On the erstwhile HBO Max, writers of the critically series Winning Time have taken to the erstwhile Twitter to try to save their show, which seems beset not by quality but more so the stalled viewership momentum of Max itself these days.
I'll be blunt: "Winning Time" is fighting hard to survive. Viewership keep going up, up, up. But if you want HBO to renew it and keep it going (and not have it fucking end with Boston winning), we need views. Seriously. It's the best show on TV. But #s matter. #winningtimeSeptember 7, 2023
Max seems pretty far away from where it happily stood just 24 months ago, when a fresh stream of hits -- Mare of Easttown, Hacks, White Lotus, House of the Dragon -- rolled out on the platform, one after the other, and subscribership expanded quickly.
Parent Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million direct-to-consumer customers in Q2. There is very little buzz surrounding Max. In fact, these days, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty might be literally "the one to watch" on the whole entire platform.
Also read: Has Max Become America’s Most Irrelevant Streaming Service? This Week’s 'Next Text'
Then again, WBD, which lost over $700 million on streaming in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, almost broke even on it in the second quarter of this year.
And regardless as to whether WBD's business is actually evolving/progressing into any forward-looking growth models, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels continued Thursday the company's collective home run trot over its cost savings, while speaking at the BofA Securities Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference.
“For a decade, in streaming, an enormously valuable amount of quality content has been given away well below fair market value, and I think that’s in the process of being corrected,” he said.
“This whole idea of warehousing content on Max, on a streaming platform in retrospect is incomprehensible,” Wiedenfels added. “Content needs to get oxygen to stay alive and to stay vibrant."
As one Wall Street Journal media writer quipped on X today, a show like Winning Time might be better oxygenated on another platform, like, say, Netflix.
"Content needs to get oxygen to stay alive and vibrant," says Warner Bros. Discvoery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, explaining the need to do third-party deals for original content. OK Gunnar, take my advice then and sell first two seasons of Winning Time to Netflix.September 14, 2023
WSJ's Flint might have a point. HBO's most streamed show recently, at least in the U.S., has been Ballers, a Dwayne Johnson vehicle, which wrapped in 2019 and is now shared by Max and Netflix.
Meanwhile, Wiedenfels continued to stress the need for traditional linear windowing -- a task made easier for him by the $1.4 billion global box office performance of the Barbie motion picture.
“To really get the best value out of every bit of content that we’re creating, we need to utilize all of those cash registers, all of those windows, and we need to do that in a well-orchestrated and optimized way," Wiedenfels said. "And that begins with the content investment process.”
