Tag: Discovery

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Eva Longoria and Chris Wallace CNN+ shows will move to HBO Max and CNN

Programming that was originally meant to live on the now-shuttered streamer CNN+ will now move over to CNN and HBO Max, Warner Bros. Discovery announced today at its first Upfront presentation for advertisers. Shows moving to the linear CNN network include “Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico” and “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.” Another title that had been meant for CNN+, “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” —starring former longtime Fox News anchor Chris Wallace — will move to both HBO Max and CNN in the fall.

It is unknown at this time where the rest of the CNN+ slate will end up, however, or if select CNN+ titles will later arrive on HBO Max further down the road.

Before the launch of CNN+, HBO Max was the streaming home of many CNN titles, including “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” HBO Max is a good place for these shows, as Warner Bros. Discovery shared with advertisers that HBO Max and discovery+ are enhancing the consumer experience with a light ad load, with less than four minutes of commercials per hour on average. Additionally, 80% of viewers watch HBO Max and discovery+ on their TV screens, and half are cord-cutters. According to the company, this extends the reach of advertisers into non-cable homes.

We aren’t sure what the combined streaming service will look like once HBO Max and discovery+ fully merge. However, the variety of content — including CNN titles — offered will certainly attract a diverse audience.

Also, at the company’s Upfront presentation, Chris Licht, chairman and CEO, CNN Worldwide, announced the launch of a topical, long-form news show as well as upcoming titles like “The Story of HQ Trivia,” “See It Loud: The History of Black Television,” “The 2010s,” “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” and “Little Richard: I Am Everything.”

The 2023 programming slate is an attempt made by CNN for a comeback as the recently launched streaming service. The short-lived streaming service, CNN+ reportedly saw under 10,000 viewers a day and was shut down at the end of April. It seems that CEO David Zaslav was not about to let this tarnish the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery.

CNN+ streaming service pulls a Quibi, will shut down a month after launch

On CNBC’s Squawk Box, Zaslav said, “We looked at it, and we looked at the data, the number of users … They had spent an enormous amount of money trying to sell an independent product. The subscribers weren’t there. The users weren’t there … when we looked at the data, the business wasn’t there.”

Lasting nearly 30 days, the cable news network’s streaming service spent $250 million to launch the product and another $100 million to promote it. The New York Times reported CNN had planned to spend more than $1 billion on CNN+ over four years, according to sources familiar with the matter. Thus, Zaslav was (rightfully so) unwilling to invest any further into the platform.

But CNN itself isn’t going anywhere, and the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO is bullish on the brand. At the Upfront presentation, the company expressed its determination to reinforce CNN’s role as a top news organization. Licht boasted that CNN is “the number one digital property in the world.”

He added:

The next chapter of CNN is one where we aspire to be a beacon for the kind of journalism essential to a functioning democracy. The time when extremes are dominating cable news. We will seek to go a different way, reflecting the real lives of our viewers and elevating the way America and the world view this medium. We intend to challenge the traditional philosophy of cable news, delivering programming and commentary that questions the status quo, shatters groupthink, holds our leaders on both sides of the aisle accountable to facts and fights fearlessly to get to the truth.

CNN+ launch may be off to a bumpy start, numbers suggest

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Discovery+ becomes The Roku Channel Premium Subscription’s first ad-supported plan offering

Roku and Warner Bros. Discovery announced today that discovery+ has launched as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel. Discovery+ will add its 70,000 episodes of network shows along with over 200 originals, making it the largest mixture of library titles on The Roku Channel.

Roku says both the ad-free ($6.99/month) and ad-supported ($4.99/month) versions of discovery+ are now available, and users can sign up for a free seven-day trial.

The addition is notable because it’s the first time Roku’s Premium Subscriptions will support a subscription video-on-demand service with an ad tier. Typically, The Roku Channel generates revenue by running its ads across the free movies and TV shows it streams as well as by taking a revenue share from the premium subscriptions it sells to its customers. But these days, more subscription video services include both ad-free and ad-supported tiers to choose from.

Today’s move opens the door for Roku to connect subscribers to more services like discovery+ through The Roku Channel hub in the future.

