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Television

Disney Raises Streaming Prices After Services Post Big Operating Loss (cnbc.com) 131

Posted by BeauHD from the no-mention-of-inflation dept.
As part of an effort to make its streaming business profitable, Disney announced that the price of ad-free Disney+ will rise 38% to $10.99 -- "a $3 per month increase," reports CNBC. "The price of Hulu without ads will rise by $2 per month, from $12.99 to $14.99, effective as of Oct. 10. Hulu with ads will go up by $1 per month, rising from $6.99 to $7.99." From the report: The price increases reflect the growing operating loss for Disney's streaming services. Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ combined to lose $1.1 billion in the fiscal third quarter, $300 million more than the average analyst estimate, reflecting the higher cost of content on the services. The increased operating loss occurred even while Disney added about 15 million new Disney+ subscribers in the quarter, about 5 million more than analysts estimated. Disney has previously stated it plans to lose money on Disney+ until 2024.

Average revenue per user for Disney+ decreased by 5% in the quarter in the U.S. and Canada due to more customers taking cheaper multi-product offerings. Overall, the company's quarterly results, also announced Wednesday, beat analysts' expectations on the top and bottom lines. Disney+ subscriptions rose to 152.1 million during the most recent period, higher than Wall Street's projections of 147 million. In a separate article, CNBC reports that Disney now projects between 215 million and 245 million total Disney+ customers by 2024, "down 15 million on both the low end and high end of the company's previous guidance." Previously, the guidance was between 230 million and 260 million by the end of fiscal 2024. They also reaffirmed its expectation that the streaming service will become profitable by the end of 2024.
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Disney Raises Streaming Prices After Services Post Big Operating Loss More

Disney Raises Streaming Prices After Services Post Big Operating Loss

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  • They just have less people able to afford all the streaming sites, so some have cut back. Those left pay more. Lucky for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Disney pissed away $1.5 billion. They are growing, but there are just so many consumer that will buy multiple platforms. I dropped from like 7 to 3 and it is not a many thing . It is value.

      Disney does have value. It keeps the brats quiet, it keeps the husband distracted, But there has been a lot greed lately which has lead to unreasonable risk as content producers want to maximize return on their own product instead sharing. You want paramount, Disney, HBO content, you have to pay for the walled gard

      • In theory they are trying to maximize profits. I don't really buy the idea that their streaming businesses are losing money... just that the business units have a higher internal cost for licensing. Hollywood Accounting and all that.

        I am curious what the end-game is though. We have AppleTV (given as a gift) and Netflix, along with Prime. There is zero chance that I would subscribe to anything else... we might watch 25 hours of TV per month. I would love to cancel Netflix for a few months out of princip

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xeoron ( 639412 )
        Loss of 1.5 to gain 9. They announced they have lined up 9 Billion for the ad tier version of Disney+.

    • Right, because in the past when you lose money, charging more has always worked! Shortly before crashing or going bankrupt, but still...

  • Too many streaming services (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @07:31PM (#62778558) Homepage

    There are too many streaming services: too much competition for the consumers money.

    Raising prices will not fix this problem.

    • There are too many streaming services: too much competition for the consumers money.

      Disney probably figures that the average family is going to ask their kids whether they'd rather keep Netflix or Disney+, and I don't need a crystal ball to see where this is going to go. Sorry Netflix, Stranger Things - the College Years just ain't gonna cut it.

      • Disney figures wrong.

        Especially if the family has more than two kids or if mom has a friend with a small child and is pulling her hair over the four hundredth iteration of Tinker Bell's new adventure.

        Mom controls what they subscribe to.

      • Re:Too many streaming services (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JackieBrown ( 987087 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @12:21PM (#62780462)

        I think Disney messed up with jumping into politics and sexuality. Their past sins keep any progressives from leaving their kids unattened in from of Disney + and their new stands keep the conservatives away.

