The Vergecast Streaming Services Draft: Warner Bros. Discovery’s Next-to-Leading Service — “Max”
What is the best streaming service? It is big and important to answer. It’s also a completely impossible, completely subjective question that depends on everything from your budget to your favorite Mission: Impossible movie. The market for streaming stuff is not the same as always, with platforms constantly rising and falling.
But here at The Verge, we like answers. For this episode of The Vergecast, we decided to answer the big question chaotically and at great length. So we held the first annual Vergecast Streaming Services Draft, in which our three co-hosts each drafted their top five streaming services. There were a lot of arguments, but no condoning of piracy. We would never.
The landscape is likely to shift today as Warner Bros. Discovery shows off a new service called “Max.” Under the rules of our game, both David and Alex can have that one. But only for this year.) We got a new The Marvels trailer — score one for Disney Plus. It’s a Fast powerhouse because it got a bunch of free channels. It looks like Sony might be pushing harder into cloud gaming, which means PlayStation Now probably won’t go undrafted next time.
Warner Bros. Discovery hopes that it will amass 130 million subscribers by 2025. At the launch event, the company’s streaming chief Jean-Briac Perrette discussed several improvements to the HBO Max interface to increase retention and engagement, adding that the company had invested in machine learning so home feeds can recommend content using a “human-plus-machine approach.”
The new service, announced by CEO David Zaslav at a press event Wednesday, will launch May 23 and give consumers access to a large library of programming across Warner Bros. Discovery’s sprawling portfolio: Warner Bros., HBO, HGTV, Food Network, Cartoon Network, TLC and others.
“We are a global leader in sports and we are a global leader in news,” Zaslav said. “And in a few months we will come back to you on our attack plan to use this important and differentiating content to grow our streaming business even further.”
Max subscribers have access to three price tiers. The least expensive is $9.99 a month and will show ads. The ad-free version will cost the same as the company’s existing service. That tier will let customers stream on two devices at once and download up to 30 titles, but the content will be available only in high-definition rather than 4K.
The companies executives claim that the new service is unique in its content mix and it includes award-winning prestige programming with some of the best shows on television.
News and sports programming will be in the future, given that Warner Bros. Discovery owns properties such as Turner Sports and CNN.
Other companies enmeshed in the cable business have also moved in recent years to launch streaming platforms, including Disney
(DIS), NBC, and Paramount. But none of these companies have achieved the success of Netflix
(NFLX), which pioneered the streaming business and has more than 230 million global subscribers.
But subscriber growth for streaming services has slowed in recent years as the market becomes more saturated. A number of companies have introduced lower-priced plans to get people in.
Profitability is the most important measure of a company’s success, as executives increasingly point out. The company said last year that it would stop providing guidance for its members, as it was more focused on revenue.