Randy Ahn, Head of The Roku Channel, SVOD, said in a statement, “Today marks an exciting milestone for our business as we welcome both tiers of Discovery+ to the roster of exceptional services available as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel. Discovery+ is a leading streaming service and features an unmatched content library. We’re thrilled to support their growth through their launch on The Roku Channel and for the opportunity to bring this caliber of content to our users.”

Discovery+ offers viewers access to shows from brands like HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, OWN, Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Magnolia Network, as well as content from A&E, The HISTORY Channel, and Lifetime.

The Roku Channel, meanwhile, offers premium subscriptions to more than 50 services and gives users a unified browse and sign-up experience, allowing for simple subscription management with a single monthly bill.

It recently announced more Roku Originals coming to the platform including new cooking shows hosted by Martha Stewart and other well-known food media names. There will also be lifestyle and home improvement programs coming to the free streaming platform, as well.

Roku snags Martha Stewart, Emeril and others for its original programming push

“We’re pleased to deepen our relationship with Roku, a valued partner, and expand access of discovery+ on the Roku platform through the launch on The Roku Channel,” said Gabriel Sauerhoff, SVP Digital Distribution and Commercial Partnerships, Warner. Bros. Discovery, “We look forward to further extending the reach of our exceptional library of lifestyle and real-life content to millions of Roku streamers and providing them increased optionality in how they access discovery+ .”

The five year old Roku Channel is doing well for the company, recently reporting a total of 20.9 billion streaming hours, per Roku’s recent quarterly earnings report.

Discovery+ is a younger streaming service, only one years old, and will soon merge with HBO Max. Last month, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery reported that Discovery Inc. had 24 million total streaming subscribers as of the end of Q1.

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Warner Bros. Discovery revenue increases in Q1 2022 despite decline in linear subscribers

Today, Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. reported financial results for the first quarter of 2022 (January 1 through March 31). The results are for Discovery, Inc. and do not include first-quarter performance for WarnerMedia, which was acquired on April 8.

HBO Max and HBO gained 3 million subscribers in Q1 as Netflix reports subscriber decline

As we saw last week, AT&T reported that WarnerMedia’s operating income declined 32.7% year-over-year. In terms of operating profit and cash flow, “WarnerMedia was really below my expectations,” Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, said in today’s earnings call. However, the company is still confident about achieving its targeted $3 billion in annual cost synergies, despite CNN+ shutting down on April 30.

CNN+ streaming service pulls a Quibi, will shut down a month after launch

 

On the other hand, total revenue for Discovery Inc. was $3.16 million, an increase of 13%. U.S. advertising revenues increased 5% and distribution revenues increased 11%. U.S. Networks revenues increased 7% compared to the prior year’s quarter to a little less than two million dollars, and total operating expenses for U.S. Networks decreased 8%.

Net income for the Discovery businesses in the first quarter of 2022 was $456 million, or 69 cents a share, up from $40 million, or 21 cents a share, a year ago. The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 56 cents per share.

The company ended Q1 2022 with 24 million DTC (direct-to-consumer) subscribers, an incline of two million subscribers since the end of the fourth quarter. However, subscribers to Discovery linear networks on March 31 were 4% lower versus the prior year.

In this morning’s earnings call, Zaslav stressed that the company “is not trying to win the direct-to-consumer spending war,” the WBD CEO said. As he has said before, he promises that the newly combined WarnerMedia-Discovery company would “invest in scale smartly.”

Zaslav added that the company’s combined 100 million streaming subscribers give them “true optionality over time to drive our strategic decision-making.”

Throughout the call, Discovery Inc. expressed how unfortunate Warner Media’s revenue decline was but wanted to pay attention to the future ahead. It’s still early days, so hopefully, the mega-merger will see a combined growth in revenue, thanks to its large library and combined streaming subscribers.

It will be interesting to see this new structure come to fruition, and how CNN will dust itself off after its failed streaming offering. The plan is not “fully baked,” according to the company, and it will not be launching anything new or “chase aggressively behind subscriber goals.” Figuring out the best way to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ and managing churn will be its priority.

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CNN+ streaming service pulls a Quibi, will shut down a month after launch

Following multiple reports that the new CNN+ subscription streaming service was struggling to attract viewers, CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery today announced that CNN+ will cease operations effective April 30 — just a month after its launch. The company said customers will be able to receive prorated refunds of their subscription fees as a result of its closure.

