After all, Discovery+ isn’t going away.
According to a source familiar with the company’s plans, CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has decided to continue offering the Discovery+ streaming platform in the United States. This is a sharp departure from the media company’s previous plan to merge Discovery+ and HBO Max into a single streaming service. The Wall Street Journal broke the story first.
According to the source, the company has not changed its plan to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into a “enhanced platform” later this year, a key synergy identified by Warner Bros. Discovery following its April 2022 merger. Customers, according to CEO David Zaslav, prefer fewer, not more, streaming options.
However, the company is concerned that forcing Discovery+ customers to pay more for a combined app will result in a significant loss of subscribers, according to the Journal.
Discovery+ costs $6.99 per month without advertisements and $4.99 per month with advertisements. That is significantly less expensive than HBO Max, which costs $15.99 per month without ads. A monthly fee of $9.99 is charged for an ad-supported tier. Warner Bros. Discovery has not disclosed the cost of the combined service to subscribers.
There is no significant genre overlap between HBO Max and Discovery+. HBO Max includes Warner Bros. films, Turner Classic Movies, and HBO documentaries, comedy specials, and dramas like “The Last of Us.” Discovery+ features a lot of reality television, including Food Network and TLC shows like “Chopped.”
Warner Bros. Discovery does not break out the number of subscribers by platform, but it currently has nearly 95 million global HBO, HBO Max, and Discovery+ subscribers combined.
When Warner Bros. Discovery reports earnings on February 23, Wall Street analysts expect the company to reveal more details about the combined platform.