    • I have Disney+ bundled with Hulu and I was ok paying a little bit more for both services. But for an extra $3 it's not worth it for us. I'll miss watching the Mandalorian but the remaining content is not anything I would pay for. I have all the Star Wars movies on Blue-Ray or DVD and when I'm in the mood for them I'll pop them in. I cancelled Netflix a few months back and I'll keep an eye out to see what HBO Max does once they merge with Discovery. I cut the cord 12 years ago and content containment was muc

      • A simple solution is to have every streaming service join together, so a single point for the world to watch anything they want and their reasonable subs goes to the content owners of the programmes they actually watch. A simple process that will make money.

        On a side note how can Disney lose money on theior own content? all they should be paying for is the backbone infrastructure for the streaming services. They should be racking it in...

        • We had this before, it was called Cable TV. You paid a single point and you could watch anything you wanted.

          • And even back in the day some people watched but didnt have to pay. Back then it was giving a beer to the cable guy who would go remove all the filters for HBO.

          • We had this before, it was called Cable TV. You paid a single point and you could watch anything you wanted.

            Right, and people complained about the price, claimed “cord cutting” would be a panacea that saved you money. Turns out the Balkanization of content delivery costs as much or more as cable; especially as content owners move their content to their exclusive service. The one advantage is teh ability to subscribe, binge watch and cancel monthly.

            • Re:Too many streaming services (Score:4, Informative)

              by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @08:46AM (#62779774)

              claimed âoecord cuttingâ would be a panacea that saved you money.

              And it has worked out exactly that way. I pay $25/month for Netflix. Prime doesn't count since it comes along for the ride with shipping. But even if it did count, it brings the total to $37/month. That gives us everything Cable didn't and couldn't: ala-carte, on-demand, commercial-free viewing from anywhere at any time. Cable didn't (and simply can't) provide anything even remotely close to that, yet they want to charge five to six times the price for a truly shitty experience.

              No Thanks.

              HBO isn't even remotely worth the price, and neither are any of the other dinosaur networks. Disney+ is worth it for one or two months out of the year, and is otherwise very cancelable for the other ten to eleven months.

              So yes, Cord Cutting saves me about $1,475 a year.

              • claimed âoecord cuttingâ would be a panacea that saved you money.

                And it has worked out exactly that way. I pay $25/month for Netflix. Prime doesn't count since it comes along for the ride with shipping. But even if it did count, it brings the total to $37/month. That gives us everything Cable didn't and couldn't: ala-carte, on-demand, commercial-free viewing from anywhere at any time. Cable didn't (and simply can't) provide anything even remotely close to that, yet they want to charge five to six times the price for a truly shitty experience.

                No Thanks.

                HBO isn't even remotely worth the price, and neither are any of the other dinosaur networks. Disney+ is worth it for one or two months out of the year, and is otherwise very cancelable for the other ten to eleven months.

                So yes, Cord Cutting saves me about $1,475 a year.

                Good for you. But a lot of people want other channels besides Netflix. With streaming services going to XYZ+, it’s easy to wind up paying more if you want the content. Judging by comments about having to subscribe to multiple services to get content, I suspect many people ar paying as much or more than before. It all depends on what you want.

                • ...itâ(TM)s easy to wind up paying more if you want the content.

                  The simple strategy is to subscribe to one service (maybe two, if you really must) for a season, then cancel. By then, whatever other services you may want will have entire seasons of shows available. Subscribe to one or two of the others for a year, then cancel. Repeat indefinitely.

                  • ...itâ(TM)s easy to wind up paying more if you want the content.

                    The simple strategy is to subscribe to one service (maybe two, if you really must) for a season, then cancel. By then, whatever other services you may want will have entire seasons of shows available. Subscribe to one or two of the others for a year, then cancel. Repeat indefinitely.

                    I have used that strategy, and get a number of streaming services bundled with my internet and phone; but if want live TV, sports and some exclusive shows you're pretty much at or above a cable bundle. Cord cutting has enabled major content providers teh ability to do exclusive shows, not on their OTA networks or not licensed to other streaming services to extract more money from consumers. Not all consumers, but enough for it to continue and spread.

