Why Max should air great shows like Our Flag Means Death on HBO proper

The second season of Our Flag Means Death wrapped up the other day on Max, bringing an end to David Jenkins’ queer-friendly dramedy about a couple of middle-aged men who find love on the high seas.

Well, maybe this is the end. Jenkins has plans for a third and final season, but we don’t yet know if Max will renew the series. Viewership numbers aren’t bad, so there’s definitely a chance, but I can’t help but think it would have been an easy call had Max’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery done one thing differently: aired Our Flag Means Death on HBO in addition to streaming it on Max.

Max’s unused edge

The streaming wars are in a strange place right now. We all know the big players: Netflix is at the top of the hill with some 247.15 million subscribers. Disney owns both Disney+ and Hulu, which combined have nearly 200 million subscribers. But even with those big numbers, making money with streaming is becoming increasingly difficult. For a while, companies kept making content willy-nilly in the hopes that they would get enough subscribers to break even or better. But now they have a lot of subscribers and find that the financial math still doesn’t work, so they keep raising raising prices, introducing cheaper tiers where people have to watch ads, or raising prices specifically because they want people to switch to cheaper tiers where they have to watch ads. Everyone is trying to get an edge right how.

Then there’s Max, the streaming service that Warner Bros. Discovery Frankenstein-ed together when it combined HBO Max with Disney+. Max has around 100 million subscribers according to Variety, although it’s hard to parse exactly how many are subscribed to Max specifically and how many have Max because they subscribe to the normal channel and get Max as a freebee; a lot of HBO subscribers get Max as a ride-along and might not even realize it.

And that gives Warner Bros. Discovery an edge I don’t think they’re using enough. Unlike Netflix, which only has one way to get new TV shows out to people, WBD has options. Not only do they have their own streaming service, but they have a high-quality premium cabal channel with a reputation for excellence. I think they should be debuting Max content on HBO proper, and then trusting that people will see it, fall in love with it, and subscribe to Max to keep watching it.

These Max originals are too good to be this underseen

There are actually quite a few excellent Max originals. Our Flag Means Death is one of the latest, a quirky period comedy-drama I can’t imagine flying on any other network. Hacks is a cutting show biz comedy that has won Emmys for writing, director, and an acting nod for Jean Smart. And then there’s my personal favorite Max original: Warrior, a martial arts period drama so good I think it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Stranger Things and House of the Dragon when it comes to discussions of the best TV shows on the air.

But Stranger Things and House of the Dragon are talked about non-stop on Twitter, and in the press, and at the dinner table. The (excellent) third season of Warrior streamed one episode per week on Max earlier this year, and apart from me slobbering all over it, there wasn’t a ton of hype.

Do you know what show was airing linearly on HBO while new episodes of Warrior were being quietly burned off on Max? The Idol, a vanity project from Sam Levinson and The Weeknd widely regarded as a cringey failure. If there was any justice in the world, Warrior would have gotten a primetime slot, leading to potentially millions of new fans discovering this show, and The Idol would have been dribbled out on Max while no one was looking.

But honestly, I don’t see why both of these shows couldn’t have aired on both Max and on HBO. It think WBD is shooting itself in the foot by hiding some of these series on what is, deservedly or not, one of the less popular major streaming services out there. Airing shows like Our Flag Means Death and Warrior on HBO proper would expose them to a lot of people who are currently not watching them, because too many people either don’t have Max or don’t know they have Max. But people watch shows on HBO. Even if HBO airs a stinker like The Idol, people talk about it, because HBO is known for quality. Imagine how much better the talk would have been had HBO actually aired a quality show in that summertime slot earlier this year!

If I put myself in the shoes of WBD executives, maybe they’re thinking that if they air their Max-exclusive shows on HBO proper, no one will have any reason to subscribe to Max. But I disagree. To start, streaming these shows on Max alone isn’t a great alternative, because Max isn’t yet a behemoth to rival the likes of Netflix; excellent shows can get lost there, because there simply aren’t enough subscribers for them to find an audience. But if these series air on HBO, people who otherwise wouldn’t know they exist could subscribe to Max to catch up on prior seasons, or to watch episodes they couldn’t see as they air. It seems to me like WBD has everything to gain and nothing to lose.

I’m surprised WBD has been slow to make a move like this, since they’ve been pretty flexible when it comes to crossing the battle lines of the streaming wars. For instance, they could have made Max the one and only place to stream Dune, which they produced, but they also licensed it out to Netflix, because they know a lot of people watch Netflix and they want an audience for what they hope will be a big sci-fi franchise. Roughly the same logic applies to airing Max-only shows on HBO. These are great series; let people find and love them.

HBO and Event TV

As studios adjust to the streaming age, it becomes harder to create event television, to make a TV show that people are talking about every week as each new episode drops. And yet HBO still has several shows like that in its stable, all of which they release at a rate of one episode per week, over linear TV. Think about the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, or the zombie drama The Last of Us, or the comedy The White Lotus. All of these shows have captured people’s imaginations, and all of them are rolled out in a way that could be called old-fashioned.

In all of those cases, HBO is having its cake and eating it too, because people watch new episodes on linear TV and then go to Max to watch them again, or to catch up on what they missed. It’s a virtuous cycle that I would love to see WBD double down on, especially with upcoming Max-exclusive shows like the Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or even that far-off Harry Potter reboot coming up.

Not every show WBD makes should air on HBO; HBO has a brand identity to protect. But for series that fit the mold, I see no reason why they shouldn’t get a coveted time-slot on the most trusted cable network on TV. Otherwise, great shows like Our Flag Means Death and Warrior could be on the chopping block even though there are huge audiences out there that would love them if only they watched them, and that’s not a future anyone wants.

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