WIH+: Zaz’s Streaming Doctrine & The Future of HBO

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, the new streaming-focused companion to Matt Belloni’s beloved franchise.
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Welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, the new streaming-focused companion to Matt Belloni’s beloved franchise. Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback about last week’s debut, and for your thoughts on the very name of this newsletter! Please keep the notes coming by responding directly to this email. And if you’d only like to receive Matt’s What I’m Hearing, just email Fritz (fritz@puck.news).

Discussed in this issue: John Landgraf, Neil Gaiman, Stranger Things, David Zaslav, Batgirl, The Gray Man & much more…

Tuesday Thoughts

—FX’s 1 Percent Opportunity: In this new multi-platform universe, how are media companies figuring out what shows go to streaming versus linear? I deal with this question every day at Parrot Analytics, where I work. John Landgraf, the chairman of FX, also offered an interesting observation on a Hollywood Reporter podcast. Landgraf said that there’s only a 1-2 percent overlap between FX and Hulu audiences, so “we seem to be able to aggregate up an audience.” As FX shows migrate to Hulu, Landgraf also said he’s seeing an increase in younger viewership in line with numbers from a decade ago, pre-YouTube/TikTok et cetera...

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Zaz’s Law of Streaming

In light of his Batgirl slashing and earnings call manifesto, WBD C.E.O. David Zaslav is articulating a new logic for streaming: it’s going to be an important and growing revenue channel, but not the only one that matters. Here’s what Zaz is really saying, and how it might (or might not) work.

JULIA ALEXANDER

David Zaslav has been the C.E.O. of Warner Bros Discovery since April, a period in which the fortunes of the streaming economy, once beloved by Wall Street, appear to have been entirely recast. Netflix, which has seen its subscriber growth essentially flatten, has seen its market cap drop by nearly 70 percent. A year ago, my colleague Dylan Byers reported that Disney was considering spinning out ESPN as it hoped to model itself as more of a Netflix-style pure play. Now, however, the company is not only firmly holding onto its profitable but declining linear assets, but it also recently decided not to break the bank to renew its subs-juicing but low-revenue partnership with the Indian Premier League.

In his four months running a combined WBD, Zaz has tried to navigate this new universe. He swiftly shuttered CNN+ and, more recently, shelved Batgirl because it was unlikely to generate the kind of customer acquisition that a $90 million streaming-only title should. Now, the full Zaz streaming strategy is coming into view. As he announced at last week’s earnings call, WBD is rolling out a combined HBO Max and Discovery+ service in mid-2023...

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