I watched the announcement that HBO Max is rebranding as just “Max.” I get it, on a basic level people don’t associate HBO with kids and family stuff, and they might reasonably assume HBO Max is just HBO and not all the other stuff they also have. I’m not sure renaming it “Max” fixes those issues, and dropping HBO – the 50-year old brand people already associate with “TV you have to pay for” – from the name of your streaming service seems like corporate malpractice. The most inexplicable decision to me is ditching the color purple in favor of blue. Everyone uses blue. Purple was fairly unique, it was key to the service’s identity, and it’d create continuity with the old service so millions of subscribers don’t go “wha happen?”
When they were talking about family shows they showed a graphic of Cartoon Network’s Summer Camp Island in the background, kind of a dick move considering they unceremoniously purged it from the service last year.