michael here and today's video is about the impact of the warner brothers discovery merger
on people who use hbo max and discovery plus i've identified a big problem ahead what is the
solution keep watching this headline from variety sums up the news that hbo max and discovery plus
will be combined into one platform but that will not happen right away first some type
of bundling will take place so shortly after the discovery warner media deal closes in april 2022
expect bundling like the disney bundle but eventually perhaps a few months later something
that looks more like netflix from a business perspective combining hbmx and discovery plus
makes a lot of sense it is what i expected them to do but for consumers these are very different
services at very different price points how different just one example only about 10 of
people who responded to my youtube poll subscribe to both hbo max and discovery plus right now
the main issue the new company is going to have to address is the discovery plus customers who
in many cases are more price sensitive than hbo max customers discovery plus hooked people with
affordable plans five dollars a month for ad lite and seven dollars a month for ad-free
less than half the price of ad-free hbo max that is 15 a month so it's reasonable to expect a
combined service will cost at least 15 a month but maybe less for the ad supported plans more
on that later but i'm wondering could that be too steep for people who only want the discovery plus
type content come to think of it about a month ago i put up another poll and i asked about the
combination of hbo max discovery plus and cnn plus into one bundle 31 of people said they'd pay 15
a month or less for that these results may be skewed because i did put cnn plus into the picture
that is not confirmed as part of this new mega service but i do think it is a good possibility
mostly because i'm not sure that cnn plus is going to get enough eyeballs as a standalone service
check out my separate video on that now we know there will be a combined product for
hbo max and discovery plus question is will these separate apps be offered standalone
at least for a period of time it's a good question and one i do not have an answer to quite yet and
you may be wondering especially if you paid annually for one of the services or you get
either of them as a perk from another provider like your phone company for example here hbo max
is included with some at t unlimited plans the new company is going to have some decisions to make in
these cases two possibilities that come to mind first they could introduce the combined service
and keep the separate services running for maybe a year or two another option is they could give free
or discounted upgrades to the combined service for people who have perks through another provider
or those who pre-paid for annual plans of hbo max for discovery plus warner brothers
discovery will be led by current discovery ceo david zaslav whose compensation package for 2021
was 246 million dollars according to this report a very rich and very powerful man and someone facing
a very important decision on how to price the combined streaming product because if he goes
too aggressive he could alienate the discovery plus subscribers forever some of them were already
reluctant to subscribe to discovery plus because many people still pay for discovery's lineup of
channels like tlc hgtv and food network through a paid tv service so they're already feeling like
they're paying twice now what if the goal is to create a blowout streaming product that people
will never want to cancel hbo max's current pricing is where i think the combined product
probably should be ten dollars a month with ads 15 a month without plus a better deal for annual
subscribers and at least at the start there may need to be some sort of a special deal for those
discovery plus subscribers so they don't feel like they're burned through this merger process
and there is some time for all this to be worked out first there will be some type of bundling and
then down the road maybe six months or so you can expect that combined product i'll keep you
posted on when that happens in the meantime if you are one of those price sensitive discovery plus
customers there are 6 and 12 month discovery plus gift subscriptions available at recording time so
this may be a good time to lock in the current price before any of these changes take place