As Warner Bros. Discovery has been canceling shows and gradually dismantling HBO Max over the past few months, CEO David Zaslav has insisted that the entertainment giant had a plan for all of that content beyond disappearing it for tax credits and to avoid paying royalties. Part of that plan, it seems, is to bring a lot of HBO Max’s shows back on other platforms with streaming partners like Roku and Tubi.
Warner Bros. Discovery is putting a bunch of HBO Max’s canceled shows on other streaming services
Shows like Westworld, Raised By Wolves, and FBoy Island are making their way to services like Tubi and Roku as part of Warner Bros. Discovery-branded channels.
Shows like Westworld, Raised By Wolves, and FBoy Island are making their way to services like Tubi and Roku as part of Warner Bros. Discovery-branded channels.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.
Today, Warner Bros. Discovery announced the impending arrival of multiple branded FAST (free ad-supported television) channels and over 225 AVOD titles to The Roku Channel and Tubi. As part of the new licensing agreement between Warner Bros. Discovery and the streamers, old episodes of shows like Westworld, FBoy Island, Raised By Wolves, and The Time Traveler’s Wife will be available on newly created curated channels. On Tubi, these channels will be branded WB TV Watchlist, WB TV Keeping It Real, and WB TV All Together. Additionally, both Tubi and Roku will give subscribers access to thousands of hours of feature-length and episodic content from Warner Bros. Discovery’s catalog, which includes the Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Warner Bros. Television.
In different joint statements from both Tubi and Roku, Warner Bros. Discovery’s president of content sales, David Decker, expressed excitement about the deals and emphasized that the strategic partnerships are meant to give customers access to the content they love.
“We love working with world-class, cutting-edge partners like The Roku Channel,” Decker said. “Their innovative platforms provide us with new ways to bring our valuable content to fans across the country.”
Obviously, that sort of enthusiastic cheerleading is exactly what you’d expect to hear from Warner Bros. Discovery, which benefits from this entire situation. But it is rather interesting to see one of the biggest players in the streaming game letting some of its once flagship pieces of IP live on other streamers when HBO Max isn’t technically dead yet and it’s still unclear what sort of platform its successor will be.
Warner Bros. Discovery content will start hitting Tubi beginning February 1st and is set to come to The Roku Channel in the spring of this year.
Update February 1st, 4:26 PM ET: Article updated with more recent names for Tubi’s WB TV Watchlist, WB TV Keeping It Real, and WB TV All Together channels.
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