Discover + HBO? No thank you.

Throwing millions away in oddball corporate merger

We’re in an era where the number one thing many people complain about is the ever-rising cost of goods, gas, food and ability to cover their costs. Thousands of people are living on the streets because they can’t afford rent. My local gas station, Chevron, is selling unleaded gas at $5.79 a gallon.

So you’re the head of a studio that has been taken over too many times to count and you’ve got a nearly finished film that was set to play on the HBO Max service. “Batgirl” cost $90 million to make. And you don’t like it. So why not just dump it and call it a day?

Right, why not throw away a $90 million investment and take a writeoff?

Think of all the other things $90 million could do.

And this is only one of the crazy things announced this week from the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery, another example of why mega-mergers never seem to work out.

Beyond shelving “Batgirl,” (a character that like Bruce Wayne, dons a suit and mask to help fight crime in Gotham City) because it wasn’t deemed good enough to play in theaters or on streaming, the folks at WBD have decided that HBO Max, its premiere streaming service, also isn’t good enough for the long haul. It said this week that HBO Max will bite the dust by summer 2023, to be replaced with a new agenda and name.

WBD says the combined totals of HBO Max and the Discovery + service top 90 million, compared to over 100 million for Disney+, 175 million for Amazon Prime and over 220 million for Netflix.

So something seems to be working. Only, it’s not enough.

The plan is to merge the best-of-TV HBO offerings, classic movies from the WB studio and Turner Classic Movies catalog, with Discovery + reality shows, plus some CNN content, as a way to better compete with Netflix.

No one asked my opinion, but here’s the deal: I have no interest in seeing any Discovery programming, or paying even more (you know that’s coming) for a service that already charges $15 monthly. I like HBO Max for great shows: “Succession,” “the White Lotus,” “Hacks” and the recent six-part documentary on Paul Newman and Joanna Woodward, plus access to classic movies from the TCM vault. In fact, of all the streaming services out there, HBO Max is by far the one I watch the most often.

I ditched cable because I didn’t like programming shoved down my throat that I had no interest in watching.

If this Discover HBO or whatever it will be called turns into another bloated Netflix clone with bulk programming and little curation, is it time to reconsider cable again?

Speaking of cable

I’ve long believed that eventually, streaming prices would surpass what we were paying for cable TV, when many of us decided to cut the cord. Fifteen dollars for HBO Max. Twenty dollars for Netflix’s top tier. And on and on it goes.

With all the strife about streaming this week, and baby steps to raise steps even higher, I decided to pick up the phone and call my internet provider, Frontier, to find out about current pricing for TV service. Maybe it was time to come home.

But talk about a sign of the times. Frontier has stopped offering TV services altogether. Let that sink in. My old Cable TV provider no longer offers cable TV! Now it’s just an internet provider. Period. That’s how much the world has changed. Frontier was my cable TV provider for years, and before that Verizon FIOS, before it sold out in 2015 for $10.5 billion.

So I called the alternative in my area, Spectrum, the company re-built from the old Time Warner Cable days (yes, the same Time Warner that used to be corporate cousin of Warner Brothers during the era when it merged with AOL.) You can still get TV from Spectrum, “starting” at $49.99 monthly.

But add the TCM movie channel, which I want, and it’s $62. The company smartly now lets you ditch the costly cable TV box and DVRs and watch via a Spectrum smart TV app. But if you want to go old school and get a box with a DVR, it’s $15 a piece, and I have 2 TVs. So that’s $92 plus $21 “Broadcast” fee (sports and local TV) for a total of $113, plus 10% local tax, bringing it up to over $120. If you skip the boxes, it’s just over $90. (Plus $60 a month for internet.)

(Just FYI: You can most of the cable channels you may want to watch (but not TCM!) via the streaming service Sling TV, which costs $35 monthly, and you won’t get dinged for broadcast fees and the like.)

I’m not going home. No wonder I cut the cord!

Days of Our Lives

The best deal for local TV still remains buying an antenna, which are more powerful than in years past, and can bring the CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and independent stations to your set without having to adjust rabbit ears. Look to spend around $25.

Just don’t expect to pick up the long-running soap opera “Days of Our Lives” on your set. Sadly, there is a new trend to cancel network TV shows and have them resurface for paying fans. The week NBC announced that was moving Days of Our Lives to Peacock, its little watched streaming service beginning Sept. 12. The show has been on the air consistently since Nov. 8, 1965 and will be replaced by a daily news show.

That’s a whole lot cheaper than paying for actors, writers, directors and producers, right?

The best deal in town

Netflix is considered the gold standard of streaming, and it’s as good as its last program. I loved the latest season of the retro 1980s inspired horror series “Stranger Things” and the legal drama “Lincoln Lawyer,” but haven’t been able to find much of interest since.

So what do I watch on streaming? HBO Max, as noted, for series and movies, but 9 evenings out of 10, the first and last place I go to is YouTube. I pay $10 a month for classic YouTube ad-free, and it’s simply the best deal in streaming.

Thanks to its Google ownership, YouTube clearly knows my interest, because Google is tracking me everywhere, what songs I play on YouTube Music, what I’m searching for on Google and what I’m watching on YouTube.

In some cases, that might be creepy, but the fact is, turning on YouTube is like playing a great radio station where I don’t have to make decisions. Just press play and let the YouTube algorithm entertain me. On any given night, the offerings are music, comedy, travel and tech news related. More than enough to keep me happy for hours.

Because so much of YouTube views are now coming from smart TVs, YouTube recently introduced automatic tools to operate the service via your smartphone. Just open the YouTube app while watching on TV, and you’ll get a prompt asking if you want to connect to the two. From there, your phone can fast forward, speed up the action, leave comments and the like.

And that’s my rant for today! What’s your favorite streaming service? Can you justify having Discovery content with HBO Max? And how badly do you want to see Batgirl?

Let me know with a reply. I’ll be back with you tomorrow to tell you all about my recent Photowalking adventures in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Jeff