Let’s Talk About Max

Back when I was a young pup working for Variety in the early aughts, one of the perks of my job was getting to go to tapings of what was then a brand-new Fox reality competition series called American Idol. During the first couple of seasons, the network would throw afterparties several times each season, and it was actually very easy to just walk up to Jennifer Hudson and have a conversation about how crazy this whole TV talent show thing was. Two decades later, Idol is not nearly the pop culture phenom it once was, and it also now airs on ABC instead of Fox. But the series continues to be a strong ratings draw, even in a streaming world.

Sunday’s three-hour finale drew 6.6 million same-day viewers (quite a few more than Succession, by the way.) More impressively, Idol managed to add viewers vs. its 2022 and 2021 season-enders, and it also ranks as ABC’s most-watched series overall for the full season-to-date. Fox was probably right to cancel the show in 2015: Its reality brand benefited from the refresh, and Masked Singer has been a big hit (that likely costs a lot less to produce). But ABC was just as smart to reboot Idol, and the decision to do so is still paying off.

As for this week’s Buffering, our topic is a more recent reboot: The transformation of HBO Max into Just Max. Hope your long weekend is a good one, and as always, thank you for reading. —Joe Adalian

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


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We’ve known for more than a year that the old HBO Max would be merged with much of the content from Discovery+ to form a new streaming platform, and this week, we finally got the result: Max. Social media was fillled with the usual griping about the change, even though the new service doesn’t cost any more than the old one (yet) and despite the fact that HBO content has not been buried below endless rows of TLC true crime docs and the 500 90 Day Fiancé spinoffs (again…yet).

The real test of whether Warner Bros. Discovery was right to completely rebrand and modestly revamp a service which was just three years old will be whether all these changes result in faster subscriber growth, more app usage and lower churn rates. It could be a year or now before we really know the answer to that, so this week’s Buffering is all about what we do know: How does the new Max look? My Vulture colleague Eric Vilas-Boas shares my nerdy love of all things user-interface related, so we met up in the Vulture Slack to hash out our first impressions.

JOE ADALIAN: So, Eric: You got a chance to preview the Max app last week, and I loved your report about how Max’s design team did their job (so much so that we’re including it in full further down in the newsletter). But there’s nothing like exploring an app hands-on once it’s live and in the world. What struck you most about Max while tooling around it today?

ERIC VILAS-BOAS: Yeah, I got a lot more time with it playing around at like 1 a.m. last night. I got a demo with it earlier, but that kind of thing is obviously scripted and guided. What struck me, to be honest, was that I was able to pretty easily jump into it and get it started. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I was half-expecting failure! Or at least expecting it to rollover at like 3 a.m. or 6 a.m. vs midnight. The fact that it worked wasn’t so much a surprise, but it was nice to see. I logged in on Chrome on my Mac laptop, then on my Roku TV, then on my phone, which logged me in automatically

JA: Yeah, there will always be people who have hiccups for some reason. This isn’t like cable where most people get TV through the same basic tech. Sometimes errors happen on the device side, or in how the new app’s code works with each piece of hardware. But mostly, I do think it worked. I was also impressed by how much faster it loads. I timed both the old HBO Max app and the new one. It took me about 15 seconds to go from hitting the logo to being able to select a show on the home page while using HBO Max, while Just Max was only 8 seconds. It’s not Netflix speed, but it’s an improvement

EVB: A huge improvement — 50%!! The automatic logins, too. There’s nothing I hate more than typing passwords with a remote, and the addition of Wi-Fi and QR code logins is truly a balm for my sanity.

JA: Let’s talk about the overall user experience. As you note in your preview, it’s a lot like HBO Max — which, smart. You’re already risking audience confusion and even annoyance with a name change and making some folks download a new app. Having things look familiar makes sense. But what bummed me out going through Max was how everything felt so much more … basic. I’d noticed these changes in recent months on HBO Max. Some of the fun ways they had been playing with bigger types and breakout sections started going away. It really feels a lot more like the basic endless rows of Netflix, and that’s not good.

EVB: I got that sense too. I enjoyed some of the bigger sections you’re talking about for their variety and energy, but I guess according to Max, people generally didn’t use them. And losing them, paired with keeping the fonts the same, makes for a relatively uniform experience throughout. If you scroll, not much changes, and in fact, a lot of it bleeds together a bit for me after a while. I counted roughly 30 content rows on the homepage I looked at this morning, and I’d say I actually stopped and read maybe a third of the little sub-headlines indicating what they were. The Warner Bros. Discovery exec I spoke with also mentioned “no dead ends” as an operating principle his team had designed. That feels like a nice way of saying “infinite scroll,” which a lot of folks don’t love and feel paralyzed by!

