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Max Has A First Name Again

Perhaps the most notable news coming out of this year’s Upfront/NewFront season is that Warner Bros. Discovery is changing the name of its Max app back to HBO Max. 

I say “perhaps” because it’s likely much of the civilian population didn’t notice, as they’ve been calling it “HBO Max” all along and assumed that the “Max” graphic was just a new logo treatment.

Regardless, the HBO name is front and center again to the delight of millions who still see it as the standardbearer of quality TV.

Why It Matters

Much as many of you may strongly disagree, the instincts for taking HBO off the app’s name were not without merit.

The idea was that after 20 some odd years, there were a whole lot of people who did not think it was worth it to subscribe to HBO, whose cable-only subscriber numbers languished somewhere south of 50 million.

And that many of those people would enjoy watching all of the other programming on the app: HGTV, The Food Network, Discovery Channel, TBS, TNT and CNN. 

De-emphasizing “HBO” in the name would let all those people know that the app was way more than HBO, that even if they didn’t think Barry was funny or understand why you’d care about all the disagreeable people on Succession, there would still be plenty to watch. 

It was, of course, a good idea until it wasn’t.

Getting the smell of HBO out of your app when shows like The White Lotus and The Last Of Us are all the cultural elites can talk about is no easy task.

And once that happens, it’s not easy to roll out the sort of popular mainstream series that Paramount and Peacock do so well and that Netflix is leaning into. Hard.

So all that, and then there was the vibe shift in TV this year which is all about quality over quantity, a shift that most definitely favors HBO over WBD’s other properties.

And to be fair, there is a lot of quality on HBO. 

Which is remarkable in and of itself, in that much of the organization's leadership, notably capo di capos Richard Plepler had departed for greener pastures.

But old habits die hard it seems. Which is why HBO continues to remain home to the types of programming that appeals to the sort of people commonly referred to as the cultural elites. With a deep bench that includes sleeper hits like Somebody, Somewhere and Righteous Gemstones.

Along with all that reality and nonfiction programming from the Discovery/Warner part of the business.

Which is a problem and something WBD management needs to focus on if they want the business to succeed.

What You Need To Do About It

Go to the HBO Max app, and the top four series today are The Last Of Us, 1000-lb Sisters, Poly Family and Hacks. 

The first and last are sophisticated HBO series. The two in the middle are reality TV shows about morbidly obese siblings and a polyamorous foursome with kids.

If you’re thinking that the overlap between the audiences of the two extremes is negligible, you’re probably right. 

And that is the issue WBD needs to deal with: the collapse of the monoculture, the physical separation of the classes and the resulting political polarization only serves to put an exclamation point on their seemingly red show/blue show content line-up. 

Which is a fancy way of saying it still seems patched together, as if Walmart bought Neiman Marcus and began selling Christian Louboutin pumps next to the practical workboots.

Emphasizing HBO is a start, but then if you’ve emphasized HBO, are you de-emphasizing Paul American, your “Max original” series about YouTube stars the Paul brothers?

Or is the “Max” brand going to be one of your two brands and you’re actually planning to give it a unique identity?

It’s a lot because HBO stands for a certain type of TV show in a way that Netflix or Amazon or Hulu never will and it’s not going to be easy shifting that perception.

One solution may be to offer two new subscriptions—one that’s mostly HBO with some of the more middlebrow Max shows, one that’s mostly Max with some of the more popular library HBO shows. 

You’ll have to do some research and figure it out, figure out where those HGTV shows fit in, what to do with CNN.

But you’ll need to make everything hang together more cohesively, to fill in the middle so the options don’t seem so diametrically opposed.

Good luck with that, because it’s not going to be easy. 

No matter how much we may all love HBO.

Four Big Takeaways From The Upfronts

At first glance, the Upfronts can seem like an anomaly—events tied to a version of the television industry that has not existed for the last decade, one where networks showed off their new fall-premiering series and advertisers jostled to get their ads on the ones that looked like hits. (And, of course, the ones that already were hits.)

On the other hand, even in 2025, the bulk of TV ad spend still goes to linear.

That is not as absurd as it initially sounds: most of the linear TV watched in the US is ad-supported, around half of the streaming is not. Plus linear has much higher ad loads than streaming. So it stands to reason that most of the advertising is still on linear.

