Warner Bros. Discovery to Keep discovery+ as Stand-Alone Streamer; Still Plans to Merge Content with HBO Max

Despite being more than a year in the making, it appears that Warner Bros. Discovery has decided not to proceed with the long-planned merger of its two disparate streaming services HBO Max and discovery+, at least not completely. Discovery executives began touting the plan to bundle and then merge the platforms before the company officially purchased WarnerMedia in spring 2022 and continued talking about the eventuality throughout the past year, announcing in November that it would debut in spring 2023. However, according to a Wall Street Journal exclusive, Jessica Toonkel and Joe Flint are reporting that those plans have now shifted.

While WBD still reportedly plans on launching a hybrid of its two services that features all of the HBO Max content and a majority of the discovery+ titles, the latter lifestyle service will remain as a standalone option for fans of the various and sundry baking, home renovation, true crime, and reality dating shows that populate the platform.

At the center of the shift is the fact that by merging both services into a single entity, WBD would effectively be forcing discovery+ customers to choose between an exponential price increase or unsubscribing. Currently, HBO Max’s ad-lite plan runs $9.99 per month while ad-free is $15.99. Conversely, discovery+’s pricing plans run $4.99 and $6.99 monthly. It would be nearly unfathomable for company execs to have offered the unified service at a price point lower than HBO Max’s current rates, so no matter which plan they were on, discovery+ customers would have been forced to swallow at least a 100% rate hike to maintain access to the content they had previously been paying only $5 or $7 for.

Related: How Can Warner Bros. Discovery Keep discovery+ Customers When Service Combines with High-Priced HBO Max?

Though Warner Bros. Discovery has declined to break down the specific subscriber counts for each of its two services in recent quarters, when Discovery last announced its individual numbers, it reported having 24 million total streaming customers across its various platforms. Since WBD has recently noted that there was only an overlap of 4 million customers between its two streamers, by raising prices by that much, it is risking alienating a substantial portion of the estimated 20 million discovery+ subscribers.

According to the WSJ, the new merged platform will include such titles as Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” and the Magnolia Network, while other unnamed discovery+ titles will remain exclusive to their original streaming home. Presumably, WBD will look to include the Discovery networks’ content that is slightly more elevated, so that it fits in with the prestige programming otherwise found on HBO Max. Magnolia series and specials are already a part of the HBO Max library.

While the Wall Street Journal noted that the forthcoming unified service does not officially yet have a name, reports late last year emerged indicating that the service would simply be dubbed “Max,” presumably to coincide with the shorthand used for HBO Max, as with their in-house “Max Originals.”

Warner Bros. Discovery will issue its latest quarterly earnings report on Thursday, Feb. 23, and will answer questions from investors and analysts that afternoon. That day would seem like a perfect opportunity to provide insight into the company’s upcoming plans for its various streaming offerings. However WBD decides to move forward, this is a major, but likely prudent pivot, for the company. While streaming has entered into an era of bundling and consolidation — and this was always a major goal for Discovery’s acquisition of WarnerMedia — customers are still cost-conscious and forcing as much as a 229% price increase on them would likely not be the wisest decision, especially for a company that is already making unprecedented moves to get its financial house in order after the increasingly costly merger.