If you have been following the drama surrounding Disney+ as of late, you know that things have not been good. This is both in terms of company growth as subscriber losses continue to deteriorate the platform, and Guest satisfaction has significantly dropped with the removal of many titles, and now, the impending price hikes that will come with the subscription model that does not have an ad playing every few minutes.
Credit: Disney Plus
When Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Max, and more hit the market, subscribers loved it because they were able to pay a small monthly fee to be able to watch their favorite shows and movies without having commercials every 7 minutes, much like cable TV has. The price of Disney+ or Netflix was far less than a cable bill, and soon after inception, these platforms would soon create their own titles as they fully battled cable TV with new original content.
Recently, Disney held their Q3 2023 Earnings Call. Here we saw that direct-to-consumer sales have increased 9%. That being said, Disney+ subscribers have dropped to 146.1 million. Disney’s goal for Disney+ subscribers was 154.8 million, so this now falls short. Disney’s “core” consumers increased by 1% — regardless, we are starting to see subscribers drop off now that Disney has begun to reduce the amount of content they are able to bring to their audience, the people paying for these services on a month-to-month basis.
Disney CEO Bob Iger continued to discuss how they have raised prices across Disney+ prices and that ad-supported Disney+ subscription service options have been purchased by 40% of users. Ad-free bundles will also be coming to the US for Disney+ and Hulu, which will in turn, cost more as their current ad-free options do, increasing Disney+ revenue. Iger also announced that they’ll be cracking down on password sharing, making it impossible to split the cost of Disney+ with friends or family.
Credit: Disney
In less than a year, Disney+ will be increasing the monthly cost of its ad-free plan $3 to $13.99 in October. Hulu, which Disney owns a majority stake in, will also increase the monthly cost of its ad-free subscription $3 to $17.99.
Disney CEO Bob Iger expressed the following during the meeting:
Direct-to-Consumer revenues for the quarter increased 9% to $5.5 billion and operating loss decreased to $0.5 billion from a loss of $1.1 billion. The decrease in operating loss was due to a lower loss at Disney+, higher operating income at Hulu and a lower loss at ESPN+. 4 The improvement at Disney+ was due to higher subscription revenue and a decrease in marketing costs, partially offset by higher programming and production costs and lower advertising revenue. Higher subscription revenue was attributable to Disney+ Core subscriber growth and increases in Disney+ Core retail pricing. The increase in programming and production costs was due to higher costs for non-sports content, partially offset by a decrease in sports programming costs. The decreases in sports programming costs and advertising revenue reflected the comparison to IPL cricket programming in the prior-year quarter, as we did not renew the digital rights beginning with the 2023 season.
Previous Disney CFO Christine McCarthy outlined the company’s plan, saying, “We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation.” The comments come as Disney recently canceled projects like National Treasure and Lucasfilm’s Willow after just one season each.
“As a result, we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion,” McCarthy said. “The charge, which will not be recorded in our segment results, will primarily be recognized in the third quarter as we complete our review and remove the content.”
Credit: Lucasfilm
Therefore, Disney+ is currently in the midst of a historic content purge, which has garnered the attention of fans from around the world. Disney removed more than 50 titles from both Disney+ and Hulu, including dozens of full-length films and series, in an attempt to cut costs. Now, having made it to Q3, we can see that this content disposal campaign has not helped their Disney+ numbers.
We have seen tons of content lost on the platform, including Hulu as well, which has left many fans upset. Disney has been removing original titles which they own the rights for, which has left their users confused, and wanting to leave due to the lack of content currently available on the service.
Below, you can see the vast list of some of the canceled and removed programming. Disney has also chosen to end highly popular series like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series at the height of the show’s popularity.
