WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav says bundles are the future of streaming

WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav sees multi-subscription bundles as the future of streaming services.

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Now that the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger is complete and that Max is a profitable subscription, one of the key parts of streaming growth could lie in cross-service bundling options. Streaming allowed the world's disparate content creators, providers, and labels to fragment the market and monetize their TV shows and movies on a wholly-controlled platform. The results led to the downfall of cable TV as consumers shifted towards streaming.

But now the future of streaming could look a lot cable TV, at least that's what WBD CEO David Zaslav believes. In a recent Q4 earnings call with investors and analysts, Zaslav said some interesting things about subscription service bundles, and hints that WBD might be able to broker more favorable deals with other content providers.

Below we have a full transcription of Zaslav's responses on the topic:

I think everything is driven by consumer experience, and right now that experience is awkward, it's cluttered, and somewhat confusing. People have learned how to deal with it--you Google where a show is.

Re-bundling just makes an awful lot of sense. I think we've transitioned out of this idea of 'subs at any cost,' we've done that by getting Max profitable and really focusing on getting subs with real economics and growing that like a real business.

The ability for a consumer to go to one place, the Verizon example is a good example. Netflix is a great product. You put it together with Max and you can get...those together provide a very meaningful experience for people. And it makes it a lot easier to traverse across our universe and theirs.

In the longer term, I expect that there will be meaningful bundling. It's going to happen one of two ways.

It'll either be a bundling by an intermediary, a platform company like an Apple or an Amazon or a Roku, or what's going on with Charter and Comcast, which is very compelling and I think very helpful to all of us in the content business.

These channel stores morph into places that provide a simpler, easier, and less anxious experience for people to find the content they want and have it be simpler and fluid.

Or we could do it ourselves. I've always advocated that we should do it ourselves.

We're looking to do that domestically, we're looking to do it outside the U.S., in some ways the sports venture is trying to meet that very need. That when you put our product together with Fox's product, together with ESPN's product, it just has a much better, more fluid consumer experience.

It's not 'which channel is it on' it's not 'where do I go, do I have it, don't I have it'...it's just in one place.

I think more and more we'll be gravitating towards that.