from the incompetence-as-an-entire-brand dept
We’ve well documented by now how the AT&T->Warner Brothers->Discovery series of mergers were among some of the most destructive and pointless “business deals” ever conceived by modern man.
The mergers resulted in bottomless layoffs, the closure of numerous valuable and popular brands and shows, and much worse product as incompetent, fail-upward executives shifted the company’s focus away from quality programming toward lowest-common-denominator engagement slop. It also resulted in constant name changes that, at several points, even confused the company’s own employees.
Part of that effort, you might recall, included (mostly) sidelining the HBO brand, which guys like Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav said reflected an evolution in the company’s thinking. Executives believed that the “the HBO name turns off many potential subscribers,” so they renamed their streaming service “Max” in the belief this would give them a fresh branding start.
While “HBO” as a studio still technically still exists and every so often produces good stuff in spite of itself, “Max” has generally trafficked in lower quality content since inception, resulting in a lot of people cancelling their streaming subscriptions — especially given the constant price hikes and overall enshittification.
Now Warner Bros Discovery executives have decided to bring the HBO brand back again. Modern media outlets like Axios are incapable of candidly explaining how stupid this whole trajectory has been, instead offering this explanation:
“Highlighting the HBO branding sends a signal to consumers that the streaming service will lean into high-quality programming, instead of focusing mostly on its breadth of shows.”
The real signal being sent is that America’s highest paid media executives have absolutely no fucking idea what they’re doing.
Again, they insisted that this was the exact wrong path just a few years ago. They previously (falsely) believed the HBO brand “turned off” the public and openly and repeatedly stated that focusing on quantity instead of quality would change everything. That resulted in the Max lineup being inundated with just a bottomless array of reality TV dreck with names like “Fuckboy Island.”
At the same time, a ton of quality programming and brands (from Mad Magazine to Sesame Street!) got sidelined, while many remaining brands (see: CNN) just got worse and worse.
The trajectory of this clown show has been immeasurably entertaining in all the wrong ways. And the king of the whole effort, Zaslav, continues to be slathered with outsized compensation despite zero indication that anybody in a position of leadership at this company has any idea what they’re doing.
Zaslav, like most media execs at major media companies, is all out of any sort of original ideas. The kind of stuff that truly pleases customers (low prices, higher quality, improved customer support, better feature sets) costs money and erodes quarterly earnings and the goal of impossible growth.
So instead these executives have embraced a purely extractive “growth for growth’s sake” mindset in which they pursue purposeless consolidation whose only function is to temporarily goose stock valuations, provide big tax cuts, and flimsily justify outsized compensation for fail-upward brunchlord media executives who fancy themselves savvy dealmakers.
And there’s been an entire generation of this, if you extend your view back to the original, equally disastrous AOL deal back in 2001.
Zaslav has stated repeatedly that he sees Trump 2.0 as an opportunity for more harmful media consolidation, which will only continue to make the underlying products worse. Wash, rinse, repeat, with absolutely nobody learning anything from the experience thanks to all manner of perverse financial incentives that have nothing to do with building real value or making your customers happy.
Filed Under: brands, brunchlords, consolidation, david zaslav, executive compensation, hbo, incompetence, media, mergers, streaming, video
Companies: warner bros. discovery
