So After Changing From HBO To HBO Max, And Then Just "Max", Consultant Agency McKinsey Convinced HBO To Again Change Back To HBO Max And Reportedly Stuck Them With A Bill For $150 Million Dollars For Their Time

Advanced Television - Back in 2022, management advisor company McKinsey told Warner Bros that the media giant should combine itself with factual production specialist Discovery. The advice resulted in a reported fee of $55 million (€47.6m) for McKinsey. But in the period 2022-2025 McKinsey benefitted by another $37 million for advice issued to the now combined Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) to change its pay-TV channel HBO to HBO Max, then to Max, then back to HBO Max.

So far so good, and few could argue that listed companies need the comfort of solid professional advice in order to minimise shareholder complaints.

But this year, to date, according to reports, McKinsey has billed WBD an additional $63 million to cover the advice, including research and detailed consultation, that Warner Bros Discovery should now separate and be split into two companies.

Of course, the ultimate aim could be to float off Discovery in an IPO and generating value for WBD as well as existing shareholders.

A funny thing happened last week when I was watching the (fantastic) Billy Joel documentary, "And So It Goes" on (check notes) HBO MAX. 

When I was logging in to the app to find it, I noticed something funny. 

Why had the icon changed from that dumb purple "Max" thing back to a grey and black HBO Max logo? Surely an error no? 

So I googled and realized, nope. Indeed Warner Brothers was bamboozled yet again by the best in the business. 

Fuckin McKinsey man. The $20 million-a-month “consulting” firm that’s made an entire existence out of convincing corporations to light themselves on fire while calling it “strategic innovation.” 

You might remember them from such chart-topping hits like the Enron scandal, gutting a once proud and distinguished American brand by the name of Boeing, "advising" both the FDA and Purdue Pharma simultaneously during the height of the opiod epidemic, and their work with corrupt warlords in South Africa. Just to name a few.

These guys somehow conned HBO into killing the most iconic brand name in television history- HBO, and rebranding as the generic, dollar-store label known as Max.

Because who needs brand equity, decades of prestige, and cultural cachet when you could sound like a kid’s cousin who sells vape pens out of his trunk? 

“Max.” 

Brilliant stuff.

So after torching billions in goodwill and confusing literally every subscriber on earth (“Wait, do I have HBO? Do I have Max? Is HBO different than Max? Why am I paying for both HBO and HBO Max but now they’re the same thing but not really?”), they then came crawling back, reverting to the original name- HBO Max?

Congratulations. Full circle. We’ve just spent two years in corporate clown world, only to end up right where we started. 

McKinsey seriously has the easiest grift on earth. Take something simple and beloved, complicate the living fuck out of it, then cash the check. 

I'm sure their specialty is PowerPoints with words like “synergy,” “frictionless UX journey,” and “future-proof repositioning.” Translation: kill the one thing everyone actually likes about your product. 

HBO meant Sopranos, Game of Thrones (pre-season 8), Succession, The Wire, Sex and the City, Larry David calling everyone assholes. Prestige television. Max means what exactly?

It's like the tush push. They run the same fucking play every time. Everybody knows it's coming. Yet nobody can stop it.

Their formula-

1. Break what works.

2. Call it “modernizing.”

3. Collect obscene fees.

4. Leave town before the fire reaches corporate HQ.

Netflix is still Netflix. Apple TV is still Apple TV. Disney+ is still Disney+. But we got HBO is running around in clown shoes because McKinsey convinced some boardroom full of suits that young people are scared of the letters H-B-O. 

This whole fiasco is proof that corporate America will happily set a gold bar on fire if a consulting firm in a $10,000 suit tells them it’s “innovation.” HBO Max was already perfect. Max was a joke. And McKinsey remains the smartest dumb guys alive. 

You can't help but respect it.