Vibhuti Sharma and Lisa Richwine for Reuters:
Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday said it would offer a $13-per-month bundle of its three streaming services starting in November, a move to attract audiences who have embraced digital services such as Netflix Inc.
Disney’s bundle includes family-friendly digital offering Disney+, sports service ESPN+, and Hulu, which will cater to adults, for a $5-per-month discount. The Hulu offering in the bundle will include commercials. That price is the same as Netflix’s most popular plan, which allows streaming on two devices simultaneously.
Hulu is currently available for $5.99 a month with ads, or $11.99 without ads. ESPN+, which offers sports that are not shown on ESPN’s cable channels, including Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts, rugby and some professional baseball and soccer games, costs $4.99 a month. Disney+ on its own will cost $6.99 when it starts streaming on Nov. 12 with a slate of new and classic TV shows and movies.
MacDailyNews Take: And, not only that, but, according to CEO Bob Iger, Disney+ will be rebooting ‘Home Alone’ for all you filthy animals!
This is what an updated Home Alone would actually look like. pic.twitter.com/sGj86933LA
— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) August 7, 2019
Good thing Apple’s getting into the game this year as the field is going to get very crowded. There will be a limit as to how much cord-cutters will want to pay for these various streaming services which, when you add them together approaches the old cable/satellite bill. We currently subscribe to Sony’s PlayStation Vue, Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime Video, and more, with Apple TV+ a definite add soon. How much is too much? And, how much media can you really consume, anyway?
Not bad..thought for sure it would be more. For $5 more they offer all ESPN channels for streaming. That would be the killer app..
I have no need for ESPN.
I’m starting XFlix, it will be a 24 hour live streaming channel featuring me and all of my achievements, which I will be the director, producer and presenter for.
You’ll discover how I advised Steve Jobs, Woz, Gates, Zuckerberg and more to become smart, rich and famous.
I will also explain why I’ve stayed quiet all these years but chose to showcase myself to the world via MDN. I’ll also have proof that Andy Kaufman is still alive and doing duets with Elvis in an obscure Vegas casino for the last 20 years as impersonators of themselves, which is why no-one (except me) knows who they really are.
It will be must watch TV and also a perfect way to get to sleep each night.
MDN – finally acknowledging that these breakaways from cable are just going to coalesce into the cable model again.
The competition will be good to rein in cable providers’ pricing, but at the end of the day, cable is a good model.
I’ll just read more books, thanks. Every show is getting to be like watching the DNC talking points read by actors anyway, so what will I miss?
TV programming has always been political (safe harbor laws, educational content requirements, equal time mandates). In the US, in days of yore, it was mostly conservative propaganda (traditional nuclear families; happy housewives), more recently it’s been liberal propaganda (minority empowerment, identity tolerance)
You’ll find your books are full of it, too. Also your paintings and sculptures.
Odd.