Warner Bros Discovery is working on Max as the new name for its merged HBO Max and Discovery+ service, due to launch in 2023. HBO and Discovery are both well-known television brands, at least in the United States. Corporate rivalry may be resolved by going with something more generic. Establishing such a generic brand globally could be a challenge.
CNBC reports that Warner Bros Discovery executives are close to settling on the new name for the combined online video subscription service, codenamed BEAM. The favourite seems to be Max but that could change.
It looks like HBO will be a sub-brand within the service, which will include programming from across the portfolio of Warner Bros Discovery. These will be organised into separate hubs in a similar way to how Disney separates its brands within Disney+.
The combined service is set to launch in the spring of 2023. The price point has yet to be announced.
HBO Max and Discovery+ subscriptions currently cost $14.99 and $6.99 a month respectively. They both also offer cheaper plans that include advertising.
There were just under 95 million subscribers across HBO Max, HBO, and Discovery+ at the end of September 2022, 53.5 million of them in the United States. Warner Bros Discovery is aiming for 130 million direct-to consumer subscribers to the combined service by 2025, whatever it is called. The direct-to-consumer business lost $634 million in the last quarter, on revenues of just under $2.5 billion.