HBO Max And Its Place In Connected TV
Maybe it’s just the warped perception of time under COVID-19 quarantine, but doesn’t it seem like HBO Max has been gestating for a decade? In fact, Warner Media only announced its splashy streaming plan in 2018. In any case, the waiting game is over and HBO Max is now formally a part of the Connected TV (CTV) pantheon. That said, where exactly should we place HBO Max in that world, and what should we expect from HBO Max and CTV more broadly as that universe continues to evolve?
The benefit and burden of the HBO brand
If you read media trade publications, you’d think that the only people whose opinions matter in CTV are millennials. But millennials alone aren’t going to make or break HBO Max. Millions of cable and satellite households led by pre-millennials (aka the rest of the adult population) have been HBO subscribers for years if not decades, still deliver billions of dollars in subscriber fees and carry strong preexisting passions about the HBO brand.
If you’ve grown up with HBO in any fashion you know that HBO has always meant something “different.” When HBO created the almost audacious tagline “It’s not TV. It’s HBO” it never seemed outlandish. Whether it was premiering the biggest movies on TV (when that really meant something), pioneering Peak TV serieHoward Homonoffs such as The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and The Wire, or producing trailblazing documentaries or live sports events, HBO has for nearly a half-century built an exceptional TV brand.
Given the self-created track record, Warner Media may face a greater expectation from the TV-viewing public about HBO Max than any other CTV service. No other CTV brand is so linked with a history of quality TV, and that includes CBS All Access as well as NBC’s Peacock. Netflix – not to mention Tubi, PlutoTV and Xumo – can have plenty of junk mixed in with its gems and no one really cares. Even Disney+ is linked to a brand as or more associated with theme parks and movie princesses than TV. Not so for HBO.
And speaking of its CTV brand, is HBO Max the most HBO you can have? What about HBO the “channel” – what is that now? How about HBO Now and HBO Go (which I expect will eventually go away)? HBO Max labels its original programming as “Max Films,” so are these films that are not ready for prime-time HBO? If so, what are they doing on a service with the HBO name? Especially when you ask subscribers to fork over the highest price in the CTV world at $14.99 a month, you’ve got to make that value proposition clear and HBO Max is a brand in progress.
Content blends old and new effectively
Consistent with incoming AT&T CEO John Stankey’s early pronouncement to focus HBO on viewing hours “per day” rather than “per month,” HBO Max has plenty of what was referred to only a couple of years ago as “premium video.” If you like TV, it’s pretty hard to argue you aren’t going to find something of interest among 17 different categories of programming here ranging from Action to Suspense, with Documentaries and Kids along the way.
Not to be too persnickety on the brand point, but the overall content blend of Warner Media’s CTV baby is really more HBO “Plus” than HBO “Max.” In addition to providing the expected access to current and library HBO network content, HBO Max’s infusion of all of Warner’s content brands under one CTV roof does provide many treats. If you have a personal list of “movies I can’t believe I haven’t seen,” HBO Max likely includes a number of them, leveraging such historic MGM film library classics such as Casablanca, Rebel Without a Cause, and Ben-Hur as well as the timeless Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes oeuvre. There are familiar brands such as TCM, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim whose programming you can still watch on cable and satellite, but HBO Max is playing the long game here, needing to capture the growing number of households without a multichannel video subscription. As has been reported ad infinitum, Friends now has its permanent and likely exclusive CTV residence on HBO Max along with a group of other high-profile broadcast and cable network series such as The Big Bang Theory, Rick and Morty and Doctor Who. Is it HBO? No, but it’s HBO Max and it’s TV.
On user experience, it’s CTV. But is it HBO?
Are we at the end of innovation in CTV user experience? In 1992, a historian named Francis Fukuyama wrote a book with the much-lambasted title and premise of The End of History, seeing the triumph of the West at that time as the end of the evolution of ideology. Oops. And yet as we load up on the number of new CTV entrants, with the scrolling tile format, similar groupings of lists, recommended titles based on prior viewing, and breakdowns by category such as “Rom Com Favorites”, it feels a little like we’re at the end of an evolution in CTV user experience.
HBO Max looks great, it’s easy to understand how to navigate, and it works seamlessly. But you’re likely to feel like you’ve been here before – many times. I am still waiting for someone to come in and shake things up in terms of a user experience with a degree of differentiation depending on the CTV brand and the content. This isn’t it. And don’t tell me about Quibi – it’s not even CTV. To paraphrase Tevye at the end of Fiddler on the Roof, and hopefully without straying into blasphemy, I guess I’ll have to wait for the user experience Messiah somewhere else.
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