Add Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos to the voices welcoming back the HBO name.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced Wednesday that it would change its streamer’s name back to HBO Max, abandoning the Max name it adopted two years ago.
“They had so many years trying to start with so many different brands that this move makes sense,” Sarandos said, chatting with Business Insider after the streamer’s annual TV upfront presentation.
Sarandos said that branding was one area in which Netflix had an easier time than its legacy media rivals. It didn’t have to make the transition from cable TV to streaming and integrate different TV assets into one company.
“We have the luxury of being one brand from the beginning,” he said.
“I look at ’90 Day Fiancé,’ it’s bigger than ‘Hacks’ on the top 10, so it’s like, how do you argue that you’re not this or that?” he added, referring to an example of the lowbrow Discovery reality shows and HBO prestige fare that WBD tried to bring together with Max.
Despite the variety of content, Sarandos previously made it known that he was surprised WBD had dropped “HBO” from the name of the streamer.
“They put all that effort into one thing that they can tell the consumer — it should be HBO,” he told Variety earlier this year. In that interview, he also said he didn’t understand Amazon’s and Apple’s streaming strategies.
Apple’s strategy includes tapping Sarandos himself for a cameo in Apple TV+’s “The Studio.” He played himself in the Seth Rogen-starring parody of Hollywood.
“It would be the most meta moment of television for me to win an Emmy and thank my friends at Apple,” he joked after the upfront event.
Sarandos also weighed in on another media rival, Versant, the new name for the Comcast cable networks — including USA, CNBC, MSNBC, and Golf Channel — that are set to soon be spun off.
“How do you make them a cohesive product?” he said.
