In March of this year, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer of Discovery, confirmed that HBO Max and Discovery+ would beMerge into a single serviceWhen Warner Bros. Discovery announced its financial results for the last quarter, it stated that the two services will officially merge in the summer of 2023.
However, Warner Bros. Discovery has not yet determined the name of the two services after the merger. JB Perrette, head of Warner Bros. Discovery's global streaming business, said that they will continue to study how the consumer market views the brand influence of HBO and Discovery services to determine the name of the merged service in the future.
In the past, Warner Media launched a service of the same name under the HBO brand, and later derived services such as HBO Go and HBO Now. Later, it launched HBO Max with more content, but later ceased operations of the original HBO Go and changed the name of the original HBO Now to HBO. HBO Max maintained the original service name, but further highlighted its independent operation positioning.
WarnerMedia officially completed its merger with Discovery in June this year, and continued to operate under the name of Warner Bros. Discovery. It also confirmed that it will merge the two services HBO Max and Discovery+ in the future. This also means that the new service after the merger will have a new name and must also have a certain degree of recognition.
On the other hand, after the official merger in June this year, Warner Bros. Discovery recognized a loss of US$6 billion, so it is expected that it will continue to strive for greater profit opportunities through service projects in the future.