JA: Exactly. And see, that’s what I don’t get about an app that’s now being run completely by old-school linear TV people. David Zaslav and his team know how important channels and network brands are. People will turn on HGTV and just watch it all day; the actual show sometimes doesn’t even matter. There are “brand” portals on Max the way there were “hubs” on HBO Max — but they’ve been further hidden and made less vital. If anything, Max should be leaning into that more, giving people the ability to easily “flip” through the various “channels” that now live on Max. The old flourishes at least did a better job showing off the various parts of the vast Warner Bros Discovery content universe. Also, the fact that “HBO Max Hubs” have become the “Brand Spotlight”? Oy. Clearly engineers and corporate suits had the final call.

EVB: OMG, yes! “Brand Spotlight” — such a boring subheader for a boring list of logos! Call it “Something to Watch” — anything else. Because it’s not as if the audience wouldn’t recognize TLC or HGTV.

JA: Unbelievably dumb. Also dumb: condensing writers and directors into a “creators” category in your credits tab. Also dumb: Making it harder to find the TCM hub, er “brand spotlight.” It used to be listed just after HBO, Max Originals and DC. Now? It’s the 10th logo you see. And then once you’re on the brand spotlight, the content is once again harder to find because it’s more endless horizontal rows. Depressing. I get that Max needs and wants to respect audiences who care more about Food Network than Casablanca. But this is a little extreme.

EVB: Yep, part of HBO Max’s appeal was always that it had this reverence to classic cinema — hard to argue that that’s still there at least presentationally, even with this HBO logo up top. What do you think about the HBO branding of it all? Does it feel like … enough? As in enough to placate die-hard HBO Max users?

JA: I think putting the link to the HBO portal high up, where it’s obvious and easy to reach, is the smartest thing about the whole redesign. If you go on Twitter, lots of folks complain that somehow HBO is minimized by not being in the name of the app. I get that: The majority of U.S. subscribers to Max signed up for HBO. Most are still people who pay for HBO via cable or used to pay for HBO Now. So it feels a little off for people who love the HBO brand and what it stands for; it’s a little less cool to say ‘Max is my fave streamer’ vs. HBO is the best streamer.

But let’s remember that until very recently, nobody just paid for HBO. You paid a minimum of like $50 to get basic cable and then added on HBO for $12 or more per month. Yet guess what: Watching and loving HBO was just as awesome when it was channel 501 on your overpriced cable system. And it’s just as cool now when you watch HBO on something called Max. Putting the logo on top, basically by itself, is almost the streaming equivalent of being channel 1 or 2 on your cable box. It’s a place of honor, a signal to subscribers that this is what’s most important. So yeah, I dig it. I think the folks complaining on Twitter will quickly move on, too — at least until David Zaslav makes HBO a $5 add-on to Max in 2024.

EVB: Big agree that it’s the smart play. My last Q for you is: Do you have any opinion of the little sound effect thing they added? Maybe I’m obtuse but I have no idea what the actual sound is supposed to be. Our colleague Savannah Salazar said maybe it’s a mic-tap? But I don’t know!

JA: I’ve only heard it once or twice, and it’s … fun? I liked the old sound, too. I also preferred the old graphics which popped up when stuff was loading; the little circle in Max is so much more basic … like the rest of the app. So final question from me: Overall, where would put Max in the pantheon of major streaming apps? Not content offering, but overall user experience? And is it a step up, down or sideways from HBO Max?

EVB: I think it’s a step sideways, user experience-wise. I can’t say I made too much use of all the various content hubs on HBO Max after I learned most of what the service had on it, and I won’t miss them cluttering up the nav the way they did. A lot of things have been smoothed out. And I do genuinely like the fact that I can one-click add or remove stuff from my queue right on the homepage. But there was this undeniable charm to the old HBO Max — from the purple on to other elements. By comparison, Max isn’t any kind of disaster, but it definitely less distinct. And that’s at least partly by design. I’d rank it well above Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video, which have terrible interfaces, and below Netflix — which I wouldn’t describe as distinct either, but it gets the job done. (The streaming UI that I love best is probably still the Criterion Channel’s!! It just feels like what I think the Criterion should feel like.) How about you?

JA: I’m with you on ‘sideways.’ This is by no means a disaster, and if there’s stuff they’ve fixed on the backend to make it load more quickly and crash less often? Mission accomplished. I think elevating HBO to a position of prominence was very smart, and good for them for (finally) fixing things people had been complaining about since May 2020. All that said, the whole point of Max is to give people the sense that there’s more there than HBO, and HBO-like content. You’ve now got one place that has both Sister Wives and Big Love (really, why isn’t that in the marketing?) They should lean into that in the design.