Alongside the news, the service’s chief exec Andrew Morse, EVP and chief digital officer of CNN Worldwide and head of CNN+, is also leaving the company after a transition period.

This could be one of the fastest shutdowns in streaming we’ve ever seen. And we saw what happened to Quibi.

“As we become Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN will be strongest as part of WBD’s streaming strategy which envisions news as an important part of a compelling broader offering along with sports, entertainment and nonfiction content,” said Chris Licht, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, in a statement about the service’s closure.

“We have therefore made the decision to cease operations of CNN+ and focus our investment on CNN’s core news-gathering operations and in further building CNN Digital. This is not a decision about quality; we appreciate all of the work, ambition and creativity that went into building CNN+, an organization with terrific talent and compelling programming. But our customers and CNN will be best served with a simpler streaming choice,” Licht added.

CNN+ was already showing poor adoption after its March 29 debut, reports said.

According to CNBC’s sources, fewer than 10,000 people were using the service on a daily basis after its first two weeks.

CNN+ launch may be off to a bumpy start, numbers suggest

The company’s risky bet was that, in today’s competitive streaming landscape, people would pay a subscription for live and on-demand news programming and other content — including a thousand plus hours of on-demand shows, films and CNN+ originals. It had also snagged big names in news including Kasie Hunt from NBC News and Chris Wallace from Fox News to aid the effort. CNN’s talent was featured as well, including Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Brian Stelter, Christiane Amanpour, Audie Cornish, Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Sara Sidner, Kate Bolduan, Poppy Harlow and others.

But the service was charging $5.99 per month or $59.99 annually — prices may have seemed costly for a slate of programming that too closely resembles what’s available today on cable TV.

TechCrunch reported on CNN+’s rough start, citing third-party analytics and other media reports. But the company then told us it was “very happy with the launch” and that its first week’s performance was “well ahead of expectations.” That begs a question about whether the company blurred the line between the typical PR-hyping of a new property and perhaps being a bit dishonest about actual performance.

CNN+ rolled out only weeks ahead of the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger under the direction of ex-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who has since left the company; the new Warner Bros. Discovery is now led by David Zaslav.

Following Morse’s departure, the head of Product/General Manager CNN+, Alex MacCallum, will head up CNN Digital and will work to determine the next steps. Likely, the company just didn’t see the value in running a separate subscription product with its stated plans to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into one service.

HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one service following merger

But while CNN+ may be no more, CNN itself will still stream.

J.B. Perrette, CEO and president of Global Streaming and interactive entertainment at Warner Bros. Discovery, said the CNN brand and its content will be key to the company’s direct-to-consumer service, a press release said.

“Consumers are the center of our strategy,’’ Perrette said. “In a complex streaming market, consumers want simplicity and an all-in service which provides a better experience and more value than stand-alone offerings, and, for the company, a more sustainable business model to drive our future investments in great journalism and storytelling. We have very exciting opportunities ahead in the streaming space and CNN, one of the world’s premier reputational assets, will play an important role there.”

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The Warner Bros.-Discovery deal has officially closed

Last Friday, Discovery, Inc. and AT&T Inc. announced that they officially closed their deal with WarnerMedia. Under terms of the agreement, AT&T received $40.4 billion in cash and WarnerMedia’s retention of certain debt at close.

Today, on Monday, April 11, the company will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol “WBD.” AT&T shareholders received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T held, subsequently receiving 1.7 billion shares of WBD, which represents 71% of the total. AT&T shareholders continue to hold the same number of shares of AT&T common stock they held immediately prior to close.

CEO David Zaslav said that the announcement of the mega-merger “marks an exciting milestone not just for Warner Bros. Discovery but for our shareholders, our distributors, our advertisers, our creative partners, and, most importantly, consumers globally.”

“With our collective assets and diversified business model, Warner Bros. Discovery offers the most differentiated and complete portfolio of content across film, television, and streaming,” the CEO added. “We are confident that we can bring more choice to consumers around the globe while fostering creativity and creating value for shareholders. I can’t wait for both teams to come together to make Warner Bros. Discovery the best place for impactful storytelling.”

The Third-Best Streaming Service Company in the World

The combined media and entertainment company, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., will house three streaming services HBO Max, Discovery+, and CNN+; Warner Bros. studio; cable channels such as TNT, TBS, Food Network, Investigation Discovery, TLC, Discovery, truTV, Travel Channel, MotorTrend, Animal Planet, Science Channel, New Line Cinema, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, HGTV, HBO, among others.

HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one service following merger

Discovery+ and HBO Max are expected to merge into a single service, however, as of now, it will act as a bundle similar to the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ offering. On the other hand, CNN+, which launched last month, may or may not be bundled. The streaming service had a lackluster launch, however, CNN has said that subscriber numbers are “well ahead of expectations.”

Either way, the bundling of HBO Max and Discovery+ will unite two strong content libraries with valuable IP and a variety of content that Netflix has spent many years achieving. Subscribers will have access to almost 200,000 hours of programming and over 100 brands, which we highlighted above.

Ultimately, the newly formed media giant becomes one of the biggest players in the industry, alongside Disney and Netflix. The estimated market cap for Warner Bros. Discovery is between $45 billion and $60 billion. This puts it in third place, next to Disney, with a market cap of $240 billion and Netflix’s market cap of $161 billion.

The combined value of the company is predicted to be $130 billion, according to Axios, and its 2023 revenue is anticipated to be around $52 billion, with $15 billion expected from DTC revenue. Deadline reported that the projected combined revenue for the company in 2022 is $49.8 million.

HBO Max and HBO had 73.8 million global subscribers at the end of 2021, whereas Discovery had 22 million paying streaming subscribers. Since Discovery has more niche unscripted content than WarnerMedia and less variety, this will position the company as a more formidable streaming competitor.

The New Leadership Team

Despite being the minority stakeholder, with shareholders owning 29%, Discovery has operational control of WBD. Last week, former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar stepped down as David Zaslav took his position as Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief executive officer.

The company’s longtime CEO, Zaslav, has assembled a management team mostly from the ranks of his alma mater, and sources close to the situation told Variety that he would have a direct-report relationship with the leaders of the businesses he isn’t as familiar with.

WarnerMedia CEO exits as Discovery merger nears close

Those remaining with the new company include Casey Bloys, the chief content officer of HBO/HBO Max (who will be adding Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network to his responsibilities), Warner Bros. TV Group chief Channing Dungey, and Warner Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich. Also, Gerhard Zeiler will become president of International channels for Warner Bros., and Chris Licht will serve as chairman and CEO of CNN Global (a role he filled after the abrupt exit of Jeff Zucker).

Trusted Discovery lieutenants Bruce Campbell and JB Perrette will get key operational roles and help manage his large number of direct reports. Campbell, who previously served as Discovery’s chief development, distribution, and legal officer for Discovery, will become chief revenue and strategy officer. Meanwhile, Perrette will trade in his role as Discovery’s president and CEO of streaming and international for CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming and Interactive Entertainment.

In addition, Kathleen Finch, formerly Discovery’s chief lifestyle brands officer, will become chairman and chief content officer of U.S. Networks Group. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will continue in his role, Adria Alpert Romm will continue as chief people and culture officer, Lori Locke as chief accounting officer, and David Leavy as chief corporate affairs officer.

There are still roles that have yet to be filled but will be at a later date.

AT&T’s Massive Debt

AT&T CEO John Stankey said, “We are at the dawn of a new age of connectivity, and today marks the beginning of a new era for AT&T. With the close of this transaction, we expect to invest at record levels in our growth areas of 5G and fiber, where we have strong momentum, while we work to become America’s best broadband company. At the same time, we’ll sharpen our focus on returns to shareholders. We expect to invest for growth, strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our debt, all while continuing to pay an attractive dividend that puts us among the top dividend-paying stocks in America.”

For the last two years, Stankey (WarnerMedia’s first CEO) has been unwinding his predecessor Randall Stephenson’s acquisitions.

Moreover, in 2018 under Zaslav, Discovery bought Scripps, owner of Food Network and HGTV for $14.6 billion. In contrast, that same year, AT&T purchased a well-known cable television company that ended up being an epic fail.

The agreement will likely allow AT&T to pay off its monstrous debt. Building a streaming-ready media conglomerate isn’t cheap, and the telecommunications company has spent colossal amounts of money, including its $67 billion acquisition of DirecTV in 2015 and the controversial $85 billion deal for then Time Warner four years ago. At the end of 2019, AT&T still carried more than $151 billion in debt.

