• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 16, 2025

The re-rebranding of Max as HBO Max emerged as the Big Story from this week’s Upfronts.

The reverse name change -- announced at the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront Wednesday morning -- stood out because it was like no other story emanating from the Upfronts. 

Generally speaking, the preponderance of stories every year from the May Upfronts deal with new-content announcements, new data tools and the like, and the occasional launch of something new, such as the ESPN streaming service announced by Disney on Tuesday.

That too may have presented a naming challenge for Disney since the new “ESPN” subscription service subsumes and replaces the ESPN+ streaming brand that was first launched in 2018. 

The “+” sign, of course, is widely used in the naming of streaming brands -- Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+, AMC+, MGM+ -- and yes, Discovery+, a unit of the very company that has struggled with settling on a brand name for its primary streaming service.

In fact, there is no sign that Discovery+ is going away, and seems to be hanging in there as a separate streaming entity for WBD.

WBD’s reverse name-change of Max back to a brand name that was jettisoned just a few years ago represents a U-turn that is rare in the business world (or so it seems to me).

It is as if streaming management at Warner Bros. Discovery execs suddenly slapped their collective foreheads with their palms and let out a collective “Oops!”

In 2023, the company dropped the “HBO” from HBO Max to create just plain ol’ Max. At the time, the Max name seemed so generic as to border on meaningless.

The thinking seemed to be that having “HBO” in the brand name gave the impression that the offerings on Max were narrow rather than wide -- that the content was made up chiefly of the types of shows that the HBO brand stands for, many of which could be seen as not suitable for what used to be known as general audiences (i.e., families).

Now “HBO” is back in the name, but one could still ask: What has changed? Explanations for the name change in a WBD press release on Wednesday were so vague that they hardly qualified as explanations at all.

“The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming,” said a prepared statement from WBD President and CEO David Zaslav. 

“Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years to come,” he said.

“We will continue to focus on what makes us unique -- not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families,” said WBD President and CEO of Streaming JB Perrette in the same press release.

Not “everything for everyone”? No less a streaming company then Netflix talked about taking the very opposite approach at its Upfront Wednesday afternoon, and Netflix is the streaming leader.

The problem seems to be WBD’s reluctance to let go of the words “HBO” or “Max” in the creation of a brand name that represents just what their streaming service is supposed to be and who it will serve. HBO Max, neither then nor now, isn’t cutting it.

I believe the company had a similar struggle to name the new entity when Discovery Networks merged with Warner Bros. 

They came up with Warner Bros. Discovery, which is a little long but at least it identifies what the company is -- namely, a joining of Warner Bros. and Discovery.

One name for the streaming service could have been Warner+ -- since other names originating in the Golden Age of Hollywood are being used in the same way for Paramount+ and MGM+.

Or maybe a more modern name suitable for a television behemoth in the 21st century should be adopted. My own opinion is that the word “Discovery” is a lot more compelling than “Warner.”

I like it when companies come up with names that represent made-up words, but in the long run turn out to be the best way of identifying their brands into the future -- in this case, how about “Discoverance”? Let the brain-storming begin, again.

The tongue-in-cheek image above was projected at the WBD Upfront behind Shauna Spenley, WBD’s global chief marketing officer, while she talked about the rebranding. It shows three Supermen staring each other down to see which one will best represent WBD’s streaming service going forward.