Warner Bros. Discovery continues to cull its media content as part of its plan for the upcoming HBO Max/Discovery+ merger. The latest casualty of the merger is the long-running show aimed at preschoolers. As of Friday HBO Max now hosts 456 episodes of Sesame Street while a week before it had 650 episodes. The removal of nearly 200 episodes happens as the next season prepares to air this fall. When asked about the departure an HBO spokesperson told Variety that “Sesame Street is and has always been an important part of television culture and a crown jewel of our preschool offering,” and that they are committed to bringing the show into families’ homes with the new season and that the remaining episodes will be available through Cartoonito on HBO Max.
HBO Max plans to remove even more shows as it transitions towards becoming a combined streaming platform following the creation of Warner Bros. Discovery. It recently announced that 36 titles will soon be leaving the service.
“As we work toward bringing our content catalogs together under one platform, we will be making changes to the content offering available on both HBO Max and Discovery+,” the company said in a statement. “That will include the removal of some content from both platforms.”
The content purge is also happening as Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav continues his plan of restructuring the company. From canceled movie projects to layoffs, and series removals, he has been working to reduce costs for the multimedia giant.
Source: Variety