Following the Time Warner deal, which was hard to close because of an antitrust lawsuit and Trump-appointed regulators, the company was rebranded as WarnerMedia, blending together HBO, Warner Bros, Turner Broadcasting, and CNN.

This gargantuan debt is a glaring issue, especially since AT&T is focused on increasing revenue with price hikes, despite subscriber losses.

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CNN+ launch may be off to a bumpy start, numbers suggest

CNN+ launched on Tuesday, March 29, and is already showing mediocre results despite WarnerMedia’s promotion attempts. Sensor Tower released its initial figures (first reported by Insider) that show the CNN app, which now houses the new streaming service, added about 18,000 installs on the day of launch. During the seven days ending March 22, it had an average of 9,000 installs per day.

CNN’s new service includes a mix of daily news panels and documentaries such as “The Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech,” “The Murdochs: Empire of Influence,” as well as CNN anchors Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, and more.

The subscription only costs $5.99 per month. Plus, CNN is offering a limited-time deal and is giving new subscribers 50% off the standard monthly plan for a lifetime, which is just $2.99 per month.

The company has gone all-in on the service, throwing a pricey launch event at South by Southwest and running an ad during the Oscars broadcast, where spots cost as much as $2.2 million. Ahead of the launch, CNN+ spent approximately $322,000 in 2021, per Kantar’s estimates, noted by Insider.

One person familiar with the numbers informed Insider that, overall, WarnerMedia spent around $100 million to market CNN+, which is more than what the network typically spends in a year on marketing. A CNN executive said the launch budget was around $250 million.

By comparison, Disney spent some $135 million in TV advertising for Disney+ in the first half of 2020, according to eMarketer.

Despite all of this, the big bang that they were hoping for was more of a low sizzle. Sensor Tower predicts that CNN app installs increased 33% to 77,000 in CNN+’s initial six days compared to the prior six-day period. Since mobile users have to download the CNN app to access the streaming service, it’s hard to estimate how interested consumers are. In the Apple and Google Play stores, the CNN app has 55.4 million global installs.

It’s also important to know that CNN+ launched without distribution deals with telecom Verizon and connected TV platform Roku, which other big streamers have. When WarnerMedia launched HBO Max almost two years ago, not only was it during the worldwide spread COVID-19 pandemic, but it also didn’t have support on the second most popular platform, Amazon Fire TV.

When it comes to rankings, the CNN app jumped from 12th place to third place in the news category on Apple’s app store while sitting at 181 overall on launch day, according to Apptopia.

Note that this isn’t a direct comparison, however, the short-lived Quibi had 300,000 app installs on its first day, whereas Disney+ reached 4 million subscribers, according to Sensor Tower. Wall Street stated that Fox Nation had only 1.5 million paid subscribers three years post-launch.

The Cable News Network has faced doubts that people would pay for a streaming news app. “There are going to be personalities who are worth the low price point,” said Brian Wieser, Global President of Business Intelligence at GroupM. “The only problem is, how many people will pay for news personalities? It’s probably in the low single millions.”

CNN+ streaming service will offer live and on-demand content in early 2022

 

News personalities aren’t the only reason why people may not be flocking to the service. It also doesn’t help that Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, was forced to resign after having a secret relationship with a colleague. The previous corporate structure is now non-existent, and the replacement, Chris Licht, has not begun at the company as of yet.

The results of WarnerMedia’s mega-merger with Discovery on April 11 are also murky. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar left the company yesterday, leaving his legacy behind for Discovery Inc.’s David Zaslav, leaving uncertainties about the future of CNN+, HBO Max, and Discovery+.

In an interview with CNBC’s Tech Check, Kilar had suggested the service would be offered both as a standalone option and bundled with HBO Max. It’s unclear how that vision will change post-merger, as Kilar has exited the company.

To be fair, mobile app downloads only represent a window into CNN+ adoption, not the full picture. The service is available for viewing on the web, Apple TV, and Fire TV as well, according to its website. It’s possible that some subscribers have only logged in via those platforms, not their mobile devices.

In a statement to Insider, a company spokeswoman said: “We are very happy with the launch of CNN+. Any reports to the contrary are completely false.”

It’s possible that CNN+ subscriber numbers will be released on a future earnings call with Discovery.

