HBO Max & Discovery Plus Being Merged Into Single Platform

Warner Bros. is set to take over Discovery Networks soon. The companies agreed recently to a merger. There are a lot of moving parts involved in the deal.

One of the biggest properties WarnerMedia acquired in the deal was the Discovery Plus streaming service. Fans of Discovery Networks shows were offered a treasure trove of current and past programming on-demand through the service. With WarnerMedia’s purchase of the Discovery brand, big changes are coming.

Variety reported that the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery plans to merge the Discovery Plus platform with their popular HBO Max streaming service. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels announced the news at the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference. Discovery has already begun preparations for the switch.

“One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition. The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that’s going to take some time.

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Again, that’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime. So right out of the gate, we’re working on getting the bundling approach ready, maybe a single sign-on, maybe ingesting content into the other product, etc., so that we can start to get some benefits early on.

But the main thrust is going to be harmonizing the technology platform. Building one very, very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform, that’s going to take a while.”

There has not been any information released regarding the pricing or availability of the combined service. Fans of both HBO Max and Discovery Plus should be thrilled with the deal. Subscribers will now have a plethora of new content to sift through aimlessly on rainy days.

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