The viewership could still have been relatively high and the streaming service could still decide not to renew if it was considered too expensive and there was

The viewership could still have been relatively high and the streaming service could still decide not to renew if it was considered too expensive and there was a wish to cut costs. The deep weird, interesting part of this negotiation is that it is happening "inside the same house": the incoming new management of HBO Max coming from Discovery have made it clear they are looking to cut a lot of costs and care a lot more about that than the value of the content they are cutting, while presumably the old guard still left at Warner Brothers are negotiating for the value of their more expensive to produce (compared to Discovery's niches) content. From the outside we don't have a lot of details of these negotiations, including whether or not this was highly viewed content on HBO Max. We just see Warner Brothers Discovery punching themselves in infighting, and it is very odd and kind of interesting from this distance.