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WarnerMedia CEO exits as Discovery merger nears close

On Monday, April 11, the highly anticipated $43 billion merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was set to officially close. But a new report from Variety suggests the deal may actually close as early as this Friday, according to its sources. 

We already have somewhat of an idea of what will happen with the companies’ two streaming services, Discovery+ and HBO Max. Back in March, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said that the mega-merger would at first bundle Discovery+ and HBO Max together until they could figure out the best way to consolidate the two services into a single direct-to-consumer platform.

HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one service following merger

WarnerMedia not only owns HBO Max, but also linear network HBO, CNN (as well as new service CNN+), Warner Bros., DC Films, New Line Cinema, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, Turner Sports, and Rooster Teeth, among others. It is also part owner of The CW. Meanwhile, Discovery is the parent of Discovery+, Discovery Channel, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, Turbo/Velocity, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, and OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network).

Streamers of both Discovery+ and HBO Max can expect a lot of changes to come, as the two companies will be combining huge content libraries that are equally unique in their own way, giving people a vastly complex offering. 

Also announced today, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar proclaimed his resignation in a memo ahead of the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger. 

In April 2020, Kilar was hired as CEO of WarnerMedia prior to the launch of the streaming service HBO Max. However, Kilar was up for the challenge as he was previously brought on as CEO of Hulu shortly after its 2007 launch.

Discovery Inc. CEO David Zaslav will take the reins, and the former WarnerMedia CEO has cultivated a streaming giant that Zaslav can bank on. And boy, will he make bank.

In May 2021, Zaslav signed a new employment contract that ends in 2027, which was designed to keep him at the company through its merger with WarnerMedia.

Per a regulatory filing in March, the value of Zaslav’s 2021 compensation package jumped to $246 million, a huge difference compared with $45.8 million in 2019. In 2020, it was $37.7 million.

Like Kilar, the Discovery Inc. CEO has lengthy experience in the industry and has led the company since 2007. 

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HBO Max and Discovery+ will be combined into one service following merger

Following last week’s news that Discovery’s shareholders approved its merger with WarnerMedia, which will create one of the largest U.S. media companies, there’s now a hint as to how this merger will impact the companies’ respective direct-to-consumer streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+. This morning, Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said the companies plan to combine the two streaming services into one offering. But given those changes will take time, they plan to offer some sort of interim solution sooner.

What that solution will look like, more specifically, is less clear.

“So right out of the gate, we’re working on getting the bundling approach ready, maybe a single sign-on, maybe ingesting content sort of into the other product, etc., so that we can start to get some benefits early on,” Wiedenfels said during his presentation at Deutsche Bank’s 30th Annual Media, Internet, & Telecom Conference on Monday.

“But the main thrust is going to be harmonizing the technology platform, building one very, very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform, and that’s going to take a while,” he said. The exec also noted that the companies will more immediately benefit from the ability to optimize marketing for the services, which he said is a huge cost driver at present.

The $43 billion merger — which is set to close in the second quarter now having received both U.S. and EU approval — will see the new Warner Bros. Discovery becoming a powerful media empire that brings together HBO/HBO Max, CNN, Warner Bros. (TV and film studios), DC Films, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, Turner Sports and more, with Discovery’s HGTV, Discovery Channel, Discovery+, Food Network, TLC, ID, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel, OWN and others known to traditional cable TV subscribers. When the deal closes, the new media company will be run by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, and Wiedenfels will continue to serve the combined entity as CFO.

Speaking at the event this morning, Wiedenfels suggested the combination of the two streaming services would better reach both male and female demographics than the respective services did on their own.

“We have HBO Max with a more premium male-skewing positioning, and then you’ve got the female positioning on the Discovery side,” he said. “You’ve got the daily engagement that people enjoy with Discovery content versus sort of the event-driven nature of the HBO Max content. Take that together, I have no doubt that we will be creating one of the most complete sort of four-quadrant sort of old, young male, female product out there.”

Image Credits: Discovery

Wiedenfels also shed further light on the company’s thinking in reaching the decision to combine the services instead of bundle, as its long-term strategy. While he acknowledged Disney had been successful with its bundle so far, the company came to believe that putting “the complete firepower” — which includes “a 200,000-hour content portfolio” with valuable titles and new ones dropping quickly — into one solution was the best way forward to be competitive.

