Same reason they cancelled Gossip Girl and Love Life. They are significantly cutting the volume output to save cash so eliminated the worst performing shows on a cost to viewership ratio.

They have scope to push back shows and space them out a bit more to lower the overall volume output. It just means they will not need to order so many new shows for a spell as shows planed for the last half of 2023 can be pushed to the front half of 2024. They can easily sit on limited series and they have already cleaned out the ongoing roster by axing a whole bunch of shows. Then you have the fact that the real big budget shows like House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, and even Perry Mason are already on 2 year gaps between new seasons. Even the regular dramas (think Succession, The Gilded Age, Euphoria) are on 18 month timelines. All that will help them reduce that combined 46 show volume they had in 2022.

I think we will get more big budget HBO shows even under this regime. I just do not expect any more big expensive dramas until they start to wrap a few of the ongoing series. We will definitely not be getting any new fantasy of sci-fi shows until House of the Dragon and The Last of Us wrap. Not at HBO. On the other hand it does seem like the Max originals are going to be all in on DCU shows and movie spinoffs TV shows from It, Dune, and The Batman. So less prestige and original genre fare but we will still get genre shows of this type from Max. Which is better than nothing even if it means no more original stuff like Raised by Wolves.

I think this new regime will be quicker to cancel the shows that do not find a good audience and less interested in ordering such shows in the first place. Which means less niche shows like Los Espookys, Gentlemen Jack, Betty, etc being ordered in general and most being cancelled after a single season if they do not garner big viewership ratings.

To be fair, I think most folks have forgotten Starz actually exists.

That was the previous executive team. They wanted Max to build out both the target audience and the volume of shows. Which they did. In 2022 we got 23 scripted originals airing on HBO and another 23 scripted shows airing as Max originals. The new regime are obviously looking to reduce that volume a good bit to get the financials looking healthier. Most of the cuts will be on the Max end.

The other issue is the Max shows were supposed to target a difference audience to the regular HBO shows. More blockbuster than prestige or target underserved demos. The result was some shows like Raised By Wolves, Titans, Doom Patrol, and Peacemaker that would not work as regular HBO shows but did target a younger male demo. Then you had the female skewing shows like And Just Like That, Gossip Girl, Julia, Pretty Little Liars, Sex Lives of College Girls, Made For Love, The Flight Attendant, etc that gave the HBO Max service a better male/female demo balance than the regular HBO shows offered.

The big issue is shows like Hacks and Julia felt just like HBO shows. The biggest issue was that shows like Tokyo Vice, The Staircase, Station Eleven, Our Flag Means Death, and the upcoming Love & Death limited series are all just shows that feel exactly like regular HBO shows and target their core demo. All great shows but they did not really broaden the reach of the service as was the original intention of the Max originals.

They want more distinction between the HBO and Max originals in the future. With the aim being that the Max shows will be used to attract a new audience to the service and broaden its overall reach. Max shows will probably lean a lot more into established IP in the future like DC and spin-offs from movies franchises like Dune and It.

Be interesting to see how it plays out in the coming years. Most of the stuff we will get in 2023 and probably the bulk of 2024 will be stuff that has been in the works under the previous direction so we will likely not see the impact of this recent harder pivot until we get newer shows in 2025.

I’ll be very interested to see if regular HBO keeps its 23 scripted shows volume in 2023. They promised not to cut regular HBO programming but I’ve got my doubts they will match the 2022 volume in 2023.

It is coming back. I’m just saying it felt like a regular HBO comedy so they are not likely to order this sort of show in the future at Max. The stuff they already have that has found an audience seems safe. At least I hope so! It would be awful if the cancelled Our Flag Means Death! I like it better than the regular HBO comedies with the possible exception of Barry.

Sony did not need a streamer as they had no broadcast or cable businesses of note that needed to be replaced. That cable and broadcast revenue and profits made up the bulk of their business and was far more valuable than the studios.

Not much to say this week. You was the only show that did real numbers. Its 64,060,000 hours worked out at 15.8 million equivalent complete viewings. That was a 30% drop from opening week. Season four is trending to be down 10%-20% from season three. Still a big success though! I’m expecting a big week three and four drop as we have seen that with Netflix shows in the past that have very short runtimes.

How did the debut show do? The Law According to Lidia Poet was the pick of the bunch with 5.9 million. Also charting were Red Rose (3.9 million), Full Swing (2.9 million), Ganglands (2.2 million), and In Love All Over Again (2.7 million). Missing the charts were The Upshaws Part 3 (less than 4.6 million), The Girl and the Astronaut (less than 2.1 million), Eva Lasting (less than 1.1 million), and Community Squad (less than 2.9 million). It was a bad week for debut shows with everything flopping except Lidia Poet.

The Snow Girl (22.6-24.8 million) and Lockwood & Co (13.9-16.5 million) finished their 4 week runs. The Snow Girl did solid numbers for a Spanish language miniseries. The numbers for Lockwood & Co are poor. It is almost certainly canceled. Fate: The Winx Saga (a similar British genre show) got axed for only managing 25 million in the same timeframe!

