We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings!What happens when you end up owning the thing you aspired to be? That's the situation Netflix finds itself in with its $85 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros.'s studio and streaming assets, which includes the prestige network HBO. In 2012, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos infamously said the company’s aspiration was to “become HBO before HBO becomes us.” Now HBO will be part of Netflix, raising the question of just how the two will co-exist. While Netflix executives have said HBO will “operate largely as it is” after the acquisition goes through, experts told our Lucas Manfredi that there will be changes over time. In our lead story, Manfredi looks at what could happen to its streaming business, the cable networks and its staff and resources. HBO Max is expected to co-exist as a secondary add-on service, though the makeup of its content is still unclear, with Netflix likely to raid the HBO library for its own catalog. Andy Goldman, HBO’s former vice president of programming strategy and planning, told TheWrap there’s a benefit to keeping HBO Max around as a cheaper, separate offering to upsell subscribers to Netflix, as well as experiment with different release strategies and cross-promote its content. But down the line HBO could become a "label" and move into the Netflix app itself, similar to how FX and Nat Geo live within the Disney+/Hulu app, according to veteran TV producer Evan Shapiro. We’ll likely get more answers when Sarandos and Warner Bros. Chief Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell answer questions at a hearing on Capitol Hill next week and as antitrust regulators like the Department of Justice and European Commission scrutinize the deal’s impact on prices, competition and the entertainment industry as a whole over the coming months. HBO Max may represent Netflix's trickiest argument. It's the third-largest streamer, and its combination with market leader Netflix creates a streaming superpower, a concern that Netflix will need to explain away to regulators. In other words, it's going to be a long couple of months (years?). Roger Cheng 
NETFLIX GETS INTO THE CABLE BUSINESS
"It's not TV. It's HBO," the famed 2000 commercial proclaimed. But actually, HBO is on cable television, which Netflix would be getting into in the U.S. for the first time... 
| ||||||||||||
