HBO Max and Discovery+ Are “Not Perfect Right Now,” Says Warner Bros. Discovery CFO

CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels was asked about Monday night’s Emmy Awards while speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco. The company’s creative teams, led by HBO, were praised by Wiedenfels for winning an industry-leading 48 accolades. He referred to that as “a terrific backdrop” and “such great proof” for how management views the combined company as one organization with significant potential for growth. Even while Warners produces them for Apple and ABC, respectively, rather than distributing them themselves, he emphasized that Ted Lasso and Abbott Elementary are nevertheless significant Emmy-winning hits for the corporation.

The merger provides “tremendous opportunity,†Wiedenfels said, mentioning House of the Dragon as an example.

“Unfortunately, both are not perfect right now,†he said about the conglomerate’s two streaming services, with HBO Max having “that amazing content offering,†“a lot more of the must-have features,†while Discovery+ has a “cleaner†user experience. “We had to rebuild taking the best parts of both platforms and rebuild a new state-of-the-art structure,†which will take some time, he said. The thesis behind that is that the two streamers are “perfect complements,†Wiedenfels said.

He also signaled again that while Discovery content traditionally doesn’t have “this extreme buzzâ€, its evergreen popularity can help reduce user churn when HBO doesn’t have new hit shows launching given that it has “among the lowest churn rates in the industry†and long view times. 

“There is a lot of value in the fact that we have HGTV, Food, Magnolia, Discovery and obviously on the other side HBO†as “established, very, very powerful brands†that are expected to be “a factor in the content discovery approach that we are going to take†for the combined streaming product, he also said.

Anoosha Khan
Anoosha Khan

Anoosha Khan is a film critic and entertainment editor based in the UK. She has been reporting about celebs and movies for WatchinUK for the past year.

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