Months after announcing their purposed $43 billion merger, WarnerMedia and Discovery have answered what will happen to HBO Max and Discovery Plus once they form the imaginatively named Warner Bros. Discovery. Per Variety, Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said during a recent panel at the 30th Annual Media, Internet and Telecom Conference that the company plans to combine the two platforms into one unified streaming service.
“One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle,” he said. “We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition.”
Merging the two platforms is something Wiedenfels said he expects will take a few months for Warner Bros. Discovery to “do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers.” In the meantime, HBO Max and Discovery Plus customers should expect at least some form of bundling.
Wiedenfels suggested that could take the form of content sharing between the two platforms and the introduction of a single sign-on. One question the executive didn’t answer is how much it will cost to subscribe to the new combined service. Discovery Plus and HBO Max currently start at $5 and $10 per month, with both platforms offering more expensive ad-free tiers.
It’s not surprising to learn that Discovery and TimeWarner plan to unify their streaming platforms. When the merger was first announced last year, it was positioned as a move that would make the two companies better able to compete with Netflix, Disney+ and other rivals.