Disney+ shed another 4 million subscribers in the first three months of 2023, marking the streamer’s second consecutive quarterly drop after closing 2022 with a loss of 2.4 million subscribers. Disney ended the quarter with 157.8 million subscribers at Disney+, significantly missing Wall Street’s estimate of 163.17 million subs.
On Wednesday, CEO Bob Iger and Co. beat Wall Street estimates for Disney’s quarterly earnings and revenue due to an impressive January-March showing at the company’s theme parks. That win comes during a fiscal Q2, which concluded April 1, plagued by company-wide layoffs, a looming (and now active) writers strike and a turf war with Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis.
During Disney’s earnings call with analysts later Wednesday, Iger — who returned to his post as CEO last fall upon the ousting of Bob Chapek — announced that Hulu content will be introduced on Disney+ later this year in a “one-app experience.”
Also on the call, CFO Christine McCarthy announced Disney is “in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation” and “will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms.”
According to McCarthy, Disney expects a writedown in Q3 of $1.5-$1.8 billion from removing the content. McCarthy also said “going forward we intend to produce lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.”
MacDailyNews Note: While Disney plans to combine Hulu and Disney+ content into a single app, the services will stay separate. Both services will only be available to those who have subscribed to both Hulu and Disney+.
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Normal people aren’t happy with woke Disney…money talks.
Hmm, more like just plain boring programing. How many times can you take a 2 hour made-for-TV movie and try to spin it out into an 8 episode mini-series before people start to catch on.
It has very, very little to do with being “woke”.
It has to do with Disney+ and other Disney services being a huge draw in 2021 and 2022 than people leaving in late 2022 and 2023 because of a much poorer draw. The vast majority of people who have watched Disney+ don’t care about Disney’s politics.
Disney reshuffled the top management. Let’s see if they can get back to their programming that can bring back viewers.
Well if that helps you sleep at night….
But kids will watch the same superhero, Pixar or other animated classics over and over while most parents or grandparents will shell out a few bucks a month to have entertainment on hand UNLESS they don’t like the message going along with it.
Wondering if your youngin’s ever watched Veggie Tales?
I cancelled because I don’t want my kids being groomed.
Lol
Then you must be a spectacularly weak parent if a tv show can do that to your kids.
A TV show?
Can you read???
GO WOKE, GO BROKE. Americans do not put up that that shit.
Nah, nothing to do with “woke-ness” nor even the US market:
Disney’s contract ended in 1Q23 for broadcasting of Cricket games in India.
In the United States, Disney+ lost 300k paid subscribers.
That’s noise. Disney is betting on advertising (and user tracking / marketing data sales of course) being more profitable in the future, so the ad-free paid tier is getting more expensive. Those 300k aren’t lost customers, those are people choosing the ad supported tier.
The parroted whining about wokeness is the cry of the Faux idiots who are too stupid to read any factual media.
The business websites have the answer:
Disney’s contract ended in 1Q23 for broadcasting of Cricket games in India.
Which means that this -4M subscribers has literally nothing at all to do with the USA, or US politics. But thanks for playing.
Most streamers are losing subscribers. It has NOTHING to do with politics. Most Americans only care that corporations pretend to have values. Whether to the left or the right. We eat at Chick-fil-A, shop at Hobby Lobby, and watch our Disney/Marvel/Star Wars shows. We buy iPhones en masse.
@ James: what makes you think you’re normal? When did you determine that a company founded around silly cartoons featuring a mouse with pants, which lately has branched into describing more sides of humanity, crossed your woke detector limit?
Some might say that it’s twisted for humans to anthropomorphize anything. You must have been furious at Aesop, Hans Christian Anderson, and Mother Goose as well. Hate to tell you, friend, but art imitates life and life is a hell of a lot more diverse and interesting than what the narrow minded bitter whiners would allow. These same narrow minded idiots opposed racial integration a generation ago because they claimed (wrongly) that it wasn’t normal for people of different races to mix. Have you gotten over that yet? If not, you really should wake up. It’s a different era and minorities aren’t going to the back of the bus anymore.
Woke scum Disney, go to hell. Your bud light bankruptcy will be cherished. Fire all the woke scum and apologize to America or go to hell you woke grooming evil scum
Big loud yawn… 🥱
Nope, nothing to do with US or US politics at all.
The 4M lost subscribers were in India …
…because Disney’s contract ended in 1Q23 for broadcasting of Cricket games there.
But don’t let actual reality get in the way of your narrative attempt(!) /s
Liar! Oh if not this country is going down!
Read and learn:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/disney-earnings-stock-price-54c4fdea
“The decline in Disney+ subscribers in the fiscal second quarter from the first was largely driven by an 8% drop-off in Disney+ Hotstar subscriptions. Core Disney+ subscribers, which excludes Disney+ Hotstar, rose 1% sequentially to 52.9 million. ESPN+ subscribers rose 2% to 25.3 million, while total Hulu subscribers were mostly flat at 48.2 million.”
Similarly,
“…India and parts of Southeast Asia, lost 3.8 million subs…[but] Things went smoother stateside. In the U.S. and Canada, Disney+ gained 200,000 subs to reach 46.6 million.”
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/disney-plus-lost-millions-of-subscribers-1234807625/
Thus, the haters need to choose their poison:
…either variations of +/- 200K represents “noise” that’s to be ignored…
or
…they have to then admit that Disney’s increase in domestic customers was specifically because they’re a “woke” organization.
nothing to do with woke … everything to do with subscription costs doubling and more since Disney streaming began.
Not that either.
It was that Disney’s contract ended in 1Q23 for broadcasting of Cricket games in India.
woke or not woke, Disney will make your kids dumb, they destroyed star wars and pimped out the Star Wars universe with boring predicable carp. Nothing original from Disney in a decade or more, every project is written by focus groups and over sight from a corporation governance board. They need to pay people to watch that junk.
Heck Disney is so bad they even spoiled Pixar.
-4M in India does seem to indicate a likely connection to the loss of the sports contract more than any political movement. They’re also losing HBO content in India this year, so the losses there will likely increase.
Isn’t it interesting how this site allows the same few blowhard righties to blast their hate speech, spinning narratives that the objective data can disprove without hardly any investigative efforts? Thank you for posting something fact based. Shame on the asshats who keep posting divisive propaganda.