But so far, Max is so dull and vanilla as an app experience, I don’t really feel as if a whole new world of entertainment has been unlocked for me. And stuff I really love personally– classic TV and movies— has been even more minimized than it already was. It’s just short of a war crime that there’s no Classic TV hub or search category on an app associated with Warner Bros. But those qualms aside, Max is…fine. Getting the basics right is what matters most in streaming, and I think they’ve succeeded here. I look forward to seeing the next evolution of the platform circa 2025, after Comcast buys Warner Bros. Discovery and we meet here again to review Peacock Max: The one to watch for HBO and Housewives.

Max’s big move doesn’t look that big after all, at least not on the surface. Starting this week, when you pop open your HBO Max app to try to watch the latest episode of Succession, you might be greeted with a revised layout — or a prompt to download a new app in its place. The new Max app is a little bluer and feels slimmed down, which is somewhat counterintuitive because a lot of content has been added from corporate cousin Discovery+ (which isn’t going anywhere). In the end, Max doesn’t look that different from HBO Max.

“We really wanted to make sure that it was an evolution and that it would be familiar to all of our customers, but improved,” said Tyler Whitworth, head of product at Warner Bros. Discovery, who oversaw the service’s design and user-interface makeover. Subscribers who had Discovery+ but are switching to Max for the sake of convenience may find the new service a little different, and HBO Max users will see a layout they’ll mostly recognize. Said Whitworth, “We wanted that transition to not be jarring or shocking, to make sure that customers could feel familiar with it, but hopefully, take advantage of a number of improvements.”

Users will spot some changes immediately:

➽ Its website already redirects from hbomax.com to max.com and already houses plenty of content from the likes of HGTV, Discovery, TLC, and the Food Network.

➽ If you’re using one of its TV apps, Max opens on a blue screen, zooming in on a bit of refreshed logo animation accompanied by an echoey sound effect punctuated by a couple of percussive thumps. (How Tudum of them!)

➽ Max spotlights user accounts in much the same way HBO Max did but with blue highlights instead of purple, and if you have just signed up for a new Max account, a kids’ profile will have been added automatically — one of Max’s many signals that they are catering to all demographics.

➽ On the home page, you’ll notice the two main navigation bars have changed: The side navigation hidden in a left rail has been winnowed from dozens of categories and hub pages to just three — “Search,” “Home,” and “My Stuff” — and the top nav is more prominent with tweaked options of its own — “Home,” “Series,” “Movies,” “HBO,” and “New & Notable.” Yes, they cut “HBO” from the name of the service but kept it high onscreen, where it sits inches away from the Max logo in the top-right corner.

For the foreseeable future, we can expect to see the HBO logo pinned in that spot on the home page. “We wanted to make sure that while the name isn’t in the service name, we really protected and privileged the brand and made sure it was easy for customers to quickly find their favorite HBO content,” Whitworth said. There are no plans to swap it out when Shark Week or other Discovery franchises circle the waters, other sources familiar with the service told us.

App stability was another major concern. “We really focused on just making sure the new product worked well for customers, did all the basics better — that it was fast, it was reliable,” Whitworth said. “Obviously, that’s the main thing customers want at the end of the day. They want it to work well.” Bugs are common on any new app’s launch day, and DownDetector.com, which tracks user reports of site outages, logged a peak of 438 outages at 9:11 a.m. ET, which petered out later in the morning. As part of the rollout, Max’s team has assembled war rooms of technical staff to address issues as they arise.

The content presentation itself looks nearly the same, down to the font choices, but it has been streamlined significantly with a series of quality-of-life adjustments that attempt to attack HBO Max’s engagement problem. “We found in some of our testing that when you give customers a number of different calls to action or actions they can take, that can be confusing,” Whitworth explained. The revised app addressed that by dramatically reducing the number of different ways you can click on the screen. “You may notice even in the main buttons and the main calls to action, we took a monochromatic approach, so they’re really clear, really easy to see,” he said.

Max has more tricks baked in, too. You can finally use a QR code or Wi-Fi to sign in, instead of typing a password on your remote. There are subtle rotators that indicate how long an autoplay trailer is running. You can now quickly add or remove any title from your queued watchlist or keep watching with a dedicated click or hold of a button (this varies depending on the remote). It has removed an unnecessary step that used to take you to a separate page before you could play an episode. Episode pages now deliver details like rating info, language options, and credits in a text box you can toggle on or off, rather than burying them at the bottom of the screen. And home-page collections present what look like a mix of editorialized curation (“All the LOLs,” “Drama! Drama! Drama!”), much simpler tagged directories (“Popular Movies,” “Food & TV”), and an especially dirt-simple “Brand Spotlight” lane devoted solely to logos. After about 30 rows of scrolling, the home page bottoms out on a row of genre tiles that link away to pages of their own.

“No dead ends,” Whitworth said, citing a mantra his team repeated as they worked on the new service. “As you’re going through the experience, we want to always be surfacing new content, new opportunities for you to find something that might be interesting.”

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