Yesterday, HBO was kind enough to send me an email letting me know that my HBO Max subscription cost would be going up by one dollar next month. I have to admit that even with the plans for a new streaming service, I wasn’t really expecting this. When coupled with the various program cancellations as well as content being removed from the site, it’s almost insulting.
HBO Max was already one of my most expensive streaming services, second only to Netflix, and now this is making me rethink my relationship with the service even further. I’ve never been one of those people who cancels streaming services on the months where there’s nothing I wanna watch, but maybe that’s the kind of person that I should become.
I’m not gonna sit here, and pretend HBO doesn’t have content that I want to watch. House of the Dragon season two will be released some point and Curb Your Enthusiasm is coming back for another season as well. Obviously, these are shows that I don’t wanna miss but at the same time I find myself not wanting to reward HBO Discovery’s new CEO for making move after move that I don’t agree with.
It’s been rough to be an HBO Max subscriber these last few months. Seeing the company shelving an almost finished movie (Batgirl), pulling episodes of Looney Tunes, pulling seasons of The Flintstones, pulling some of the more niche Cartoon Network content… And then while scrolling social media this morning, I saw that the CEO of Hulu has essentially said that they’re not currently pulling any FX content, but not to rule anything out.
I know that there’s licensing agreements for shows, but when something has such a strong tie to a brand, I hate to feel like there’s a gun to my head to watch it before it’s taken away from me forever.
Dan Stransky 