The streaming service that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO wishes he could make go away announced a price increase on Tuesday.
Beginning today, January 7th, 2025, the price of Discovery+ in the U.S. will increase by $1, making the ad-supported monthly plan $5.99/month and the ad-free monthly plan $9.99/month.
These prices are effective immediately for new subscriptions. Existing subscribers will receive 30 days advance notice and see price increases starting from their next billing cycle on or after Friday, February 7th, 2025.
Discovery+ launched on January 4th, 2021 and was originally designed to be the one-stop streaming home for all of the Discovery Networks linear television content, as well as some other licensed lifestyle programming from companies such as A&E and Lifetime.
But even before Discovery merged with Warner Media in April of the following year, soon-to-be CEO David Zaslav was vocal about his desire to eventually shut down Discovery+ and merge it with the Warner Brothers streaming service that eventually was renamed Max.
The problem was that many of the Discovery+ subscribers were just fine with the unscripted programming and had no desire to pay a much higher price for Max's scripted programming.
Eventually, plans were dropped to shutter Discovery+ and instead, the streaming service has just been passive-aggressively made less useful. The Discovery+ originals plans were halted and many of the most popular shows also became available on Max. And some of the most popular shows shifted from being available on the same day as their linear TV premiere to being held back from streaming until the complete season was over.
The calculation at Warner Bros. Discovery now seems to be that while Discovery+ subscriber base isn't growing, it is more likely to shrug off a modest price increase.
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