Warner Bros. Discovery is altering the title of its streaming service once more.
You’ll by no means guess what its executives got here up with.
Initially, the service launched as HBO Max in 2020.
In 2023, the corporate controversially modified the streaming service to easily Max — ditching probably the most honored community model title in tv in favor of the most well-liked title for male canine.
On the firm’s upfront presentation in New York at Madison Sq. Backyard on Wednesday, WBD President and CEO David Zaslav mentioned the title will change as soon as once more … again to HBO Max.
“The highly effective development we’ve seen in our world streaming service is constructed across the high quality of our programming,” Zaslav mentioned. “In the present day, we’re bringing again HBO, the model that represents the very best high quality in media, to additional speed up that development within the years forward.”
Added chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content material Casey Bloys: “With the course we’re on and robust momentum we’re having fun with, we imagine HBO Max much better represents our present shopper proposition. And it clearly states our implicit promise to ship content material that’s acknowledged as distinctive and, to steal a line we at all times mentioned at HBO, price paying for.”
Thirty minutes into Wednesday’s Warner Bros. Discovery upfront, Bloys revealed the title change to media consumers. The information was met with laughter, gentle applause and precisely one whistle. Bloys did comply with with a strong joke: “I do know you’re all shocked, however the excellent news is I’ve a drawer filled with stationary from the final time round.”
The corporate additional defined the transfer in a press release by noting — in what feels like a transparent shot at business chief Netflix — “This evolution has been influenced by altering shopper wants, and the truth that no shopper in the present day is saying they need extra content material, however most shoppers are saying they need higher content material. With different providers filling the extra fundamental wants with quantity, WBD has clearly distinguished itself by way of its high quality and distinct tales, and no model has finished that higher and extra constantly over 50+ years than HBO.”
Continued the assertion: “Returning the HBO model into HBO Max will additional drive the service ahead and amplify the distinctiveness that subscribers can anticipate from the providing. It is usually a testomony to WBD’s willingness to maintain boldly iterating its technique and method – leaning closely on shopper knowledge and insights – to greatest place itself for achievement.”
The historical past of the streaming service is definitely much more tangled in case you look again to early efforts to carry HBO content material to streaming, since HBO Max changed an SVOD service titled HBO Now and a nascent streaming service for cable subscribers known as HBO Go. So, in a way, watching the corporate’s content material on demand has modified from HBO Now to HBO Go to HBO Max to Max to HBO Max.
Recognizing the inherent humor of the state of affairs, Warners’ press packet for the announcement included a meme from Buddies, with Ross famously declaring, “We had been on a break!”
Right here’s the brand new emblem:
The transfer comes follows WBD framing its streaming enterprise as its development engine in its first-quarter 2025 earnings report final week, beating Wall Road expectations. The corporate had added 5.3 million subscribers to a complete of 122.3 million, and grew streaming income by 8 % to $2.7 billion and adjusted EBITDA to $339 million.
Throughout an earnings name with analysts, Zaslav signaled that the corporate was going to attempt to pivot again to a less-is-more technique in comparison with a high-and-broad quantity supplier like Netflix.
“The concept is it’s not how a lot, it’s how good is one thing we’ve recognized,” he mentioned. “We’re not going to flood the zone. We wish to be telling the most effective tales, and we wish to even be making the most of all the good high quality content material over time.”
The transfer is a shift from again in 2023, when Zaslav emphasised a breadth and depth of content material after asserting Max throughout an interview with CNBC. “By growing the quantity of content material we’ve on the platform – content material for teenagers, content material for households, nonfiction content material, meals, dwelling, the most important movement image and TV library – by placing that complete bouquet of content material, we expect the broadest array of content material out there, that the churn will come down.”
Earlier this month, Bloys mirrored again on earlier title change throughout an interview with Puck. “Once you return to when AT&T first launched HBO Max, placing HBO in that title was controversial,” he mentioned. “There have been plenty of, ‘Oh my God, HBO is gonna be subsequent to Buddies within the TV library’ … The pondering on the time was that when you set HBO within the title, it defines all the pieces that comes on the platform.”
Continued Bloys: “Even two years in the past, the thought was nonetheless that we had been gonna be one thing for everyone. Everyone needed to be the following Netflix, and it’s so extremely costly to do this …We have now accepted and perceive that almost all of our subscribers at this level are going to have Netflix, and so they’re going to have Amazon … So when somebody is placing collectively their media eating regimen, it’s about what you add to that … We did plenty of analysis and focus teams. The issues subscribers need from us are HBO programming, scripted dramas, comedies, documentaries, the pay-one [licensing window] motion pictures, library motion pictures, and principally the Warner Bros. TV library. We went by way of all this knowledge and confirmed it to David. The beauty of David—he checked out it and mentioned, ‘Okay, let’s work out what we’re gonna do.’”
And, it appears, reverting again to HBO Max is one results of these discussions.
Max will formally change to HBO Max someday this summer time.
Tony Maglio contributed to this report.