The two services already have solid subscriber figures on their own, with HBO Max reaching 73.8 million global subscribers and Discovery+ reaching 22 million by the end of 2021.

The combined service that will ultimately arrive would also most likely offer an ad-supported and ad-free tier, as HBO Max and Discovery+ already found success with that model, the CFO noted.

“That’s worked very well for us. I was glad to hear that Disney has come to the same conclusion,” Wiedenfels said. “There’s a certain part of the population that’s willing to pay the premium price. There is another part of the population that’s willing to pay a lower place and really doesn’t care about advertising.” He said these users don’t really consider a few minutes of ads a nuisance, which was a surprise to learn.

“So that’s going to be very likely the structure as we come to the market,” he said.

The timing to get a combined offering into the market is something the company says will take longer than weeks, but hopes will take months, not years, to accomplish.

Pricing for the future service is yet unknown, but HBO Max is $9.99 per month with ads or $14.99 per month without, while Discovery+ is either $4.99 or $6.99 per month, for its ad-supported and commercial-free tiers, respectively.

The streaming landscape has seen a bit of consolidation ahead of this merger, as the increasing competitiveness of the ecosystem seems to have had an impact on incumbents. Netflix, for instance, is seeing lower subscriber growth than it has in years. It’s now trying to add value to its service through the addition of mobile games as a way to boost and retain subscribers. Disney, meanwhile, is driving subscriptions by making its Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+ bundle a more attractive offering and making some of its pricier add-ons a part of its core bundle. Paramount+ also decided to combine services by adding Showtime to its direct-to-consumer service starting this summer.

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Reddit app revamp adds a Discover Tab for finding communities, new navigation

Reddit today is launching the first major change to its mobile app in over two years with the addition of a new Discover Tab, offering personalized recommendations, as well as a revamped navigation system that includes new Community and Profile menus where users can quickly access and reorganize their subscriptions or access their profile settings.

The company said it heard from users that they wanted a better way to explore their interests, which prompted the decision to introduce the Discover Tab.

Reddit today has over 100,000 active communities, but many of them are still under-exposed, it notes.

“The big thing we’re really trying to solve for here is that it can be hard to find subreddits and communities that you want to develop a deep connection to,” explains Jason Costa, Reddit’s Director of Product for Content and Communities. “Maybe something pops up in Reddit Search or Google Search…but it can take work. It’s not always the easiest thing to do. We acknowledge that — so we wanted to craft a new surface area to make it easier to discover lesser-known communities,” he said.

The new Discover Tab will now sit to the immediate right of the home button on Reddit’s mobile app for iOS and Android. In this section, you’ll be presented with a visually engaging, vertical feed of subreddit (community) recommendations, either based on popularity, if you’re a brand-new Reddit user, or based on your engagement patterns, if you’re an existing user.

Specifically, Reddit will take into consideration things like which subscriptions you already have and where you spend the most time, to make its recommendations. For example, if you subscribe to a lot of baseball subreddits and spend time in several football subreddits, the app may recommend other sports communities. If you’re a new user, Reddit will make suggestions of popular communities until it gains a little more signal about your interests.

What Reddit won’t do, however, is leverage any sort of understanding of user demographics — like age, location, or gender — for its recommendations.

As you scroll down the Discover Tab, you’ll see photos, GIFs and videos in small rectangular or square boxes overlaid with the name of the community they represent. This choice to use rich multimedia is meant to bring more “sight, sound, and motion” to the often text-heavy Reddit app, Costa says. The new feature will also allow you to refine your suggestions as you go by long-pressing on a tile then selecting options like show me more of this content, show me less of that content, and hide that content.

Across the top of the new section are high-level categories — like Technology, Animals, Sports, History, Hobbies, and many more — so you can explore areas beyond your current interests directly.

Not all communities will be showcased on the Discover page, we understand.

Costa tells TechCrunch the company won’t recommend any community that’s NSFW, based on its community content tags rating system. It also won’t suggest any community that’s been banned or quarantined at any point, as that’s a signal it may not be appropriate for such broad recommendation.

This decision would prevent Reddit’s more controversial communities from gaining further traction, even if they don’t reach the point of requiring a ban — like the bans enacted on the Trump-supporting communities The Donald and r/donaldtrump in previous years.

