Happy Funday Sunday War & Peaceniks!
We’re having a zoom meet-up tomorrow. The agenda is below. All the bullets roll up into one theme:
Yes, Media is mid-apocalypse. AND, you can survive it.
But the pathway is not a straight line, nor are the choices binary. You must do more than walk and talk, or chew and screw.
Recently, Wired published a terrific piece with a misleading title, HBO Continues to Have the Worst Timing.
“The company could also have not “fixed” something that wasn’t broken. Before the Discovery-Warner Bros. merger, HBO Max was on its way to becoming the best streaming service around. It had scores of incredible Warner Bros. movies, plus Game of Thrones, and despite the issues created by Covid-19, it was starting to release cool, critical-darling originalslike Hacks. Its subscriber numbers were beating expectations.
Then, post-merger, the newly-formed WBD began disappearing shows from HBO Max and declared the service would soon offer shows from Discovery, host to Shark Week and nearly every home-renovation show on the air. It appeared, to the dissatisfaction of many of its biggest fans, that the vibe at HBO Max was shifting.”
It’s not bad timing. Or bad luck. It’s bad management.
From Bewkes selling WarnerMedia to AT&T when he KNEW they’d fuck it up; to literally every move Stankey made while setting $109 billion on fire; to the utter lack of strategery or vision Zas has demonstrated since combining Disco with Bros while halving Warner Bros. Discovery’s value… The main reason each decision was made, was to enrich the men making them.
The HBO to “Max” name change is C-Suite-not-invented-here narcissism disguised as “decisive action,” while holding the company’s place in line, until they sell it again, next year, to enrich themselves even more. It’s on equal footing with shifting CNN to bothsidesism reporting, while tanking the ratings, then calling it “good business.”
Being a minimum salary writer on a “Max” show that gets written down and disappeared just to save billionaires a few bucks IS bad timing and bad luck. Writing down good content, slashing talented staff, and killing off one of the most valuable brands in TV history (maybe two), then calling that strategy… is bad management.
Yes, from COVID to now, the entire Media ecosystem has been whacked by a litany of force majeure.
And Media benefited from the most captive worldwide audience in modern history. As the streaming wars heated up, the fortunate men running these companies had historic levels of wealth in both cash and intellectual property at their disposals. Disco Bros boasts one of the best and biggest content libraries in entertainment history.
They just made a movie about it, in fact. Zas even stars in it. 1000% unironically, they’ve labeled it a “Max Original.”
Disco Brothers didn’t have to be. The old idea of merging like businesses no longer makes 1 and 1 equal 2. The entire premise of combining them was not new Media scale, but rather old Media’s savings. Yes, managing costs on existing business is smart. AND so is reinvesting some of that into NEW areas of business. Ask Amazon about their ads, Google about their Cloud, Apple about their Services.
WBD’s biggest hit in the last year was not on TV or in film. It was a billion dollar game. What’s clear is that WBD management wants to be the best TV channel for the most people, with the lowest overhead. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I also do not believe it will be near enough to survive.
On tomorrow’s webinar, I’ll give my latest Yes, And presentation, about:
What comes AFTER the current ad recession.
Why Iger was bullshitting about selling Hulu.
The next evolution of FAST.
Why gaming is now Web 2.5.
How to satisfy the hierarchy of feeds for your most important audiences.
Why we must stop greenlighting the apocalypse.
How Yes, And answers many of Media’s biggest questions: Linear or On Demand? Ad supported or ad free? Paid or Free? Audio or Video? Film or Game? Competitor or Collaborator? Managing Expense or Investing In the Future?
Yes, the meet-up is for paying subs of this Media War & Peace newsletter. And, you can sign up for a free trial now, join us tomorrow, then churn out like a Stranger Things binge-watcher.
If you see the details for the zoom below, thanks so much for being a paying sub!
If not, consider taking advantage of that sweet, sweet FREE TRIAL.
Hope to see you there!
ESHAP
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Media War & Peace to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.