          • We had this before, it was called Cable TV.

            If you have ever been forced to watch Cable TV, you would not be suggesting that it was even remotely close to what was suggested.

            We came really close to having that with Netflix. It was everyone's go-to streaming service before every other producer realized they had been stupid to think that people didn't want to choose what they watched when they wanted to watch it, and to do so without commercials.

            Netflix is the one service I keep subscribing to even if I don't watch anything for months. Their delivery i

            • This one episode per week callback to Network TV that everyone else is pushing is a complete non-starter.

              I am really torn on this. I'm watching For All Mankind and a few other shows weekly but I prefer binging.

              That said, when I binge, episodes stand out a lot less. This can be frustrating when I am trying to go back and rewatch an episode.

              Also, you lose the punch of the bullshit cliff-hanger ending that is usually resolved 5 minutes into the next episode. While that may be a good thing and lead to less dissapointment, I do enjoy having time to discuss the epiosde with my friends or on reddit without worring

        • On a side note how can Disney lose money on their own content? all they should be paying for is the backbone infrastructure for the streaming services. They should be raking it in...

          I'm guessing it is costing them way more for a robust content delivery system and additional customer service reps than they anticipated. It's also possible they didn't anticipate how much they would spend on creating "exclusive" content for their channel. Disney+ original programming [wikipedia.org]

          Most people aren't going to pay $10+ per month to watch Cinderella, Snow White, or Jungle Book without commercial interruptions. They need fresh content to stay relevant and producing 100+ new episodes per week is draining t

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by thomn8r ( 635504 )

        I'll miss watching the Mandalorian but the remaining content is not anything I would pay for

        Arrr Matey, this is the way...

    • Consumers: "Cable is bad, let us buy only what we want"

      Producers: "Ok"

      Consumers: "Noooo, not like that"

      • It isn't really a problem for the consumer... we just subscribe to whatever fits our budget, or find entertainment elsewhere.

        It is a problem for the streaming services. There isn't enough money to support all of them.

        There will be significant consolidation among the services over time as the startups run out of funding. The big fish will eat the smaller ones.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by raynet ( 51803 )

          Yep, I rotate my streaming providers, 2-3 months per each and only one active at a time. Also if a streaming service only has one series I wanna watch, I will download it instead of subscribing.

      • Average revenue per user for Disney+ decreased by 5% in the quarter in the U.S. and Canada due to more customers taking cheaper multi-product offerings

        They're increasing the cost to people who are buying what they want to offset the reduced money they get from people buying a bundle that they don't necessarily want all the components of.

        That's NOT what people asked for when they said "let us buy only what we want." It's a move toward turning streaming into the bundled hell that we were trying to escape by ditching cable.

      • What people were complaining about was Cable made you buy 100 products in order for you to watch some content from the 3 channels you actually wanted. Now with streaming they are going down that exact same path, You only want to be able to see these 4 or 5 shows. No problem, you just buy all of netflix, all of disney+ all or Amazon Prime etc etc. I don't mind paying for what I want, I refuse to be forced to pay everyone full price for watching a small amount of content from each, basically exactly the same

        • Yeah, except arguably those cable bundles end up being cheaper for all the channels than buying a la carte

    • Raising prices is not due to competition for consumers money. If Disney+ can't turn a profit with 160million subscribers then they are operating with a product priced below their costs. Your post would make sense for a small service with say a couple of million subscribers, which is unable to over come your fixed costs. But when you make a loss with that many people it's your variable / unit costs that are biting you.

      You can't make a loss on each customer and make up for it in volume.

    • Well, yes, it might.

