HBO Max Is Nice (If You Can Get It)

HBO Max blasted off Wednesday without any major glitches and one big surprise: All eight Harry Potter movies are part of the service’s lineup after all. As one can always expect, there were a few gripes on social media: consumers not quite sure about the differences between the various iterations of HBO, as well as folks justifiably annoyed that two huge streaming ecosystems — Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV — had not hammered out deals to carry Max at launch. (More on that later.)

But Max didn’t suffer any meltdowns, and for all the complaints I saw about difficulties getting access to the service, I ran across at least as many excited raves from viewers psyched to find Friends back on streaming, delighted to dive into Doctor Who, or eager to devour every episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In this week’s Buffering, I offer up some early first impressions of Max and take a look at why many potential subscribers are having a hard time signing up for the platform. Plus, the latest big gets for Apple TV+ and how AMC is using an ABC series to promote one of its Emmy contenders. Thanks for reading, and if you need me, I’ll be over here working on my petition to get HBO Max to add Alice to its lineup. –Joe Adalian

Reach Joe on Twitter @tvmojoe or email [email protected].

Let’s get right to it: HBO Max is a little more than a day old, and I’ve had some time to dig around the platform. Obviously it will be adding a lot more content over the next few months and the user interface is certain to evolve. But here are some initial observations about the latest contender in the streaming wars:

• Sign-up was simple and elegant (for me). I am fully invested it the AT&T ecosystem (cell plan, DirecTV), and I have an Apple TV, so all I needed to do was hit a few buttons and about 30 seconds later, I was in. I downloaded the HBO Now app before Max launched, and sure enough, it seamlessly transformed into Max a little after midnight PT Wednesday.

• The user interface was built using the guts of HBO Now/Go, and you can tell: It looks very similar to those products, but with a fresh coat of fancy new paint and what seems to be a major upgrade in speed. This was by design, according to Sarah Lyons, senior VP of product experience for WarnerMedia Direct-to-Consumer. Since the bulk of Max’s early audience base is made up of previous Now/Go customers, “We wanted to be sure it was an experience that was comfortable to those users even as we attract a whole new demographic that aren’t typically HBO subscribers,” she told me last week.

• The overall look of the interface is upscale, slick, and maybe even a bit utilitarian, minus the tech wizardry of Netflix (no autoplay trailers) or the crowded aisle feeling you get with Amazon Prime Video. Lyons tells me more features will be added in the coming months, but the goal was to “keep it simple for day one” and not overload Max with bells and whistles early on — in part to avoid unnecessary glitches and crashes at launch.

• Echoing Disney+, Max features some brand portals — they’re called “hubs” — designed to take users to some of the platform’s content universes: everything on HBO, classic movies curated by TCM, Crunchyroll animation, and so forth. The idea is right, and the hubs look great, but the volume of content included in these programming subdivisions is decidedly meh. The Sesame Street and Adult Swim hubs had just nine titles each listed within them as of Wednesday afternoon; Looney Tunes had just five. “HBO Land” (as WarnerMedia Entertainment boss Bob Greenblatt jokingly called it during an interview last week) and “Classics Curated by TCM” are far more substantial and offer a very rich experience; ditto with all the Studio Ghibli films being in one spot. The other collections mostly serve to remind the user how much content they’re not getting on Max.

• It also seems odd that there isn’t a hub for the hundreds of movies that are part of the Criterion Collection included with the service, particularly since there are many former Filmstruck subscribers who would love quick access to those films.

• The Max app is also surprisingly absent of some basic features used by most streamers to spur content discovery. There’s no option to see related titles if you’re looking at the description for a given movie or TV show, which is a real bummer when trying to find more shows similar to something you already like. Max has a section devoted to blockbuster franchises like Alien, Jaws, and the Die Hard movies, but when you click on, say, Die Hard, there’s zero indication the second and third movies in the series are on the service. You have to find them by doing a search or clicking on an A-to-Z list of titles.

• I have thoughts about all the shows and movies not on HBO Max, but I’ll save those for another time. Instead, let me shout out a couple of pleasant surprises in the service’s launch day catalogue: You can stream all 14 seasons of the original Fox sketch series Mad TV (two words: Lowered Expectations) and there’s a surprisingly solid selection of vintage Scooby-Doo series from the ’70s. I will keep praying for the addition of the Laff-A-Lympics.

Putting it together: Last week in this newsletter, I looked at the various stumbling blocks HBO Max would face in its early months — like confusion over the various HBO brands and its relatively expensive price. These are real challenges, but I don’t think they should overshadow the larger point: Over the long term, Max is very likely to succeed, perhaps spectacularly so. WarnerMedia might not have as many iconic, built-for-streaming brands as Disney, nor does it have the unlimited cash of an Amazon or Netflix. But what it does have is a massive creative engine powered by incredibly strong and successful business units: Warner Bros. TV, the Turner entertainment cable networks, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Pictures, CNN, Adult Swim and, of course, HBO.

In my curtain-raiser for Max’s launch day, I explored how WarnerMedia Entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt (and his bosses at AT&T) pulled together the once highly siloed company to create a platform which aims to compete for the same broad range of viewers Netflix serves, but with far less content. You can read it here.

Too many HBOs? In recent days, my Twitter mentions (and direct messages from work colleagues) have been filled with questions about all the different streaming platforms with the name “HBO” attached, how much each one costs, and how you even sign up for the newest one (HBO Max.) I wrote a guide which hopefully clarifies any questions you might have about the what and how of HBO Max.