Big Shot (Disney+) Turner & Hooch [(Disney+) The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney+) The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (Disney+) Willow (Disney+) The Making Of Willow (Disney+) Diary of a Future President (Disney+) Just Beyond (Disney+) The World According to Jeff Goldblum (Disney+) Marvel’s Project Hero (Disney) Marvel’s MPower (Disney+) Marvel’s Voices Rising: The Music of Wakanda Forever (Disney+) Rosaline (Disney+) Cheaper by the Dozen remake (Disney+) The One and Only Ivan (Disney+) Stargirl (Disney+) Encore! (Disney+) A Spark Story (Disney+) Black Beauty (Disney+) Clouds (Disney+) Weird but True! (Disney+) Timmy Failure (Disney+) Be Our Chef (Disney+) Magic Camp (Disney+) Howard (Disney+) Earth to Ned ( Disney+) Foodtastic (Disney+) Stuntman (Disney+) Disney Fairy Tale Weddings (Disney+) Wolfgang (Disney+) It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer (Disney+) The Premise (Hulu) Love in the Time of Corona (Hulu) Everything’s Trash (Hulu) Best in Snow (Hulu) Best in Dough (Hulu) Maggie (Hulu) Dollface (Hulu) The Quest (Hulu) The Hot Zone (Nat Geo/Hulu) Y: The Last Man (FX/Hulu) Pistol (FX/Hulu) Little Demon (FX/Hulu)
Credit: Screenshot via Disney+
The current price hikes in partnership with the loss of content are now causing users to cancel their subscriptions. One Disney+ user said, “It’s too expensive for me. I’m going to start subscription hopping between streaming services, only subbing to a service when it has a show I want to watch. I’ll keep YouTube TV instead of cable.” Others praised Netflix over Disney+ for not removing original content that is not copyrighted. Many are assuming that upcoming contracts will try to lock in users, which will cause a major fall in Disney+ subscribers.
CNN commented on the demise of the streaming platform, saying “The more than 20% hike in prices means Disney+ will now cost twice the original price when the service debuted four years ago, and Hulu’s ad-free tier is now more expensive than the most popular Netflix plan”
Those massive libraries of content are growing more expensive (not to mention shrinking) by the year. In fact, consumers who bundle just a few streamers together in 2023 will find that the final cost is effectively the same as basic cable. Couple that reality with the introduction of ads into streaming and the end product eerily resembles on-demand cable.
Credit: Disney
As we discussed earlier, it seems that Disney+ is just another channel on cable TV, that you will have to pay more for to erase the ads — which was the reason people paid for the service in the first place instead of watching cable TV. Prices are rising as content libraries shrink, and subscriber numbers are dwindling. Netflix will then be cheaper than Disney+, and considering Netflix remains the reigning leader of the streaming wars, it may be the one that viewers choose when deciding to cancel certain subscriptions as price hikes continue.
The discussion of ad placement and the cost to remove them on Disney+ has continued online, with users asking, “How obnoxious are the ads in Disney Plus w/ ads? With the coming price hikes, I’m debating downgrading to ads. I have ad-free Hulu + Live TV, Disney+, and ESPN+ bundle for $83 a month right now, and it’s already feeling heavy. I can downgrade to ads for $70 a month instead. Hulu with ads wouldn’t be that big a deal since most of what I watch is a part of the Live TV service anyways and has ads outside of Fox, FX, ABC, and whatnot. I am just hoping movies don’t have a ton of ads. Watching something almost 3 hours long, like Avengers Endgame, and turning it into something closer to 4 hours after ads would kind of suck.”
One comment was interesting, noting that Hulu ad frequencies are not good at all, and considering it is owned by Disney, will likely be the model that Disney+ follows, “Well, Hulu is brutal imo…and that is what I expect they will use as a model.” Those who have Hulu know that within a short 30-minute show, you will easily get the same about of commercials as cable television.
Credit: Disney
Others are sharing their tricks, stating that they only activate their Hulu service now without ads while they watch a show that debuts on the service, then cancel it directly after, showing that the paid ad subscriber model is not a stable one at all: “My wife and I tried watching ‘What we do in the Shadows’ with ads, but turns out, paying for the non-ad version of Hulu let us watch twice as many episodes in the same amount of time. 1000% worth it IMO, if you plan on binging a series. We just wait for whatever series it is to fully release, then we binge it all within our one month of Hulu, then deactivate the service again.”
We have also seen Disney+ users abandon ship, “I just cancelled my membership today. It’s simply just bad business to almost double your prices in a year. The only two things I was really excited to watch in the last year I have had to pay to rent. Do they now want more than I pay for Netflix with way less good content? No thanks. Missing Loki sucks, but it alone is not enough to keep me paying.” Now, it seems that not even new programming from Marvel can keep subscribers paying for the subscription.
In the end, it seems that the demise of Disney+ will be self-inflicted, as greed takes over quality and customer satisfaction within the platform.
Will you be canceling or keeping your Disney+ subscription?
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Credit: ABC
