WarnerDiscovery's Max Has Rebranded Again in the Best/Worst Way Imaginable

Before I reveal the new/old name of WarnerDiscovery’s streaming service, I want everyone here to understand that David Zaslav, the CEO of WarnerDiscovery, makes $50 million a year. For $50 million a year, what has this genius done over the last several years besides delete beloved animated series from their service, cancel Batwoman, and greenlight a movie where Robert DeNiro plays twins called Alto Knights that came out two months ago and 96 out of 100 people you ask on the street will have never heard of it.

Oh, and also: He decided to rebrand HBO as HBO Max and then he decided to drop the one thing about HBO Max that people actually cared about — the “HBO” — and call the WarnerDiscovery service simply Max. As I discussed last week, however, the Zaslav strategy in recent months has been to basically go full Becky* on the Discovery side of things (dropping over 200 seasons of shows) and return focus to what viewers actually pay for: HBO.

The new Max will be called HBO Max.

I’ll pause here for laughter.

“This evolution has also been influenced by changing consumer needs,” JB Perrette, President and CEO of WBDiscovery, said. “No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content.”

Actually, Perette: Viewers have been saying that the entire time. Consumer needs haven’t changed; they’ve been consistent. It’s WarnerDiscovery that tried to change consumer needs, but the consumers were like, “Dude. Just give us HBO, OK? Stop with this other crap. We just want Game of Thrones spin-offs, The Gilded Age, and whatever Nicole Kidman series is up next. And stop saying The Pitt is a Max show. Just call it an HBO series for God’s sake!”

* I don’t know what “full Becky” means, but in my head, it means to completely ignore something, or Mariah Carey “I don’t know her” GIF it.