      People are consolidating their streaming habits. Someone who used to sub to 3 services now only subs to 1. And they will keep that one. If you had three services each costing X bucks and you now have one service that raised its price to X*1.2 bucks, it's still cheaper than the three services and you'll keep it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Each of these services doesn't have enough content to warrant maintaining a subscription. There are only a few things on each that I want to watch, and when I've watched them I'll move on to another service.

      They try to make you subscribe for longer by releasing one episode a week like linear TV. Some people will just wait until all episodes are available.

    • That's the crazy part - usually when a business is seeing sales fall, they LOWER prices! That's about as basic as an economic rule gets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      There are too many streaming services: too much competition for the consumers money.

      Raising prices will not fix this problem.

      The thing is, and I dislike Disney with a passion, that much like Amazon and Netflix, the price rises aren't that far out of line with inflation. Streaming services were stupidly cheap to being with as well, we knew this was because they were a loss leader to encourage adoption. That bit is over and now we're seeing them increase prices to compensate (and decrease quality). The ice cream companies do the same thing when the release a new ice cream. The initial shipments are made as best as they can be to g

  • Disney has previously stated it plans to lose money on Disney+ until 2024.

    Man, it must truly be nice to be sitting on such a fat pile of money that your business model can actually include losing over a billion dollars as part of the plan. That's it right there, the secret to breaking into an established industry. Anybody got a few billion to spare?

  • I have Disney+ for another year or so I think, because I signed up for a very cheap initial three year deal.

    Once that expires, I may cancel Disney+ from time to time, but I have to say of all services around, Disney+ is probably the one I'll spend the most time subscribed to (well except for Amazon Video, which kind of gets me for free because I still find Prime useful... for now).

    A few years back I would have said I'd mostly be in Netflix but that has changed a lot, and these days I am reluctant to spend m

    • Netflix lost the content war. They're not even trying to make good content now.

      • While my kids watch a fair bit of content on it, I keep Disney+ for myself. My kids mostly want to watch stuff on Netflix and Hulu (the latter of which I keep for Futurama).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by edwdig ( 47888 )

      If you got that initial cheap 3 year deal at launch, it's going to expire right around when these price increases kick in. You *might* pay for one month at the current prices before the increase. I haven't checked the exact dates to be sure.

  • Obi-Wan Kenobi? Ms Marvel? Book of Boba Fett? Chip and Dale's movie? There's too much content that is like a 6/10 in terms of quality, but costs $100M+ to produce. The sheer number of Star Wars TV shows is alarming, especially with the spotty track record so far (excluding Mandalorian)

    They need to consolidate Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ into something that makes folks NEED to subscribe instead of just throwing money at the wall

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )

      Kind of liked Ms. Marvel, actually. Interesting look at a culture few know.

    • Obi-Wan Kenobi? Ms Marvel? Book of Boba Fett? Chip and Dale's movie? There's too much content that is like a 6/10 in terms of quality, but costs $100M+ to produce. The sheer number of Star Wars TV shows is alarming, especially with the spotty track record so far (excluding Mandalorian)

      They need to consolidate Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ into something that makes folks NEED to subscribe instead of just throwing money at the wall

      They're not all hits, but they're all pretty good. In fact, the mini-series are the first Star Wars content since the original trilogy that actually captures the space-western vibe of the original trilogy.

      As for the various Marvel series, it seems a good adaption of the comic book vibe and a way to test out new characters before moving to film.

      Overall they've got 150 million subscribers, they seem to be doing well. I suspect the rising price is related to inflation in the sense that the content is more expe

    • I have no desire to pay for ESPN+, even indirectly. I suspect that I am not alone.

  • Said it once and I'll say it again. Every Tom, Dick an Harry with a media collection setting up their own streaming service is a road to nowhere. I'm not going to subscribe to 28 streaming services at $10-25 each. I'm sticking with Netflix, roaming between the others one at a time each month and pirating the ones that aren't available in my region.

    • I'm sticking with Netflix, roaming between the others one at a time each month and pirating the ones that aren't available in my region.

      Why treat Netflix any differently than you treat every other service?

