HBO Max is coming in May 2020. It’s going to cost $14.99 per month, and if you’re an HBO Now subscriber who subscribes directly through HBO or an AT&T cable provider (UVerse or DirecTV), you will be upgraded to HBO Max automatically, at no additional cost.

At least that’s what I think is going to happen. There’s still a lot of obfuscation surrounding who will be getting what when HBO Max launches. But we do know that it will be $14.99 per month, that it will feature a large library of titles from across the WarnerMedia universe, and that it will be the only place where you can stream things like Friends or the films of Studio Ghibli.

At a presentation for investors in Burbank, California, on Tuesday, October 29, WarnerMedia unveiled its shiny new toy, officially entering the ongoing streaming wars by directly pushing back against its chief competitors, notably Disney+ and Netflix. In the extremely controlled screenshots and snippets that Warner’s team showed off, the thing sure seemed impressive.

A proposed feature that will let two users on the same account combine their viewing preferences to receive tailored recommendations — ideal for a couple watching together or a parent and child looking for something they’ll both enjoy — seems like a cool idea if the company can get it to work. And as a fan of the late, lamented FilmStruck streaming service (partly reborn as the Criterion Channel), I love that HBO Max will feature a curated list of classic film titles, refreshed each month by the folks at Turner Classic Movies; it’s not quite FilmStruck, but close enough.

But what I found most interesting about the presentation is what it revealed about how HBO Max is using its incredibly tenuous ties to the HBO brand name. Sure, it’s largely built atop the existing HBO Now infrastructure, but it seems to be targeting one of its biggest competitors by attempting to out-Netflix Netflix. And crucially, it has one big advantage that Netflix doesn’t have: a ready-made distribution network.

HBO Max is coming straight for Netflix

Warner Bros. Television

Netflix sees itself as a service for all people, a sort of new version of the old broadcast TV networks, but instead of creating programs designed to draw the largest audience possible, it creates an entire service designed to do just that. Whether you’re 6 or 60, the idea is that Netflix will offer multiple programs that appeal to you.

But Netflix also relies heavily on programming it has licensed from other studios, shows like Friends that are now leaving for the streaming services being launched by their parent studios. (The way these shifts are effectively creating giant walled gardens of mass pop culture is something I find troubling in the abstract, but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this article. I just want to note somewhere that it’s kind of messed up that only a very specific subset of people might be able to conveniently stream Friends in a couple of years.) And the studios that originally licensed their content to Netflix are increasingly identifying new ways to take on the streaming king.

Of particular interest are the respective approaches taken by Disney, with its new Disney+ service, and by WarnerMedia, with HBO Max. Disney+ is a targeted streaming service; it’s going to be programming big, mass-market original series from the Marvel and Star Wars universes, but it’s also going to ensure those series are suitable for family audiences. Disney+, in other words, sees a weakness in Netflix — creating a programming lineup that appeals to families with kids — that is simultaneously a strength of its brand. Disney equals family audiences; ergo, Disney+ does too.

Disney’s strategy is not quite an end-around that aims to cordon off an entire segment of the market from Netflix — which, after all, still programs plenty of family-friendly and kid-centric content. But with its price ($6.99 per month, about half of what it costs to subscribe to Netflix) and its programming strategy, it’s clear that Disney is hyper-focused on this very specific audience. And if you want stuff that’s more geared toward adults and older teens in your house, well, the bundle that combines Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ costs the same as a Netflix subscription and includes the massive Hulu TV library and sports programming, something Netflix doesn’t offer.

HBO Max, however, is basically just trying to outdo Netflix, without any specific audience in mind. There’s no family tier. There’s no premium-content-only tier that’s cheaper (you can still get HBO Now for $14.99 per month, but why would you when it has fewer things to watch?). There’s just HBO Max. And it will probably confuse people for a while — since it’s not HBO but also not not HBO — though it will likely wear down most objections in time. The idea, I think, is that if Netflix loses its popular library content (like Friends, one of the biggest shows in its catalog), then it will start to wither. And the competitors that end up with that popular library content (like HBO Max) will be able to sweep in and convince consumers that a Netflix subscription just isn’t worth the money anymore.

The story of TV in the 2020s may ultimately revolve around telecoms and net neutrality

The HBO Max approach makes sense in theory, but its corporate parentage is what really explains why it’s doing what it’s doing. WarnerMedia is owned by AT&T, and while AT&T might not be the largest internet service provider in the US, it is the second largest American telecom (after Verizon). And it owns both the UVerse and DirecTV cable providers, which means it has a built-in customer base for the HBO Max product. If you’re already an HBO subscriber on UVerse or DirecTV, your subscription will eventually be converted to an HBO Max subscription, and both cable providers will offer bundles featuring HBO Max.

Disney+ and Netflix aren’t part of companies that own telecoms; they depend on the companies that do own telecoms to provide their means of distribution. And if net-neutrality rules are ultimately struck down in court — this would allow your internet service provider to charge a higher price for certain kinds of content — then bandwidth-hungry streaming content will suddenly become incredibly expensive.

That’s no problem if you’re an ISP (like, say, AT&T-owned UVerse) — you can offer faster, cheaper access to your own streaming service (like HBO Max) in an attempt to lure subscribers. But Disney+ and Netflix aren’t affiliated with an ISP, so in a post-net-neutrality world, they may end up scrabbling to cut deals with ISPs to keep their subscription costs relatively low.

As a result, the big TV story of the 2020s might turn out to be distribution or the idea that whoever controls the airwaves controls the programming. The current race to lock up all the best movies and TV shows via exclusive deals on various services has created an expectation that the story will be about content, but the biggest shows are largely already spoken for. (HBO Max, for instance, recently closed a deal for South Park’s entire run.) The question of how you might watch that stuff without paying an arm and a leg, however — that’s still very much up in the air.

And that’s why I keep looking to the still-waiting-in-the-wings Peacock, from NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast. (Disclosure: NBCUniversal invested in Vox Media, which owns Vox, in 2015.) So far, Peacock hasn’t generated nearly as much buzz as Disney+ or HBO Max. But it is owned by a company that boasts a massive distribution reach in its 25 million-plus internet subscribers. Peacock, if automatically available to all of those subscribers in a post-net-neutrality world, would be in an enviable position indeed.