The 2001 merger of Time Warner and AOL is up there in most analysts’ top 10 of worst, and most value destroying, deals ever. But those troubles were meant to have been long left behind with the much later deal to drop any reference to Time, merge with Discovery and resurrect the old Warner Brothers brand.But Warner Bros Discovery is struggling. There’s the $38 billion of debt, then there’s the mishmash of multiple brands of cheap reality programming (remember when Discovery was stand-alone blue chip?). And then there’s been the annoying gyrations of where and how your favourite sports will appear.The biggest red light has to be the recent story of their premium streamer. Picture the scene: executives and, doubtless very expensive, consultants gather to decide on sculpting its brand (or some such non-phrase). They have two ‘symbols’ – HBO a storied content brand, a name and logo the world associates with The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Succession and White Lotus among many others. On the other, the word Max that was affixed to HBO a few years ago to distinguish its DTC streamer brand from the legacy pay-TV cable brand.Reasonably, the company thought it was time to consolidate the two, there no longer being a meaningful distinction. So, pick one. They picked Max. I say again, they picked Max. The reaction of corporate customers, consumers, the press, and, I dare say, many within the company was a collective WTF? Eventually, inevitably, this month they changed the name back to HBO Max.Now, everyone makes mistakes, and it is good to admit them and put them right, eventually. But it must be indicative, mustn’t it? Only relatively poor performances across the board and antitrust concerns stand in the way of another wave of consolidation in global media. Paramount’s Skydance deal is not a panacea – they will remain a relatively weak player – but it will mean they probably do swap places with Warner Bros Discovery at the top of the vulnerability league.
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