“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” - Ted Sarandos in 2013
Seems Netflix won that race.
Why would anyone want to be old HBO? Writing good scripts is hard and not rewarded.
After that complete fumble of HBO becoming "Max" they were at their last legs
As I was reading the announcement, that quote popped into my head. I came here to say exactly that.
Thing is that Netflix didn't really succeed at that goal. HBO was and still is the gold standard for premium cable content. Netflix instead decided to go for the bottom 70% of the market, and the quality of their shows reflects that.
In fact the very reason for this purchase is that they desperately need help on the creative side.
Netflix is what it is today because all the studios trying to compete with their tech was an even bigger disaster than Netflix competing on content.