David Zaslav, chief executive and chairman of the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery, has said that HBO lost $3 billion last year, failing to recoup a large amount of money spent on content. Deadline Reports. The comment comes after cost-cutting measures saw a lot of original content pulled from HBO Maxwith the biggest losses coming from the animation department.
In a keynote presentation at the RBC Media conference, Zaslav touched on a number of difficulties that have arisen with the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, including the need to rethink broadcast models. “Right now, we can have 30 million people with Euphoria, but they can come for two months, watch Euphoria, and then leave,” Zaslav explained. “Do we want to create incentives for people to be there? There are a lot of companies that have a business where most of the people are there year-round.”
Regarding HBO’s finances, he said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like that,” explaining that HBO spent $2.5 billion in 2019 for a $2.5 billion profit, while in 2021 it spent a whopping of $7 billion, which later saw a loss of $3 billion. While discussing the loss, Zaslav noted that “all those direct-to-stream movies just got thrown on top of” HBO Max.
The company has already initiated cost reduction measures, which have included Large amounts of content are removed. from HBO Max. Leadership has raised the possibility of selling some of this content to other streaming services, as well as selling non-exclusive rights to original content that Zaslav says “isn’t being watched, or we don’t think anyone is subscribing because of this.”
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