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The biggest bummer surrounding the HBO Max launch was the fact that millions of potential customers simply had no way to sign up for the service, even if they wanted to. That’s because AT&T–owned WarnerMedia was unable to reach agreements with two big streaming gatekeepers — Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV — ahead of Max’s launch Wednesday morning. (It did sign a last-minute deal with Comcast a few hours after the service debuted.) Nobody involved is talking about the details of the disputes on the record, and talks continue: A rep for Roku told Buffering it “still looked forward” to figuring out a way to get the service on its platform. Deals could be done by the time you read this. Whatever the specific sticking points, it’s safe to assume the big issues are related to money and control: How much of Max’s $15 monthly fee WarnerMedia is willing to share with distributors, and how Max’s content is displayed to users.

HBO is used to splitting up to half its fee with cable operators, so I don’t know that financial terms are what’s causing the biggest headache here. Instead, what’s likely going on is something analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners wrote about recently: WarnerMedia wants consumers to have to watch Max programming in the Max app, and not as part of the internal ecosystems platforms such as Roku and Amazon have created on their devices. This isn’t some crazy demand by WarnerMedia, by the way: Netflix and Disney+ don’t let their shows slum around in other platforms’ unique universes. Sure, titles will show up in the Apple TV or Fire TV interfaces, but when you click to watch, you get taken to an outside app. I don’t know why Roku and Amazon are demanding HBO play by a different set of rules — if that is indeed what’s happening — but Greenfield thinks it’s because regular HBO has been okay with having its content disaggregated on those platforms.

By contrast, now that it’s diving deeper into the streaming waters, WarnerMedia wants to follow the examples of Netflix and Disney and get consumers to use its app, not the Roku or Amazon interfaces. Streamers want to do things this way because they can collect more information about how users relate to content and build a more personal connection to customers when they use a separate app. Conversely, Roku and Amazon want you sticking around their universes because they’re now both in the business of selling advertising on free services such as the Roku Channel and IMDBtv. They also argue it’s far more consumer friendly if people don’t have to switch between a million apps when sampling content. (Fact check: true.)

What Amazon’s saying: “AT&T is choosing to deny these loyal HBO customers access to the expanded catalog,” Amazon said. “We believe that if you’re paying for HBO, you’re entitled to the new programming through the method you’re already using. That’s just good customer service and that’s a priority for us.”

Who’s got the upper hand? I can see both sides of the argument, though if I had to make a call, I’d say Roku and Amazon are the heavies here. Consumers such as myself bought Roku and Fire TV sticks (yes, I have both — and an Apple TV) because we were told these devices were a great way to get streaming services such as HBO Max. Nobody, and let me underline this, nobody buys a Fire TV so that they can stream episodes of Spenser: For Hire with ads on IMDBtv. (And I say this as someone who has done just that.)

Yes, having content from different platforms aggregated into one interface is great for viewers — particularly if said interface is Apple TV, which does an amazing job surfacing great shows and movies I didn’t even know were available to me via my cable subscriptions. I don’t blame Roku and Amazon for pushing to get more flexibility from streaming services as to how their content is displayed. But at the end of the day, what’s really consumer unfriendly is selling people a box for $40 or $60 or even $100 on the promise that they’ll be able to stream all the big platforms — and then going back on that promise in order to serve your own business interests. Cable operators did just that for decades, and look what has happened to them.

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• Apple Rocks on: Before word leaked out Wednesday that Apple had landed the rights to Martin Scorsese’s next film, I broke some news Tuesday about the streamer’s latest series move. Following some pandemic-inspired shorts produced earlier this month, Apple TV+ is
doing a formal reboot of kidvid classic Fraggle Rock. But even more interestingly, as part of the deal, Apple bought the exclusive streaming rights to all the live-action episodes of the 1980s HBO series. That explains why those Fraggle episodes disappeared from HBO Now a few weeks ago and aren’t part of HBO Max. And it also means that for the first time, Apple TV+ will have library content as part of its offering. So does this mean Apple has changed its announced strategy of focusing on original content and will now start battling to scoop up old TV shows and movies? Well, technically, yes, Apple now has (a) library title. But as I explained here, there has not been a significant strategy shift.

• So many streamers: In recent weeks, Buffering has been showcasing some specialty streamers that aren’t named Netflix or Hulu. Well, we’ve taken those morsels and collected them in one place, adding in a couple dozen other interesting subscription video services worth considering as you decide how to spend your digital dollars. Check out the complete guide here, and maybe bookmark it: We’ll be updating the post with more platforms on a regular basis.

In Vulture’s guide to the most anticipated shows of the summer, my colleague Jen Chaney included Quiz, an AMC limited series (produced with ITV) about the scandal that erupted when it turned out a British couple was trying to cheat during their run on the original version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I’m a sucker for game shows, and for period pieces (yes, sadly, something set in 2001 now counts as a period piece), so I was already predisposed to check this one out. The fact that Quiz also stars Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen (Tom!) and Sian Clifford of Fleabag pretty much sealed the deal. AMC is understandably pushing this three-episode drama from director Stephen Frears as an Emmy contender, and it’s found a fun way to promote the series to Emmy voters. During tonight’s season one finale of the new Jimmy Kimmel–hosted Millionaire reboot, AMC will air a customized For Your Consideration ad touting Quiz and its connection to Millionaire. The spot will only air in the Los Angeles market, but you can check it out here. Quiz begins its three-week run Sunday on AMC (with all three episodes available to stream at once on AMC Premiere).