HBO Max Can’t Decide What It Wants to Be

HBO Max can’t decide on a name to stick with. The service changed its name to Max in 2023 and recently reverted to HBO Max. This shift is so frustrating that even Warner Bros. has poked mild fun at this strange change in their social media posts.

But HBO Max has been having this problem for a long time. It’s not just that they can’t decide on a service title; they’re not even sure what the service is supposed to be. It has so much potential with its catalog, but also the most troublesome business decisions that continue to hold it back.

The HBO Name

The reversion to HBO Max does make sense for the notoriety. Since the 1980s, the HBO brand has been associated with top-tier TV. It was a quality cable channel home to everything from the kid-friendly Fraggle Rock to the profane mafia drama The Sopranos. With early freedom to create uncensored shows, the channel lived up to its tagline: “It’s not TV, it’s HBO.”

Finding a proper title became a tricky endeavor when entering the age of streaming. HBO’s first video-on-demand service, launched in 2010, was HBO Go, a service only accessible to HBO cable subscribers. A separate streaming-only model would debut in 2015 as HBO Now, appealing to the rising trend of cord-cutters favoring streaming over cable.

The abundance of HBO services during the 2010s gave plenty of options for those who needed their Game of Thrones fix. However, trying to keep track of the services was also confusing. So, when Warner Bros. pulled the trigger on HBO Max in 2020, the other HBO-branded services were dropped.

The difference between HBO Now and HBO Max was that the HBO Max service would represent all the media under the Warner Bros. umbrella. Since HBO was the most highly-regarded WB-owned channel, it made perfect sense to give the streaming service a name that screamed, “Hey, we’ve got that Westworld show you heard about!”

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A Wealth of Intellectual Property

HBO Max had all the potential to be a must-have streaming service, considering what Warner Bros had acquired and could showcase. Sesame Street would be a draw for families, Cartoon Network’s catalog would appease the kid crowd, and DC Comics ensured an exclusive superhero hub. That’s to say nothing of a century’s worth of classic films under Turner Classic Movies.

HBO Max had a lot to offer that could justify the pricier subscription cost of $15 a month. For premiering amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the perfect time to cultivate an audience stuck at home. HBO Max was one of the more eclectic streaming choices, boasting the longest-running early education shows (Sesame Street) and must-watch epic television (Westworld).

Poster for Westworld Season 4 with a robot bending down in a wasteland with a city in the background

Another huge draw for HBO Max was their model for movies. 2021 had the service premiering the long-desired Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, a four-hour superhero film more suitable for streaming than theaters. Warner Bros. also rolled the dice on their theatrical movies by simultaneously releasing films like The Suicide Squad and Dune in theaters and on HBO Max.

There was no shortage of new and old media to watch on HBO Max, including Studio Ghibli titles. Warner Bros. seemed to have struck gold by unloading its massive vault of intellectual properties onto one streaming app. But just when audiences felt like they were raiding the WB vaults like the Animaniacs, the doors started shutting.

The Problem of Purging

Everything that went wrong with HBO Max can be summed up in one word: Discovery. When WarnerMedia merged with Discovery Inc. in 2022, it didn’t just mean that HBO Max would be a bigger home for Discovery Channel TV shows. The new Warner Discovery conglomerate led to more than just employee layoffs; it also shed media from HBO Max.

The later removal of HBO from HBO Max was fitting, as the service felt like it had removed half of what it used to feature. It used to be a service where you could watch the classics from Cartoon Network. Nowadays, only a handful of those classics remain.

Here’s a brief look at what’s been axed since the Discovery merger and subsequent purging:

• Looney Tunes
• Sesame Street
• Batgirl
• Scoob 2
• Infinity Train
• Westworld

What HBO Max Does and Does Not Want To Be

HBO Max is shifting towards more profitable brands that attract viewers. The Last of Us is currently the must-watch show on the streaming channel, so leaning into that type of media makes sense. Essentially, there will be more HBO in HBO Max and less of…well, everything else.

If there’s one demographic being abandoned, it’s the kids. The removal of Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, and Cartoon Network programming has signaled that kids won’t be the streaming service’s future. However, Cartoon Network’s grown-up late-night block, Adult Swim, will remain as their new shows air regularly on HBO Max.

But even settling on HBO isn’t that stable of an identity for the streaming service because HBO has always fluctuated with its appeal. The cable channel was once home to kid shows like Fraggle Rock and Babar in the 1980s, but it abandoned the young audience in the following years with no new kid programming. HBO has since been seen as a random mash of occasionally stellar dramas, high-quality miniseries, compelling documentaries, and the latest movies.

Even with the shift back to more HBO, the service will keep chunks of the Warner library. Turner Classic Movies, DC Comics, Adult Swim, CNN, Discovery, and a host of other programming blocks will remain in a reduced form. The settling back into HBO Max is more of an attempt to settle on a new tagline of, “It’s not a random assortment of Warner Media’s most profitable properties—it’s HBO!”

HBO Max used to have a menu section for the various hubs for the properties being showcased. Now the hubs are buried further down in the interface, almost as if they’re trying to hide. The messaging seems clear with this framing of the hubs: HBO Max has everything, but doesn’t want to be everything.