3 ms·

HBO is owned by Warner Bros/Discovery now. Seems like it would make licensing easier. Unless they're going to "rent out" their valuable properties to other str

• filmgirlcw 4y ago
  No, it's more like they don't think the current price was worth renewing on HBO Max and could use that money for other content. But they'd be willing to license it to someone else (probably less than what HBO Max was paying, but that's still weirdly a win) if possible. Under AT&T, the whole idea was to keep basically everything created or owned by Warner Bros. under the HBO Max brand, no matter how much more they could be making if they licensed Friends or Big Bang Theory or whatever to Netflix or Disney or Apple or whoever. Because they saw that as an incentive to get subscribers. Now that subscriber growth has largely flattened (at least in the US), they are rethinking that idea for properties that don't bring them a lot of subscribers or that don't have a lot of views. Other streamers probably have zero interest in picking most of this stuff up because they have all gone all-in on producing all of their content in-house and have their own budget struggles, but they could do international licensing or license to FAST (free ad supported streaming television) services in a roll-up. Or they could just not have the content on streaming if they are going to have to pay for it. Vault it up. Which is a real shame, of course, but this is why some of us have continued to buy physical media or iTunes downloads.