• @[email protected]
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    31 year ago

    I just wanted HBO. Not HBO plus superheroes. Not HBO plus trashy reality TV. What even is the brand at this point?

    When they became HBO Max it was fine, I guess, because all the HBO shows I actually cared about were still there.

    But when I load the app and all I see is reality TV, and then they start removing HBO shows I hadn’t even gotten around to watching, I decided to cancel and watch Barry before my subscription ran out (great show, not on Blu-ray).

    I’ll just buy the handful of series I want to follow on Blu-ray instead. WB is good about that. I picked up House of the Dragon on 4K (already watched it but I enjoyed it) and will pick up The Last of Us and probably Chernobyl on 4K at some point.

    Bye, HBO. You were a great brand until executives who didn’t understand your brand or your demographic decided to mutate you into something else entirely.

    Oh, by the way, good luck attracting future talent when the prospect that a series they work hard on might suddenly disappear forever, along with their residual payments, all because an accountant decides it makes the books look better.

    • @Stovetop
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      21 year ago

      Yep. I still have my subscription going because I have friends/family on it, but now that I’ve finished Succession, I don’t really use it at all.

      It’s a real shame what happened to HBO, and I don’t think it’s ever coming back. Surprisingly Apple TV+ is the closest thing I’ve found in terms of what made HBO appealing in the first place, and as sad as it is, I think that is solely due to the fact that Apple TV+ is really just a passion project for the company, who do not need to rely on it as a revenue stream to survive. But it’s still not quite there.

      Hopefully all of the industry strikes dismantle the current big players and allow more production-oriented companies to thrive. Though I doubt it because reality TV does not require union writers/actors to survive and that’s what these companies are banking on surviving off of.