HBO Max Is Already Honing Its Identity

When HBO Max first launched in late May, critics and analysts spoke about it like cautiously optimistic realtors. The new streaming service from WarnerMedia had great bones, the logic went; it just needed to invest in some structural improvements to bring it up to its full potential. The catalog was solid, but what if subscribers could watch it on their Roku-powered TVs? An omnibus outlet for WarnerMedia’s many holdings made intuitive sense, but why was this one named after, but also creatively distinct from, a rarefied option like HBO?

Nearly three months later, HBO Max has successfully avoided the punch lines less sensible ventures like Quibi have attracted in spades. (Then again, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar hasn’t been rewarded with a prime speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention; perhaps he ought to consider a pivot to bites.) At the same time, it also isn’t the runaway success of a juggernaut like Disney+, which breezed past its five-year subscriptions goal, now over 60 million worldwide, in just eight months. HBO Max’s gains are instead relatively modest: A July report put its activated accounts at just 4.1 million, a small fraction of the HBO customers eligible for a free upgrade and contributing to a small 5 percent increase of HBO’s total subscriber base compared to the end of 2019, from 34.6 million to 36.3 million.

But in the past few weeks, HBO Max has also demonstrated something most major launches backed by massive corporations have not: a willingness and ability to change what isn’t working, and double down on what is. Earlier this year, Apple licensed past seasons of Fraggle Rock after initial attempts to build a library from scratch, and Peacock had to figure out how to sell itself without the Olympics as a built-in marketing hook—but these small tweaks pale in comparison to the massive upheaval at HBO Max earlier this month. Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly, the industry veterans most closely associated with HBO Max’s development and debut, have been pushed out of WarnerMedia entirely. In their stead, Casey Bloys—who’s been running HBO since the departure of longtime head Richard Plepler in 2019—will now run the new product that bears his original charge’s name.

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