In Discovery Inc’s earnings call, JB Perrette, president and CEO of Discovery Streaming, left open the company’s future integration strategy for their combined streaming assets, discovery+ and HBO Max.
“There may be two phases to this where there may be an initial phase which allows for more of a quick bundling of services and a second phase, which eventually allows for, obviously, a common service on one tech platform,” Perrette said. He later doubled down to say, “it will take a bit of time to come to one platform. And so while that process is underway, there will be opportunities in a much quicker fashion closer to Day 1 to potentially do some very creative bundling propositions.”
Discovery CEO David Zaslav also announced that Kevin Mayer would be joining the operation as a consultant. Mayer was famously instrumental in launching The Disney Bundle. Mayer is also one of the players behind Blackstone Group, which is nearing a deal to buy “CoCoMelon” creator Moonbug.
One concern for the company appears to be the markets where one or both platforms have already launched. The question is obviously how to reduce churn rate in any process that integrates the platforms.
AT&T says that they expect the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery to bring in upwards of $3 billion in synergies. These synergies likely come costs and scaling efforts which can potentially be spread between the two entertainment behemoths.
Discovery announced that they ended Q3 2021 with 20 million Direct-to-Consumer Subscribers - an improvement of 3 million subscribers from Q2. That includes subscribers on discovery+, along with their previously launched international platforms including dPlay, which was rebranded to discovery+ late last year.
Earlier this year, the deal between Discovery and WarnerMedia was announced. The merger is set to be approved in the first half of 2022. This agreement combines movie studio Warner Bros. with linear TV networks including CNN, TBS, TNT, Discovery, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, and Animal Planet. In a statement during the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said, “We have great content. A library almost as big or bigger than Netflix.”
discovery+
discovery+ is a video streaming service that offers more than 70,000 episodes of 2,500+ current and classic shows from several popular TV brands including Discovery, Investigation Discovery, HGTV, TLC, Food Network, A&E, Lifetime, and History.