      I've got them all in rotation - except for Paramount+, which comes free with my T-Mobile cell service. BTW thanks to the people here who let me know about yt-dlp - it's not perfect, but it makes Paramount+ much more consumer-friendly.

      • I'm sticking with Netflix, roaming between the others one at a time each month and pirating the ones that aren't available in my region.

        Why treat Netflix any differently than you treat every other service?

        I've got them all in rotation - except for Paramount+, which comes free with my T-Mobile cell service. BTW thanks to the people here who let me know about yt-dlp - it's not perfect, but it makes Paramount+ much more consumer-friendly.

        Every service has many a tentpole franchises. Maybe Netflix has a few franchises s/he likes. Which ones? Only s/he can tell.

        A hardcore star-wars and/or marvel fan would treat Disney+ differently from the others.
        A hardcore fan of Star trek and/or southpark would treat Paramount+ different than the others.
        A hardcore fan of DC and/or cartoon network would treat HBOMax different from the others...

        You see the drift.

        • A hardcore star-wars and/or marvel fan would treat Disney+ differently from the others.

          Heh. Depends on the definition of hardcore, I guess. I aleady have the good (old) stuff on disc. No interest in the new.

    • Said it once and I'll say it again. Every Tom, Dick an Harry with a media collection setting up their own streaming service is a road to nowhere. I'm not going to subscribe to 28 streaming services at $10-25 each. I'm sticking with Netflix, roaming between the others one at a time each month and pirating the ones that aren't available in my region.

      From a consumer's point of view, you are right... But these are not ordinary "Tom, Dick an Harry". These are megacorps for wich a 1.1 Milliard loss is just couch-cushion-change... And with tentpole franchises galore to keep people interested...

      We will end up roaming between many services one at a time each month (like you correctly said), but subscribing to "Ad-Supported" tiers (to lessen the financial impact) in more than one service...

      The only win for us consumers will be the VoD aspect of streaming, and

  • Another non-news (Score:3)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @08:24PM (#62778660)

    Disney has previously stated it plans to lose money on Disney+ until 2024.

    So, that they are losing money in 2022 should be no surprise.

    Disney added about 15 million new Disney+ subscribers in the quarter, about 5 million more than analysts estimated.

    Yet everything is going swimmingly

    As part of an effort to make its streaming business profitable, Disney announced that the price of ad-free Disney+ will rise 38% to $10.99 -- "a $3 per month increase," reports CNBC. "The price of Hulu without ads will rise by $2 per month, from $12.99 to $14.99, effective as of Oct. 10. Hulu with ads will go up by $1 per month, rising from $6.99 to $7.99."

    Instead of waiting until 2024 to make a MEGA-HIPER PRICE RISE, they are doing it step-by-step.

    Nothing to see here, move along.

  • Analysts generally predicted Disney would subsidize their new streaming service to gain market-share from Netflix et. al. The real question was how long they'd bleed before they settle back to at least break-even. It's a common strategy of megacorporations breaking into new sub-markets to use their cash cows to bust into new prairies.

  • With the HBO/Discovery merger maybe we will see a bit more consolidation of services.

    Eventually I feel like Disney will have to drop the "family fare only" farce and just fold Hulu in fully.

    After that it's just really the two "new media" services Netflix and Amazon and the old media houses. Warner/Discovery, Disney/Fox, Paramount/Viacom and NBC/Universal.

    6 big services control probably 90% of content. Add them all up and you get... The cost of a cable TV subscription and the cord cutting oborrbos is comp

  • - adding insult to injury - (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @09:35PM (#62778788)

    Notice anything interesting about this excerpt ?
    " ~ from $12.99 to $14.99, ~ , rising from $6.99 to $7.99. "
    Yes, everything ends in the number nine. Just like at your favorite retail stores and gasoline stations. Why is that? Is it a reflection of their material and overhead costs? Is it the result of a carefully worked out formula by cost accountants and marketing engineers? Um, no.

