Verge pointed out that it has also been shifting its branding from referring to shows as “Max originals” to calling them “HBO Originals.” So it seems like whatever they were trying to make the Max name associated with, it didn’t stick.
So now we’re back to where we started—with HBO Max. And obviously, the executives can’t just admit they kinda blew it with the name change back in 2023, so this comes with the wallpapering over of the decision-making process. No “Oops, our bad.” Let’s get some corporate speak for why this happened instead. Here’s David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, via press release: “The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming. Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”
Ah, yeah, that’s the good stuff. It’s all part of the plan, no?
Read the full article here
