John Oliver has long roasted his own parent company for its business decisions, but after learning this week that Warner Bros. Discovery not only expected him to do it again, but was actually looking forward to it,

The market has spoken here, and quality is the real differentiator.” To put it more plainly: The basic assumption behind the Max branding, that viewers would flock to Discovery’s big buckets of unscripted dross over the decades of quality material in HBO and other Warner Bros.

HBO Max became simply Max in 2023. Now Warner Bros. Discovery is going back to basics and reclaiming a brand long associated with high-quality programming.