    Very simple: Marketing people think you are stupid. Yes. Take a moment to imagine them right now, slapping you across your face. That's what they are doing with this humiliation. They think you will say "Well, at least $14.99 is less than $15. I'd never pay $15!" And guess what- they are right. After over 100 years, marketers have persisted in this subterfuge and consumers have accepted it. We really ARE stupid. We save one penny from the next dollar amount and we think it's a bargain! There are exceptions. I buy certain products and services from Apple, Google and some other high-end sources and their prices often don't end in 9. It's mostly the sleaziest retailers catering to the uneducated who do that.

    Consider whether you really want to be abused by price hikes AND insulted by price gimmicks before you submit to Disney's extortion.

    • Very simple: Marketing people think you are stupid. Yes.

      No. Marketing people *know* you are stupid. Ending a price in 99, or 95 whatever your minimum unit is, wasn't just something a marketing team dreamed up. It's based on well known research that showed that consumers (all consumers, even those conscious of this trick) subconsciously focus on rounding to the nearest few significant digits or dollar values. It's how human brains work. It's a combination of the effect of reading a number from most to least significant digit, and becoming less interested in the l

      • Education doesn't beat human nature. Even you are subject to this, it's only by sheer stubbornness that you try to avoid it *after* your brain has already acted in the same way all other do.

        Education can be a hinderance as educated people think they are too smart to have inherent human biases and thus easily fall pray to them. The easiest person to con is the one who thinks they are too smart to con.

    • Good point, sadly all reporting just follows without a question. Instead, they could report USD 15 (minus 1 cent) or USD 15 (-0.01) to be both correct and clear about the level.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not stupidity, it's a flaw in the way the human brain works. The brain is always trying to prioritize information and decide what it can safely ignore. Cents are much less important than dollars in this evaluation of cost.

  • Disney has a severe cost/value proposition issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The_Revelation ( 688580 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @10:12PM (#62778864) Homepage
    I'm not exactly sure how Disney is able to justify a cost increase to watch a bunch of old animated movies. As a parent, its a very minor convenience to watch Disney animation via their website rather than just using the collection of movies I've already downloaded over a decade ago.

    Disney offers absolutely no value with any of its other content on Disney+. The Star Wars and the Marvel stuff is all terrible. Nobody is asking for it, and to be honest, none of it is age appropriate stuff for my kids.

    Its as if Disney has abandoned its core product of animated (which people want to pay for) entertainment in favour of a whole bunch of content that I'm not really comfortable with showing my kids due to the way Disney needlessly positions its values over the requirements of the story.

    It certainly feels as though Disney is asking every subscriber to cover the cost of their new garbage rather than allowing us just to pay to access their legacy content which should effectively cost them nothing to stream.

    And that leads to what I can only consider complete confusion over what the Disney product is offering, leading back to that value proposition. Who is it meant for? It seems like it would traditionally be aimed at kids, but then they put a bunch of confronting social commentary in their shows that parents will have difficulty justifying providing access to, and they have shows like the Predator (Prey) which is something I don't want showing up when my kids log into Disney. Who is this for?

    • The Star Wars and the Marvel stuff is all terrible. Nobody is asking for it

      You should consider that you are not in a very common demographic, and in fact a lot of people are asking for those things.

    • Disney offers absolutely no value with any of its other content on Disney+. The Star Wars and the Marvel stuff is all terrible. Nobody is asking for it, and to be honest, none of it is age appropriate stuff for my kids.

      The growing subscriber numbers and box office for Marvel movies seems to suggest otherwise. I will agree that some of the Marvel TV series are not up to par, but some of them are quite good. If they bring the grittiness of the Netflix Defenders (especially Punisher) over, no, that won't be age-appropriate for some, but they're not just a kids network anymore.

      • FWIW, the Punisher series is actually on Disney+ now.

        (I watched the first few episodes a couple months back, decided it wasn't quite for me.)

