Get ready for an HBO Max – Discovery+ mashup app in 2023
The headline of Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings call was something a lot of people were anxious about: HBO Max and Discovery+ are merging into a new service. The company will roll out this new offering — which doesn’t have a name yet — for U.S.-based consumers in the summer of 2023, with LatAm expansion later that year, and the European market launch in 2024.
The firm aims to merge different offerings like acclaimed scripted shows such as “Succession,” “Euphoria” and the upcoming “House of Dragons” from HBO Max and unscripted shows such as “90 Day Fiancé” and “Fixer Upper,” under one service. This is probably to better compete with Netflix, which has a slew of scripted and unscripted shows under its belt.
Warner Bros. Discovery will start this merger process by cross-posting content on both services. Discovery+ will start showing CNN originals starting this month under a new tab, and HBO Max will gain some reality shows from Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network starting September 30.
The company also admitted that both HBO Max and Discovery had shortcomings from a product perspective, with the aim of the new product being to address those issues.
HBO Max app has a notorious reputation of being a buggy app with many issues: the app freezing and crashing on Roku; unable to remember subtitle settings on Apple TV; and content being inaccessible at times. The HBO Max’s app ratings — 3.7 on the Google Play Store and just 2.8 on the Apple App Store — are reflective of customers experiencing multiple issues. In an interview with Protocol in April, HBO Max’s product head Sarah Lyons admitted that the company hurried out its apps despite knowing they were buggy in 2020.
On the other hand, the Discovery+ app’s performance is good,
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