A decade into the streaming revolution, seams are showing and stitches are starting to pop. The recent uproar about HBO Max removing a significant number of series episodes and movies from its plat…
A decade into the streaming revolution, seams are showing and stitches are starting to pop.removing a significant number of series episodes and movies from its platform amounts to Unintended Consequence No. 9,789 for an industry that has been turned inside out by digital disruption.is scrambling to address by lightening the content load should be crystal clear to anyone who has ever worked in retail sales management. Simply put, HBO Max has an inventory problem.
In the retail world, if a product doesn’t sell, at some point it comes off the shelf to make room for something new. That has long been the case in linear television too; if a show doesn’t find an audience, the cancellation ax falls. In the past, however, if CBS or NBC yanked a show, the network didn’t have to keep shelling out coin to make it available on demand. But that has been the norm in the streaming arena.
At a time when Warner Bros. Discovery is facing serious post-merger financial pressure, there’s no question that lightening the load on HBO Max is a natural place to squeeze out some savings. This move was also made easier by the harsh reality that the shows being removed have virtually no viewership. In some cases, recently yanked shows had episodes that racked up zero views in a 12-month period.
If tens of millions of new customers are signing on every year, it might make sense to keep that quirky drama or offbeat comedy in the lineup because you never know what will play well in Peoria, or Istanbul or Rio de Janeiro. The high-flying promise of vast archives of content available to consumers with just a click has crashed into the hard reality of Warner Bros. Discovery’s debt-strained balance sheet. Nobody can afford to maintain that big an all-you-can-eat buffet for $15 a month.
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