Now that we’ve (sort of) justified the continued existence of the Upfronts, here’s a look at the four biggest trends to emerge this year.

Why It Matters

1. Amazon overwhelmingly dominates ad supported streaming. You know how I keep telling you that the only time digital companies give you a number is when it makes them look good? In this case, that number is that Prime Video’s ad-supported US audience is north of 130 million. That’s a huge frigging deal, as there are only around 347 million people in the US, many of who are like, you know, babies, who don’t watch TV.

   That’s a far more telling number too than the one people keep batting about, the one that says “ad-supported monthly reach in the U.S. has expanded to an audience of over 300 million across owned and operated supply and beyond” which is, as Chat GPT wisely noted when I asked it to opine on what that actually meant, is “classic Upfront spin” as it includes numbers from everything Amazon touches including third party DSPs and mobile apps.

   I mean when even the GPTs are on to you…

   Ditto Netflix, who was all too happy to share that it now has “94 million global monthly active users, with U.S. users averaging 41 hours per month.” Cool stat, bro, but the fact that you are not calling out the number of US subscribers on your ad-supported tier and emphasizing the number of hours they watch each month would seem to indicate that there are not that many of them.

   Classic Upfront spin indeed.

2. Renewed Emphasis On Live Sports and Live Events. This is one we’ve flagged before (and we have not been alone in our flagging.) If TV is a reach vehicle, then live sports, which allows you to reach millions of viewers at the same time is the ultimate reach vehicle. At a time when so much of our media consumption is siloed and personal, live events really stand out. NBCU, which has both the Super Bowl and the Olympics this winter, appears to be the real winner here. It’s a costly win, but it should ultimately be worth it.

3. Another Shot At Shoppable. Both Amazon and YouTube announced fairly advanced shoppable solutions. Which is all well and good but there’s little evidence of widespread consumer adoption. Or advertiser adoption, for that matter. 

   TV is often a group activity and that is going to make shopping a suboptimal experience. Because who among us wants to pause an NBA Finals game so your friend can buy a pair of sunglasses.

   There are likely solutions to this issue and there’s a whole lot of cool technology around it, from companies like KERV and others, but we’re not quite there yet.

   We will be. But not in 2025. So there’s still time to get your strategy in place.

4. Podcasts As Content. You knew all those studies about how much Zoomers love watching podcasts on YouTube would resurface during the Upfronts. 

   And they did. 

   YouTube announced it was doubling down on its video podcast offering, Amazon announced it was going strong with the Brothers Kelce, Netflix was putting the gears in motion to up their podcast game, and everyone was talking about how podcasts were going to be the new talk show.

   And they will be, at least for a while. People love a good talk show.

   OTOH, there’s a competing survey out from a company called Transistor that says Zoomers low key do not like watching podcasts, that only 21% watch on YouTube and 76% prefer audio. 

   Now that’s one survey with a small sample size and a somewhat vested interest in the topic (Transistor is a podcast hosting and analytics platform) but that has not prevented Team Audio from waving it around every time someone mentions video podcasts on YouTube.

   All that said, podcasts, as noted, are just a slightly updated version of the always popular talk show format. So it’s not surprising they do well on TV. Which is why we will likely see a lot more of them, along with greater use of the power of video to bring various segments to life. And we can expect to see video podcasts everywhere from streaming to local.

   Headphones on.

What You Need To Do About It

My biggest takeaway is to pay attention to Amazon. 

Between their audience size, their lead in terms of shoppability and their live events line-up, they are in pole position. 

That’s before you get into all the data they have. As the saying goes, Google knows who you want to be, Amazon knows who you really are.

And it’s not like there are privacy issues. 

You bought things from them. They’re not guessing.

Amazon tends to fly under the industry’s radar, what with being in Seattle and not having the industry presence and alumni network that, say, a Google does, but they are definitely the team to watch.

I’d also pay attention to live events and video podcasts which are on a glide path to becoming the talk shows of tomorrow. 

Shoppable is making strides too, but it’s still largely a hobby business. There will need to be some trigger—an event or a new technology—that comes on the scene to spur much wider adoption. 

When and how that happens is anyone’s guess, but until then look for incremental growth versus widespread adoption.

At least this year.

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