When each TV community launched a aggressive streaming service, many pundits predicted the competitors would create winners and losers.

Throughout Q2, the streaming wars heated up. Paramount+ is cruising on the expansion of its nascent streaming platform, whereas Peacock is plateauing. Warner Bros. Discovery shut down NEWS Reporter+ on the finish of April. Netflix happy buyers by shedding just below 1 million subscribers, when it initially thought it could lose twice as many subscribers.

Warner Bros. Discovery misplaced 1% in complete Q2 income, closing out the quarter with $9.8 billion, $2 billion behind expectations. So it plans to do some belt-tightening of its streaming providers.

The merged firm plans to consolidate its two streaming providers, HBO Max and Discovery+, into one bundle in 2023. The streaming bundle will embrace ad-supported and ad-free tiers.

Main as much as Thursday’s Q2 earnings convention with buyers, the corporate quietly eliminated six HBO Max unique motion pictures from the platform this week – with extra en path to the chopping block – and nixed launch plans for a number of extra, most notably Batgirl.

The surreptitious content material slicing, on high of the corporate’s new content material slate for Discovery+, steep Q2 loss and withstanding merger debt, spurned plenty of hypothesis on-line.

Particularly, commerce publications and Twitter accounts began circulating rumors that Warner Bros. Discovery was going to axe HBO Max altogether.

Executives denied this plan on the earnings name.

“These are two very distinctive, complementary streaming providers distinct of their content material enchantment,” mentioned Jean-Briac Perrette, president of Discovery’s streaming biz.

Nonetheless, the rumors aren’t utterly out of left discipline.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s tanking – it’s nonetheless tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in debt, advert income is plateauing and shares plummeted 13% throughout after-hours buying and selling following Thursday’s report.

It must offset the loss by some means.

The execs blamed their losses squarely on WarnerMedia.

“Income was down 1% – [and] these outcomes are pushed by the legacy WarnerMedia companies with important price will increase throughout all segments,” mentioned CFO Wiedenfels.

Although HBO Max has about 40 million extra paying subscribers than Discovery+ and a extra established subscription model, one thing’s acquired to provide, and it’s clear which of the 2 firms is sporting the pants.

(All three executives on the merged firm’s investor convention – Gunnar Wiedenfels, JB Perrette and David Zaslav – come from Discovery’s government crew.)

Wiedenfels confirmed the corporate made a “important discount” in content material licensing gross sales for HBO Max along with halting some unique productions for HBO Max originals.

Moreover, Zaslav burdened that the corporate will minimize out no matter content material it wants to remain afloat – because it did with the failed NEWS Reporter+.

“We’re not going to place a film out except we consider in it,” Zaslav mentioned. Though the Batgirl movie manufacturing was already tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} underway, it hit the chopping block.