In the early 2010s, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment pursued a streaming strategy built on the assumption that the name Warner Bros. had little brand recognition among contemporary consumers. We're not like Disney, one executive, citing internal market research explained to me in 2014. The name 'Warner Bros.' doesn't mean anything to consumers (Connected Viewing 2014). Six years later, the launch of HBO Max by WarnerMedia demonstrated the persistence of this assumption within the company, despite both substantial executive turnover and a new corporate owner. In the interface through which viewers engage with the HBO Max service, a variety of media brands---some owned by WarnerMedia (such as Cartoon Network and DC Entertainment), some owned by WarnerMedia (such as Studio Ghibli and Crunchy-roll)---are provided their own content pages, while the Warner Bros. corporate brand is conspicuously absent. This approach to app design reflects in part the portfolio (or siloed) approach to organizational structure that Warner Bros.'s owner, Time Warner, had previously instituted across its multiple media companies. Somewhat paradoxically, however, it also reflects efforts by AT&T, which purchased Time Warner in 2018, to replace the portfolio approach with an integrated structure in which all of Time Warner's companies work together to ensure the growth and eventual profitability of HBO Max.

Steirer, Gregory. HBO Max: Media Conglomerates and the Organizational Logic of Streaming. In From Networks to Netflix:
A Guide to Changing Channels, edited by Derek Johnson, 399-408. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023.

Gregory Steirer is a professor of English and Film Studies at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit Routledge's Website. https://www.routledge.com/From-Networks-to-Netflix-A-Guide-to-Changing-Channels/Johnson/p/book/9780367568245

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