HBO MAX & discovery+ combined service launching May 23

Today, Warner Bros Discovery has announced that its new combined streaming service will launch in the US on May 23. The service, as had been widely reported, will be called simply Max.

Since Warner Media and Discovery merged, there was talk about a combined streaming service, and that day has come. Originally, Warner Bros Discovery planned to merge discovery+ completely within HBO MAX. But it became a better idea to merge the two into a new service instead.

While the company has announced a lot of things today, there’s still a lot that we don’t know about Max. Like, how much it’ll cost. It would be surprising to see it come in cheaper than the current HBO MAX pricing. We’re expecting something around $15-$20 for ad-supported and $20 or more for ad-free. Keep in mind that it will have a ton of content, arguably a lot more than Netflix.

Goodbye, HBO

Surprisingly, WBD is going to be getting rid of HBO. HBO, which stands for Home Box Office, first launched in 1972, as a premium movie channel that was ad-free on cable. It then morphed into a streaming service, and finally after AT&T bought Time Warner, it was rebranded as HBO MAX, and added all of the Warner Bros content onto HBO MAX, as well as adding some licensed content.

Now, HBO is done. It’ll simply be called “Max”. Which is an interesting position for the company to take. As HBO and Discovery are both household names. And either one being used in the name for the new service would have been a good idea. But we’ll have to see how this works out when the service launches next month.

What’s interesting here is that while Max will be the new combined service, WBD is keeping discovery+ around. And that’s because it has a pretty loyal following. And getting customers that prefer reality TV who are paying about $5 per month, to now pay double, triple or even quadruple, is going to be a hard sell. So discovery+ customers, you’ll be able to stick with discovery+.

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