HBO Max app reports outages amid the 'House of Dragons' premiere

Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal discusses HBO Max's technical issues with its app during the premiere of its Game of Thrones prequel series 'House of the Dragon,' and also comments on Paramount's plans for a 'Ferris Bueller's Day off' spinoff.

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DAVE BRIGGS: HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel, "House of the Dragon" premiered last night on HBO Max. Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal joining us now. It is everything the streaming world has been anticipating for a couple of weeks now. What do we know?

ALLIE CANAL: Oh, yeah, I mean, my friends are talking about it. It was all over my Twitter feed. It was "House of the Dragon." "House of the Dragon." Now, we didn't get official numbers from HBO yet. But we did get some numbers from Samba TV.

Now, the numbers are about to tell you, it's likely that once we get those numbers from HBO, it's going to be much, much higher. But Samba TV said that out of three million smart TV homes, 2.6 million households watched "House of the Dragon." And that's the best viewership of any premium cable or streaming premiere year-to-date.

Now, this data does exclude mobile. So again, expect those HBO figures to come in much higher. But on the mobile front, I did get some ranking data from data.ai which showed that as of yesterday, the HBO Max app jumped 136% to the number one spot by downloads for over the top ads.

And that makes sense considering all the outages that we saw last night right before the premiere. According to Downdetector, over 3,700 outages were reported across HBO Max app. People on Twitter, they were not happy about it.

SEANA SMITH: You know, it's so interesting because clearly people are not happy about it. But we talk about more and more people going over to streaming, right? So have we heard a response yet from HBO Max, just in terms of why we're seeing these outages and why, hopefully, that won't continue here in the future.

ALLIE CANAL: Yeah, they did send a statement to multiple media outlets saying, we know that some users are having trouble. This-- the show is available to stream. They specifically cited the Amazon Fire Stick as one of the things that was having some trouble when it came to consumers trying to watch this show.

But apparently, now the outages have calmed down. But I've seen that, too, on the HBO Max app. I remember "Mare of Easttown," the series finale, I went to go watch it. And I couldn't. I was refreshing it. I was refreshing it. Nothing was working. So it seems like that's something that as streaming accelerates, we're gonna have to-- we're gonna have to fix--

SEANA SMITH: Yeah.

ALLIE CANAL: --because people aren't happy waiting.

DAVE BRIGGS: Let's hope-- let's hope so.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, less people being able to see it means less spoilers for me because I still haven't seen that yet. But from the prequel now to the sequel that nobody saw coming, Allie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Allie, please tell us, 60-year-old Matthew Broderick is coming back to high school?

ALLIE CANAL: You know, I'm not completely sure if he is going to be in this new sequel. I'm sure people would absolutely love that. I mean, I'm-- I mean, who knows. Matthew Broderick is amazing. I feel like this movie made him a movie star. So I wouldn't be surprised to see him come back.

But yeah, this is Paramount. Honestly, has been crushing it on the movie front. We just saw so much success with "Top Gun, Maverick." Now, this new sequel. Obviously, everything old is new again. We're talking "Game of Thrones," "House of the Dragon." Now, this "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" sequel. It's going to be called "Sam and Victor's Day Off."

And I think it's a good thing for Paramount. I think the company as a whole has sort of struggled, has come under a lot of scrutiny from analysts because a lot of their business is tied to that secular media component, traditional cable which we've seen some headwinds with the slowdown in advertising, along with cord-cutting accelerating. Obviously, that's a good thing for its streaming side, Paramount+. But overall, analysts have not been too kind to Paramount. So I think the fact that they have "Top Gun," now this new hotly talked about sequel, is a good thing down the line for this company.

DAVE BRIGGS: Both From 1986. Heck of a year for movies, man.

SEANA SMITH: That's true. I don't know how big of a hit, though, this one will be. Would you-- you're-- I feel like you would definitely see it, right? You seem pretty excited about it.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah--

SEANA SMITH: Oh, you're more skeptical?

DAVE BRIGGS: I'm not as eagerly anticipating it as you might expect.

SEANA SMITH: OK.

ALLIE CANAL: They need the stars back.

DAVE BRIGGS: I love "Ferris."

ALLIE CANAL: They need like--

SEANA SMITH: They do need the stars back.

ALLIE CANAL: --Jennifer Gray.

SEANA SMITH: Although, that would be a very interesting storyline.

ALLIE CANAL: Right, like how would they--

SEANA SMITH: Where would they go with that.

ALLIE CANAL: Yeah, how would they weave them back into the story?

DAVE BRIGGS: Hollywood is out of ideas, man.

ALLIE CANAL: They really are.

SEANA SMITH: That's what it seems like.

ALLIE CANAL: It does.

SEANA SMITH: At least.