Mark Twain aside, this time it’s HBO Max, whose death may have been greatly exaggerated, according to Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav.
Many had assumed that Netflix would most likely kill off the rival streaming service once regulators approve its recently announced acquisition of WBD, with fears that this could seriously increase its platform’s monthly subscription price thanks to the wave of new content it just paid a lot of cash for.
Now, according to a recording of a WBD meeting obtained by Business Insider, Zaslav has assured staff that “HBO Max will stay.” He added that “people who just want HBO Max will be able to get it.”
This was one of the biggest fears of Netflix and HBO Max subscribers who only use one of the two services: If they merge, they’ll be forced to pay a premium for an expanded content catalog full of things they never wanted. It looks like that won’t be the case based on Zaslav’s comments.
That said, I would take his words with a pinch of salt because in about 12 to 18 months (the estimated timeline for the acquisition to happen assuming everything goes smoothly, although recent comments from US President Trump suggest things could be at least a little bumpy) David Zaslav will no longer be the one making business decisions for HBO Max.
So, to a certain extent, he can promise whatever he wants, since he won’t be the one who has to deliver.
However, this idea of keeping services divided makes some sense. It could help calm fears surrounding Netflix’s dominance in the video-on-demand market if HBO Max is dissolved. Additionally, bundling services would require a significant price increase, which may be more than some customers can bear.
Instead, by keeping things separate, Netflix could simply offer a bundle that gives you both services at a cheaper rate than paying for each separately, but otherwise keep the platforms somewhat distinct.
Likewise, why wouldn’t Netflix want to make its platform even more essential to our entertainment needs than it is today? As with many things in this deal, we’ll have to wait and see what happens: Paramount also announced a hostile takeover bid today to step in before Netflix can acquire WBD, so forget trying to calculate what could happen in a year or so, we don’t know what could happen tomorrow.
However, whatever twist emerges, we will keep you posted.
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