HBO Max And Discovery+ Will Combine Forces. Should They?

On Monday, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels revealed that Discovery+ and HBO Max would combine into a single streaming service at some point, following the impending merger of Discovery and Warner Media (which will be referred to as Warner Bros. Discovery upon completion).

While it’s no surprise that the new parent company would want to consolidate the two services, conventional wisdom was pointing toward a bundled approach — much like what Disney does with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+.

According to Discovery, the audience overlap isn’t high for Discovery+ and HBO Max (less than 50% as of November 2021), so the bundle approach would seem to make even more sense in that case. HBO Max could still charge $14.99 per month for its ad-free service, while Discovery+ could stay at $6.99. A bundled offering could maybe shave a few bucks off the top, making it $19-20 per month; a price point that is definitely high compared to competitive services, but also makes it more palatable for consumers to subscribe to their less-prefered service of the two.

Even there, though, is it palatable enough to encourage new subscribers to one or the other?

As the streaming wars enter a quantity vs. quality phase, it’s a valid question to ask how much time consumers really have to watch either services’ offering to the fullest. If you’re watching hours of HGTV comfort TV, how much time are can you carve out for prestige Sunday night dramas? Alternatively, if you’re logging in for hours of more adult fare on HBO, how much time is left for House Hunters International at the end of the night?

A combined service would basically need to window things in a similar fashion to Disney+’s separation of content across Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and National Geographic, showing you the full breadth of what you can watch on the home page without intermingling things too much to confuse content types.

At the same time, does even suggesting that HBO Max shows and Discovery+ shows occupy the same space devalue the perceived prestige HBO Max has built up over decades? Similarly, would having Discovery’s family-friendly programming figuratively parked near Game of Thrones create its own perception issues and concerns? By bundling the two services, there’s at least a decided demarcation line between the two, ensuring that the differing content approaches stay that way.

If there’s one clear way to get past some of these hurdles, though, it’s by marking the price of a combined service down considerably — say to something like $15-17 per month.

In that case, you’re making Discovery+ the “discount” service of the two, sure. But you could argue it already was. There’s concern that too steep of a combined-service markdown could remove many of the benefits of having both under one roof, too, since you’re actively sacrificing revenue just to say you only have one service. The benefit, of course, is that you can sell advertising (where applicable) at a greater premium because you have one large subscriber base instead of various, unconnected ones.

This could potentially come in handy as Warner Bros. Discovery grows its streaming business even further in the coming years.

Axios has noted that there’s no indication on what a combined service means for the upcoming CNN+ launch. And shoving CNN+ into a “mega service” later this year right after its debut seems odd — and something that wouldn’t be the case with a bundle approach.

Warner Bros. Discovery is also growing out its sports streaming focus with U.S. soccer rights set to partially appear on HBO Max. (There’s also been talk of NBA and NHL games winding up on Max in the near future as well.)

Should the NBA and NHL elements come to fruition (likely), it certainly would not longer make sense to have a separate Turner Sports app, and/or an app solely dedicated to programming that appears on TBS and TNT. Not to mention the confusion it would cause if Discovery Warner also maintained separate apps for CNN, HBO and Discovery.

Especially since, to my earlier point, being able to point to an omnibus service and saying “we have 100 million-plus subscribers tuned in across news, entertainment, sports and reality TV programming” is a potentially more appealing pitch for advertisers than trying to split buys up between three to four services.

So admittedly, I’ve sort of talked myself into the combined approach at this point.

Bundling may make more money from subscription fees in the short-term, but keeping barriers up between services long-term probably fuels divisions within the larger media conglomerate, and makes for a less enticing advertising platform in the long run.

And since this Warner Bros. Discovery marriage has always been about a long-term battle to check as many boxes as possible for consumers as linear TV declines, combining all their many apps is probably the right play, despite the immediate hiccups it might cause.