    • and they have shows like the Predator (Prey) which is something I don't want showing up when my kids log into Disney.

      Errm. It's called "access control" and those shows won't show up if you set it up correctly. To answer your question of who Disney+ is for: Everyone. The fact you think it's targeted at just kids shows your little understanding of a service which includes R rated offerings, horror shows, non-fiction programs (depending on what you think of National Geographic), and classic movies, along side old, and very much brand new cartoons.

      Or maybe someone ticked the access control box on your account as a joke, and t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The Netflix Marvel stuff, which is now on Disney+, has some good stuff. Daredevil and especially Jessica Jones. Luke Cage and The Punisher are good too. Definitely not for kids.

      On the Star Wars side, The Mandalorian isn't terrible. It has a few moments.

    • Disney+ just recently introduced a content management system for parents. It seems kind of crazy to me that they have gone for so long without one. That one streaming service has shows targeted at toddlers mixed in with Iron Man 3 where people are graphically dismembered and tortured seems nuts.

  • How many streaming services are losing money, again?

    So it's almost like a big, collective, single video on demand service is a huge winner, but balkanizing it into little walled gardens and charging the shit out of people is somehow not working?

  • I am really struggling with finding any decent video streaming platform these days.

    Can anyone recommend a video streaming platform which:
    - is completely ad-free (no ads or promotion of own content before/mid watching of any kind)
    - allows you to easily hide content by title from the UI (**)

    ** - so not Amazon Video, for example, which requires you to hide each and every season individually (which is completely unfeasible, really)

    • Doesn't exist, every platform thinks it knows best what you want to watch. Best bet is to get invited to someone's Plex account.

  • As in, ESPN, Hulu, Fox, Disney+, ABC, etc.

    People left cable not because they were wanted to avoid bundling, but because they wanted to save money because the cable companies were overcharging and using the excuse of more undesired content to convince people it was a good deal.

    You want to split content, then do it fairly. Sports vs News vs entertainment makes sense. MAYBE you can split young kids vs general entertainment. But Hulu vs Disney vs ABC vs Fox does NOT make sense.

    When businesses focus on stupid

    • As in, ESPN, Hulu, Fox, Disney+, ABC, etc.

      You want to split content, then do it fairly. Sports vs News vs entertainment makes sense. MAYBE you can split young kids vs general entertainment. But Hulu vs Disney vs ABC vs Fox does NOT make sense.

      Fairness has nothing to do with it; maximizing revenue does. You bundle because someone may not pay X for one service and Y for another because X+Y is too high; but want both. However, they will pay Z if it less than X+Y, even if it is greater than X or Y. As a result, you get more revenue with a bundle than if you force a customer to chose between X or Y.

  • Give it a couple more years and you'll be paying as much for your 'streaming services' as you did for Cable TV. So much for 'cutting the cord'!
  • Is this what happens when all the free subscriptions run out and people don't want to pay ?

  • I don't see how raising prices is going to provide an incentive to attract more customers. This seems like a really dumb way to try to make your numbers. They seem to be vastly overvaluing their services. . So they
    * aren't trying to attract new members
    * don't care about losing current customers.
    Hmm...they hope they have enough customer who won't care about the increase?

  • Fuck u Disney for being one of those fragmenting the streaming services in the hope of cashing in. Your lack of fresh content means u are unlikely ever to successful with your anti consumer strategy. Nice to see u suffering.
  • You mean one of those twenty-seven other streaming services I don't want? I'll live.

  • I would tell it everywhere: "rotate" your streaming services.

    It is very rare that I would have a service that keeps me busy for months. I would get most "bang for my buck" in the first month, or two, then it becomes a trickle.

    So rotate the services. Sign up for Netflix, and immediately cancel auto-renewal (this should be the default option, why is there no law against that practice?). Then when it ends, sign up for HBO Max, do the same, rinse and repeat for other services.

    You might keep one as "main", maybe

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