Why is HBO Max removing content

“Infinity Train” trailer (Courtesy of Stan.com.au)

In the early weeks of August, nearly 40 television shows found themselves yanked off of HBO Max without warning. Surprisingly, the explanation for this action is just as baffling.

New Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav began his position at the company post-merger with $3 billion in debt to take care of. Zaslav’s strategy is to push the cheap, unscripted reality television that has generated Discovery ample revenue over more expensive, scripted content.

What was the first to go onto the chopping block? Animation.

Just Good Business?

Shows like “Infinity Train” and “Summer Camp Island” were pulled from HBO Max with little acknowledgment given to their creators. A new season of “Mao Mao” had barely been finished before it too was axed, meaning those newly completed episodes will never be seen.

Hollywood is a business, and all businesses make decisions that will benefit them monetarily first. By removing these shows, Warner Bros. Discovery can classify them as tax write-offs and not need to pay the creators or any of the people who worked on them any residuals.

Live-action projects such as the $90 million “Batgirl” movie were unceremoniously cut for the same reasons as well, but the fact that the majority of the projects scrapped were animated speaks to a larger issue when it comes to how animation is viewed by the entertainment industry.

“If you ask the majority of people who live in Hollywood and whose livelihood comes from the 1000+ live-action Hollywood releases each year, they view animation as secondary,” University of Utah film professor and former animator for Walt Disney Feature Animation Craig Caldwell said in an email interview. “This perception is influenced by animation’s past reputation as something just for kids.” Animation being viewed as secondary to live-action content is nothing new, unfortunately, but it does not mean it is any less valuable.

The Human Cost

In a newsletter shared on his personal blog, “Infinity Train” creator Owen Dennis said, “What is the point of making something, spending years working on it, putting in nights and weekends doing their terrible notes, losing sleep, and not seeing our families, if it’s just going to be taken away and shot in the backyard?”

“The Hollywood system has been heartless from the beginning. It will continue that way because there are so many people that want to work in the industry,” Caldwell said. “When you encounter such a situation, all you can do is learn from it, and use this information for the next production you work on so it does not happen too often to you.”

Animators work for hundreds of hours with very tight schedules and overbearing executives looking over their shoulders, the whole time knowing that their hard work could be flushed down the drain at any minute. What Zaslav has done has made this unfortunate reality depressingly clear.

“Animated projects take so much effort, it sometimes hurts my head thinking about it,” Caldwell said.

Economists estimate that Warner Bros. Discovery potentially lost $20 billion in their effort to save $3 billion after attacking their own garden of content with a bushwhacker. Still, only time will tell if Zaslav’s play will pay off.

As If They Never Existed

Today, there is no way to watch or support any of the animated shows that were scrapped. All trace of them has been scrubbed from official social media accounts as if they never existed in the first place, 

But that does not mean there is nothing that can be done. Many of these showrunners, writers, voice actors and animators will go on to work on other projects — projects that will hopefully garner success on a platform more appreciative of their value.

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Viewers have come to see streaming as an endless bounty of programming choices that are available in perpetuity.

But Warner Bros. Discovery, the new parent of streaming service HBO Max, is demonstrating that there are limits. The company that acquired WarnerMedia has removed 36 series and movies from the streaming site.

The moves come as the company looks to reduce costs by $3 billion after the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery.

CEO David Zaslav recently announced plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into one streaming offering, beginning next summer.

While it’s not unusual for licensed TV shows and movies to leave a streaming service after a contract is up, 20 of the removed shows were developed and created for HBO Max and were expected to have a home on the site for an extended period. (HBO Max launched in May 2020.) The bulk of the removed programs are animated series and programs aimed at children and tweens.

The purge comes a month after HBO Max pulled several of its less popular scripted series including “Camping,” “Mrs. Fletcher,” “Here and Now” and “Vinyl.”

The moves are generating blowback in Hollywood’s creative community and will probably rankle some subscribers who were watching the shows.

So why is Warner Bros. Discovery making this move now?

By removing the series and films, the company expects to save $100 million annually. Along with Warner Bros. Discovery’s need to reduce debt, media companies with streaming services are up against an unforgiving Wall Street, which wants to see a path to profitability.

Subscriber growth has long been the measurement of success for streaming services (HBO Max and HBO had a combined 76.8 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter, making it one of the more formidable competitors to Netflix and Disney+).

But now financial analysts are scrutinizing programming costs, which have escalated rapidly as companies rushed into the changing TV distribution technology. This decision will help reduce those costs for Warner Bros. Discovery. The company recently cut 70 staff positions at HBO Max, and has killed a number of expensive projects such as the J.J. Abrams series “Demimonde,” and pre-merger initiatives at WarnerMedia such as CNN’s streaming service.
What was the criteria used to determined which shows were removed?

The same criteria that’s been used for decades — shows that weren’t getting a substantial audience got the ax. A similar purge has occurred at Discovery+, the streaming service launched by Discovery Inc. before the merger. Actually, more shows have been removed from Discovery+ than HBO Max, but the latter has a much higher profile in the industry, and therefore is getting far more attention.

Doesn’t HBO own most of its shows? Why can’t it keep those titles around for viewers who still want to watch?

Even when a network or streaming service owns a show, there are still profit participants — creators, producers and sometimes actors — who have to be paid unless their financial interests are bought out ahead of time. Those are part of the costs that are being saved with the removal of the programs.

Warner Bros. Discovery executives are also concerned about having too much little-watched content on the site, which can make it harder for viewers to find the shows they really want to see. The new buzzword in the streaming business is “decluttering.”

Why are so many children’s shows being removed?

Warner Bros. Discovery executives have determined that HBO Max is an adult-themed service. The strategy may shift once HBO Max and Discovery+ are combined into a single service next year.

Two hundred episodes of “Sesame Street” are among the programs coming off. Wasn’t the 2015 deal to make the show available on HBO aimed at preserving an iconic educational program?

Even after the purge, there are still 400 “Sesame Street” episodes available on HBO Max. HBO will also continue to present the new season of episodes six months ahead of their appearance on PBS. But if you wanted to check out the Bert and Ernie dynamic during the 1980s, you are out of luck.

“The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo,” a 2020 series from Sesame Workshop created for HBO Max, was among the shows that were dropped.

How are show creators reacting to their shows being pulled?

Not well. “It feels like being kicked to the curb,” show creator Jennifer Skelly told Variety after learning her animated series “Little Ellen” was among the casualties. There have been a number of accounts in the entertainment trades of producers being upset over the move. One executive at a another streaming service, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said competitors are likely to cite the situation when negotiating on projects as a reason to accept their offers over HBO’s.

The blowback certainly won’t help ease the tension Zaslav already faces from the creative community over his decision to shelve a nearly completed $90 million “Batgirl” movie for a tax write-down.

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