Zaslav Ruins Everything

[Avaitor]

Should probably update the title to talk about Discovery.

But since the 30th, HBO Max has lost their post-1950 Looney Tunes shorts and the latter three seasons of The Flintstones, and will lose Justice League, JLU, and the Brave and the Bold at the end of the month. Oh, and the Aquaman cartoon from the 60's, too.

[Daikun]

Should probably update the title to talk about Discovery.

Title changed.

[Daxdiv]

Man, Warner Bros really is shooting themselves in the foot for their 100th anniversary. I'm glad that my cable provider gives people free HBO Max cause this would have been the "Yeah, I'm cancelling this shit" call.

[Commode]

I don't have HBO Max and have other ways to watch the entire LT library, but I don't really understand the 1950 cutoff, how many 30s and 40s cartoons are still on it?  Wouldn't it be easier to remove them all, you are already proving you don't care about animated content.

Given every cartoon from 1951 on just got dropped, that leaves at most like six Foghorn Leghorns, six Sylvester and Tweetys, seven Yosemite Sam and Bugs cartoons, five Pepes, one single Wile and Roadrunner cartoon, one Marvin, and no Speedy Gonzales, no Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, no Taz, no Hunting Trilogy, no Duck Dodgers, no What's Opera, Doc?, no One Froggy Evening.  A lot of heavy hitters missing all of the sudden, though I guess you can still watch tons of Clampett shorts I assume?  It's like the old days with the aap package on the Turner channels.

also don't get "licensing" something from within the same corporation, or it suddenly being "too expensive", that just plum makes no sense.  It just seems like the Kmart/Sears/Toys R Us model is now being employed to Warner Bros by some guy that doesn't care about anything besides money, bleed whatever you can and dump the husk, who cares about the legacy?  Shame too after WB/HBO was making such an effort to restore as much as they possibly could the last few years.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I heard it's meant as an excuse to stop paying royalties to the cast and crew, and I assume at least a few of the 30s/40s cartoons are public domain or have clauses that don't require sending residuals to the animators' estates.

[Avaitor]

But what about The Flintstones? Why is season 3 the cut off for royalties? Was Bamm-Bamm a third party creation or something?

[Commode]

royalties for these cartoons have to be like pennies per each cartoon, hardly doubt the Jones estate is making bank off "What's Opera, Doc?" streams.  They sell these cartoons for like 2 bucks a pop on digital platforms, most of which goes to WB's pockets.  And most of the actual crew, like animators and ink and painters and such, hardly got paid to begin with when the cartoons were made, doubt 70+ years later WB is paying them anything significant.

Plus like, there's still another decade plus of cartoons still on the platform directed by Jones/Freleng/McKimson, among others, and voiced by Mel Blanc.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I don't know, either those pennies add up over time, or WB is really that desperate to cut corners. There's a ton of stuff going on with HBO Max that just makes no sense, so it's hard to theorize the logistics behind this. Were there different contracts for both halves of Flintstones that we don't know of?

Yeah, Zaslav sucks ass, but there has to be something going on that explains all this instead of assuming he pulled a ton of cartoons just because.