From Warner Bros Discovery, the company that owns HBO, it was made known that they would sell the broadcast rights of some of their original series to third parties to obtain an economic return.
First were recent canceled series without an outcome like Westworld and The nevers. Then it was the turn of completed series with a current profile such as Insecure, a critical success at the time, and Ballers, which became a phenomenon in the Netflix catalog in the United States due to The Rock’s commercial profile.
However, now there are heavyweights in its history such as Blood Brothers, True Blood or Two Meters Under that are landing on Netflix. Suddenly, that brand called HBO, the one that was sold as “it’s not TV” because it was above the fiction of the other networks, is at the service of its main rival in the streaming market.
The reasoning from a purely economic point of view can be understood. Westworld and The Nevers went to an ad-supported streaming channel like Tubi. By not having endings, they had become dead weight in their catalog. And, when it comes to other original series that are well completed, the majority are titles that their subscribers had consumed or had had the opportunity to consume in recent years.
In fact, their appearance on Netflix does not mean that they have disappeared from the HBO catalog: their subscribers can continue watching them. Another thing is whether this way of amortizing the titles does not also lead to an erosion of the brand: if the HBO classics are on other platforms, HBO content stops conveying the idea of ??premium and exclusivity. Being signed up for HBO (or, well, HBO Max in Spain) meant having the best series in the history of television exclusively in a virtual drawer. Not anymore.
While it is interesting that streaming can become a less hermetic market where studios exchange titles to give each other value, periodically complement each other, and reclaim otherwise forgotten series and movies (because, when something changes platform, suddenly attracts attention again), the relationship between HBO and Netflix is ??currently being asymmetrical: Netflix incorporates beloved titles from its competitor while Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be looking for easy money, even if this means sacrificing its image, without adding Competitive titles that fit your catalog.
Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. One day it was considered that HBO was not a sufficiently powerful brand, because it only transmitted quality adult fiction and they wanted a brand that also said easy entertainment, so HBO Max appeared. And, although this change has not been carried out in Spain, in the United States the service has already lost the HBO acronym to be called only Max.
It is the dilution of a brand that, after The Sopranos and Sex and the City, was built over two decades. Luckily, series like The last of us, Euphoria or The white lotus indicate that she is far from being creatively dead, still being capable of structuring the three fundamental pillars of HBO’s success: audience, awards and social and cultural conversation.
But allowing HBO’s fame to be exploited on Netflix while it loses weight within its own platform does not convey that we are in its moment of splendor, at least from the perspective of the managers who should take care of the brand. “It’s not HBO, it’s just content,” they seem to want to say.
