WBD CEO David Zaslav's Comments on Removing Shows From HBO Max Draws Ire, "Makes My Blood Boil"

Earlier this year, as part of a cost saving measure for Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO Max announced that a slew of original programming would be departing the streaming service...for good. This news came after the Batgirl movie had been shelved entirely, with fan-favorite TV shows like Infinity Train, OK K.O.! – Let's Be Heroes, and Uncle Grandpa removed from HBO Max and suddenly without any means to watch the series at all. Speaking during todya's Warner Bros. Discovery quarterly investor call, WBD CEO David Zaslav addressed some of the "views" about how they're restructuring the company post-merger, specifically the removal of all this content and more (emphasis our own, noting the specific comment many are taking issue with).

"Casey Bloys (HBO Chief Content Officer) was able to look at all the content on HBO and when 37 series went away...He was able to look over the last year and a half, what are people watching and what are they not watching? Where are people spending time? Where are they being nourished?" Zaslav said. " We have the ability to look at across our cable channels, what are we spending on on shows and where are they working and where are we getting a good return. All those write offs, that we took shows off these platforms, we didn't take one show off a platform that was going to help us in any way. It's going to help us to get it off the platform so that we can now invest, with the knowledge of what is working, and replace those shows with content that has a chance to be more successful, have larger audience, and we're reallocating the capital."

As one might expect, Zaslav's comments instantly drew the ire of the fans of the TV shows that were removed from HBO Max, the fiery response to which you can see below. The WBD CEO spent much of the call speaking toward the future of the company and their efforts to spend on quality programming while also managing their significant debt. You can see what people are saying about his comments here:

(Cover Photo by Santiago Felipe/Getty Images) 

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