This was an awful week for viewership engagement at Netflix. The good news is that this is the last of the bad weeks. The next four weeks will be a lot healthier starting with the return of Outer Banks this week. After that it is Sex/Life, more You, and then Shadow& Bone. With a bit of help on the non-English side from Wrong Side of the Tracks and The Glory.

This coming week is super quiet outside of Outer Banks with only Triptych supporting it. I guess they are hoping folks check out the glut of lesser shows that got released last week!

When Bloys took over HBO Max originals in 2020, it had already been established with HBO-like product. But with cost-conscious Discovery coming in, it was clear that there would need to be more of a delineation. “The kind of shows they were going to were a little bit too HBO-adjacent,” Bloys says. “Now on the one hand, I’m thrilled because a good show is a good show. But from a business point, of view, what I want to make sure is if I’m spending a certain amount of money on HBO programming, any money I’m spending beyond that, I want to make sure that those shows have a job to do — which is to push out from the HBO programming.”

This whole article is a puff piece for Bloys but this article did give us some insight into Bloys and Zaslav’s plans for the remaining Max original shows. There will be a lot less of them, they will have lower budgets, they will be more IP focused, and they will not be HBO style shows but shows that reach for different demos and audiences such as Sex Lives of College Girls.

It is interesting that both Bloys and Orci felt like Max was ordering shows that could easily have been HBO shows and was not broadening the audience of the service enough as a result. They probably have a point but I’ll absolutely miss shows like Station Eleven, Julia, Tokyo Vice, The Staircase, Warriors, and Our Flag Means Death. Even the upcoming Love & Death miniseries feels very much like an HBO limited series.

All that said, I did enjoy Peacemaker, The Flight Attendant, and Sex Lives of College Girls so hopefully this new direction for the Max originals still delivers us some very watchable shows.

”You can have 10 mediocre shows or you can have five great shows,” says one agency partner whose clients work on the franchise plays. “People will still stay on Disney+.”

Someone needs to tell this dude streamers like Disney+ have month-to-month contracts and that savvy consumers will just churn out in the months between Marvel and Star Wars shows.

Crazy how few folks on Reddit realise the truth of this. They are cutting $3 billion of content. Of course they cannot afford as many Star Wars or Marvel shows. They will up the volume again if folks start churning out and the cutting loses them more subscription revenue than it gains in budget savings.

It is also worth noting this is available on Rakuten Viki in a lot of markets as well as YouTube.

I’ve not had the chance to check it out yet but I absolutely will. Glad to hear it is a very solid adaptation and that they have plans to do the sequel books as well.

They actually own Paramount Network. The problem is they sold the out of season streaming rights to Yellowstone to Peacock years ago. They have since admitted that was a dumb decision.

Pretty much. They are expecting a writers strike around the summer which will hurt broadcast far more than streaming. At least in the short term. They are just renewing stuff that would have got cancelled like La Brea as they can get the scrips wrote now before the strike happens.

That was the canary in the coal mine for sure.

They have the exact streaming numbers right down to when and where you watched those Showtime favourites. That is the data advantage of streaming.

It is dead. They are going to axe all the programming executives and stop making future Showtime shows. No need for a Showtime tab if it is not going to be generating new content beyond current seasons of Yellowjackets and Billions.

Good to see them giving this show a proper wrap up.

As for a looming writers strike? Looks like I’ll have to fire up a rewatch of DS9 to fill the void!

Viewership ratings in today on Netflix pretty much confirm Lockwood & Co is DOA and 100% cancelled. I expect the same performance from Dead Boy Detectives for sure.

They ain’t taking it to HBO Max. They do not have the cash. They got to make space for the reality shows inbound from Discovery+ in a few months.

Nah…they used to pump out 4-5 shows at the CW annually. I’m talking about DC Universe where they had stuff like Doom Patrol, Harley Quinn, Titans, Stargirl, and Swamp Thing.

Meh..not excited by any of these announcements and pretty disappointed that Peacemaker series two is indefinitely delayed due to Gunn working on the Superman movie and the general DC rebuild.

Also not keen on the news they are only aiming for 2 DC TV shows per year. DC Universe used to manage more than that volume on their own! If HBO Max cannot afford to produce the DC shows then I’m sure Apple, Amazon, or Netflix would love to fund and air them!

The only other announced DC show Berlanti has on his slate at present is “Dead Boy Detectives” at HBO Max, which is currently in production.

That feels the definition of a one and done series for HBO Max.

The decision might be out of their hands if Nexstar pull the plug on it at the CW.

With Disney looking to enact a bit of cost cutting and Paramount and WBD both pulling dead content to save cash I’d not be surprised if Disney follow their lead and Kindred never makes it to Europe. It is a dead show without a conclusion. Airing it is pretty pointless at this stage.

Now that Showtime is dead and gone you do not have to worry about their shows going on too long.