Warner Bros. Discovery is planning to maintain Discovery+ as standalone streaming service, in addition to merging HBO Max and Discovery+ into a combined service.
Warner Bros. Discovery had planned to combine both Discovery+ and HBO Max into a supersized service featuring content from both platforms.
Read More Warner Bros. Discovery lays out future plans
However, the Wall Street Journal reported that Warner Bros. Discovery fears that a significant number of Discovery+’s 20 million subscribers would be unwilling to migrate to a more expensive service.
Quoting people familiar with the matter, Wall Street Journal said the move was a strategy shift for a company that had planned to consolidate content in a single subscription app.
Discovery+ without ads costs US subscribers $6.99 a month and the ad-supported version costs $4.99. HBO Max, meanwhile, costs $15.99 a month without ads and $9.99 with ads.
The plan now is to continue to have Discovery+ remain available even as a newly combined service hits the market in the spring.
WarnerMedia, which launched HBO Max in 2020, closed its $43 billion merger with Discovery last April.
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