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Only 11% of U.S. consumers are able to accurately tie hit series Heated Rivalry to HBO. Just 23% can do the same for The Pitt. Is streaming’s ‘brand lens’ out-of-focus? We talk to Jason Zolov, a former HBO research executive, now a senior consultant for Hub Entertainment Research, about what’s going on with the once-bullet-proof strategy of building content brands with exclusive originals.

Brand on the run: Why subscription streaming’s mass migration into bundles may be busting more than just churn

Comcast announced last week that Disney+, Hulu and HBO Max have joined Netflix, Peacock and Apple TV in the cable company’s Xfinity StreamSaver bundle, a package now spanning an array of eight different SVOD configurations, offering more than 28 million home internet and cable TV customers discounts of as much as 45% verses individually purchased pricing.

Streaming’s early phase of big-bang-like dispersion has cycled all the way back to big-collapse. Prioritizing subscriber growth over revenue expansion, services including HBO Max have been made available in big disaggregation markets like Amazon Prime Video Subscriptions, which bundle multiple services into one Prime bill. They’ve partnered within studio alliances like the Disney Bundle. Now the largest U.S. cable companies are back in the bundled video aggregation business, too. Consumers are increasingly consolidating their fractured array of DTC services, and their associated monthly bills, into a singularity, just like the olden days. One searchable app to rule them all.

Consumers seem to have acquiesced to a return to the old ways — paying for an acceptable level of stuff they’ll never watch, so long as they’re covered on the stuff they do care about, and the bill isn’t crazy high … and paid via nine different statements dispersed across three credit cards. Aggressive bundling appears to helped tame premium SVOD churn, which is back below 5% after surging to around 6% two years ago, per Antenna.

As for helping streaming companies distinguish their individual brands? Not so much.