Image Credits: Reddit

Ultimately, Reddit hopes the new Discover Tab will help users find more communities to subscribe to, which would lead them to launch the Reddit app more often and engage with more content. This, in turn, could help boost Reddit’s bottom line. During tests over the previous month with a small subset of users, Reddit found that one in five people joined at least one new community after using the Discover Tab.

The new tab isn’t available on the web at this point, as Reddit will instead focus on the 70% of its user base who engage with its service via the mobile app (55% iOS/45% Android) or mobile web, versus the 30% who use Reddit on the desktop.

The addition also necessitated Reddit to rethink its navigation, as the tab is replacing the subscription tab that had previously been found on the bottom navigation bar. Now, subscriptions are tucked into the new Community menu on the left, where they can be sorted and customized. This Community Drawer will now include four sections: Moderating entry points; “Your Communities,” for your subscriptions; “Following” for the users you follow; and the “r/all” entry point.

On the right side, a new Profile Drawer will allow users to access and customize their profile.

The new features are rolling out now to Reddit’s global user base of 54 million daily active users across iOS and Android.

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Breakr raises $4.2M to connect influencers with emerging musicians

Music app Breakr this week announced a $4.2 million seed round, led by Slow Ventures. The latest raise follows $700,000 in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz’s TxO fund – a round the people behind the service considered a sort of proof of concept as they worked to get the idea off the ground.

It’s clear why Breakr’s offering is an appealing one for investors. The product serves as a way to connect up and coming musicians with social media influencers. Musicians get exposure and the influencers get paid to effectively host an office hours listening session. Breakr, meanwhile, gets a 10% cut from the revenue.

Image Credits: Breakr

It’s a unique approach in an overcrowded music marketplace, where discovering music and being discovered have both proven difficult codes to crack. Though it’s less about tweaking the algorithm for music listeners than it is getting undiscovered music in front of the right set of ears. Speaking with two of the startup’s six founders, we reminisced about the days rappers stood outside of record stores, attempting to sell mixtape CD-Rs for $5 a pop — things have come a long way since then, but no one has fully solved the problem of music discovery.

“Breakr is a needed tool to efficiently connect artists, influencers and brands,” I know from first hand experience that this process manually is too time consuming to not only find an array of diverse influencers but activate them as well,” AMP Technologies’ Marc Byers said in a release. “They’ve created what I call a mall of influential marketers, where all you have to do is shop what talent fits the taste of your campaign needs.”

And while the medium has changed to social media, the hustle and feelings of futility haven’t. Not everyone gets their  Mobb Deep story with Q-Tip stopping and listening to a few bars after coming out of the Def Jam offices. Obviously we need a lot more Q-Tips in the world, just as a general rule. With human cloning technology still lacking, however, Breakr is hoping to offer some approximation of the experience, with added financial incentive.

“If you’re a world-renowned DJ or A&R at a major label, these artists are already in your emails, and DMS, trying to get your attention,” says CEO Tony Brown, who previously worked for financial giant, Goldman Sachs. “We give them a unique URL, they send that unique URL and say, ‘hey, stay out of my DMS, meet me here. Here’s the cost. And let’s talk about it.’”

Influencers charge artists on a sliding scale – likely commanding more based on their following. Breakr says around 12,000 users have signed up for influencer accounts, which the company is currently in the process of vetting. Between 3,000-4,000 accounts have been approved.

“We’ve worked with companies as big as Warner and Sony, as small as the SoundCloud rapper, and everybody in between,” adds Inventor and Head of Product Ameer Brown, who was formerly with Adobe.

Rapper, influencer and long-time friend Tobe Nwigwe is also on the long list of co-founders and has been active in helping spread the brand through social media, including hosting his own listening sessions.

“As soon as I saw the vision for what the Breakr team was building, essentially the tech-middle-man between influencers and artists, I immediately knew Breakr would be the future,” says Nwigwe. “Having cultural icons like Erykah Badu and Dave Chapelle rock with my music, and organically amplify me on their platforms, was major for me. Now, with Breakr, we make this happen authentically for artists and influencers of all levels.”

On the subject of cultural icons, Nas is also among the notable investors. “We loved the company before we knew the connection but that coincidence really made doing this deal even more special,” the rapper said in a comment provided to TechCrunch.

Music licensing marketplace Songtradr raises $50M