Posts for 'Disney+'

Four topics for this week’s podcast:

First, Disney+ and Hulu are no longer available for sign up in Apple’s App Store. As we discuss, this feels like a move by Disney to preserve margins, though at the expense of some of its subscribers losing the advantages of unified billing and integrated search/discovery. It also means less competition for Amazon, which is already the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services.

Next, IAB Tech Lab this week announced an initiative to help standardize emerging CTV ad formats. We’re confident it will help more advertisers move spending into the channel.

Third, Fubo is boldly offering premium services on a standalone basis, not requiring a base subscription plan. Fubo aims to be a “super aggregator” and is breaking from pay-TV operators’ traditional approach of enabling access to premium services only for subscribers. It’s a sign of the times, with viewers requiring flexibility and it seems like a savvy play by Fubo to keep viewers engaged with its app.

Last, a variety of streaming services are partnering with grocery chains and delivery apps, which both of us think makes a lot of sense to reduce churn and cost per acquisition. We expect to see more partnerships going forward.

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

Both Google and Roku announced new streaming media devices this week, with Google launching its Google TV Streamer, which is positioned as the “next generation of Chromecast,” and Roku releasing an updated version of its Roku Ultra. As we discuss, these are two companies at far ends of the TV OS battle, with Google somewhat surprisingly still a laggard, and Roku still a leader.

Next up, Disney+ officially launched its paid sharing globally, following its announcement earlier this year. Disney+ is clearly hoping to emulate the success Netflix had following its rollout of paid sharing, though as we detail, there are important differences between how Disney+ is executing that could lead to much different results.  

Then we discuss a newly announced initiative by Whip Media to bring more transparency to FAST viewership across channels. While this would be a step forward, as Colin explains there are critical challenges to making this a reality.  

Finally, we circle back to a report last Friday about remarks from Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters concerning the possibility of the company leaning into live sports. Peters said “never say never” about live sports and with nearly 280 million global subscribers, Netflix would have an immediate impact.

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Last weekend Disney blacked out all of its networks on DIRECTV as the carriage agreement between the two companies expired without a new one being reached. These types of disputes are common in the pay-TV industry, and there’s always a lot of jawboning and finger-pointing, making it difficult to understand the exact proposals and counter-proposals.

What seems indisputable is that Disney is pushing for a continuation of its longstanding approach to bundling all of its networks together, perhaps with some additional flexibility for DIRECTV. With ESPN’s high cost, that means the bundle price to DIRECTV is elevated, even as cord-cutting accelerates. It also means DIRECTV would keep paying for a bunch of smaller channels most of its subscribers don’t watch. None of this is especially friendly to viewers.

The irony of course is that even as Disney is pushing for bundling with traditional distributors like DIRECTV, Disney is separately part of the Venu Sports JV which unbundles its (and Fox’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s) sports networks and packages them into a new streaming offering. Venu’s launch is now up in the air due to Fubo TV winning a preliminary injunction against it.

Stepping back, as we observe, Disney is also pursuing a variety of other moves that also suggest reduced customer focus. The primary example of this is the latest round of Disney+ price increases that this time are coupled with a crackdown on password sharing - an approach completely counter to how Netflix wisely executed its password limit. Even though Disney eked out a profit in its DTC segment in the latest quarter, Colin and I believe these moves will put a lot of pressure on Disney+ subscriber numbers in the coming quarters.

(Outside of the streaming space, Disney also recently and embarrassingly insisted, and then reversed, its position in the case of a woman who died from an allergic reaction to food at Disney World, with Disney initially insisting her husband lost his rights to sue the company because he signed up for Disney+.)

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Disney reported a $47 million operating profit in its direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment in its fiscal third quarter 2024. The profit comes one quarter earlier than Disney had forecast. The $47 million profit reverses a $517 million loss in the year ago quarter.

While the optics of the profit are indeed positive, in this week’s podcast Colin and I do a deep dive into the profit’s true quality and sustainability. Doing so reveals a fragile picture. First, there are issues about how much of Disney+’s recent subscriber gains are in fact due to the Charter deal, which by some accounts hasn’t been terribly successful in driving active subscribers. Meanwhile, Hulu’s been moving sideways for a while, and there’s no longer transparency about ESPN+’s subscriber count.

Another issue is Disney+’s falling average monthly revenue per paid subscriber which declined further in Q3. It’s noteworthy because Disney’s CFO ascribed it partially to Disney+’s lower-priced ad tier. Yet Hulu actually reported higher average monthly revenue per paid subscriber due to higher ad revenue. So there are some contradictory signals.

Meanwhile, Disney’s aggressive bundling, at deep discounts, may bode well as a longer-term churn-buster, but will almost certainly pressure near-term DTC profitability. Then there’s Disney+’s price increase, which will kick in soon, concurrent with a broad rollout on limiting password sharing. This double whammy is likely to lead to some subscriber losses.

From analyzing the the Q3 financial statement, it’s clear Disney+ and Hulu were still unprofitable in the quarter. It was actually ESPN+ that turned the DTC segment green. But as I detail, further analysis reveals an unusual jump in ESPN+’s quarterly profit level and profit margin vs. a year ago, suggesting Disney may have done a one-time reallocation of expenses from ESPN+ to ESPN that cannot be replicated in future quarters. Speaking of one-time events, Disney may still owe Comcast another $5 billion for the Hulu buyout (it’s not clear if that would hit the DTC line or another).

Finally, and at the risk of piling on, just over the horizon in fiscal ’25 loom big payments for Disney to the NBA for its new rights deal and an earnings drag as the new Venu Sports JV (potentially) ramps up. Note, an early Venu write-off is equally likely.

Add it all up and it’s clear to us that the quality and sustainability of Disney’s first quarterly DTC profit are quite fragile.

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According to new data from Hub Entertainment Research, Amazon’s Prime Video now has the highest percentage any major SVOD provider taking its ad-supported tier. And it happened by Amazon simply flipping a switch at Prime Video to make ads the default for all subscribers. Perhaps most interesting is that two other major SVOD providers - Netflix and Disney+ used completely different strategies in introducing their ad tiers. Colin and I discuss why Amazon’s move is so significant for the company and the broader streaming industry.

Meanwhile this week Disney reported a $47 million profit in fiscal Q2 ’24 in its DTC segment, which includes Disney+ and Hulu. Profitability hadn’t been forecast until 6 months from now. It also added 8 million D+ subscribers domestically in the quarter. But as Colin details, closer analysis shows that Disney’s recent deal with Charter somewhat obscures the gains. There’s also the pressing question of whether DTC can be sustainably profitable.

We tackle lots of other juicy topics this week too: Tubi’s continued growth, advertising’s increasingly important role in supporting the streaming ecosystem, WBD’s cost-cutting and bundling plans with Disney, plus more.

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As has been promised for a while, Hulu has been integrated into Disney+ in a bid to present more content seamlessly to viewers. No doubt the move was a significant undertaking, yet Colin’s early review shows a few key UX features lagging, notably his viewing history. We expect that in time these will be updated.

Elsewhere at Disney, ESPN has taken initial steps toward being a sports hub by incorporating links in its app and web site to regional sports networks’ streams. NESN, Monumental Sports Network and SportsNet Pittsburgh are already available. ESPN could play a vital role in addressing the problem of sports streaming fragmentation.

Finally, Colin and I both noticed the NFL’s chief media/business officer Brian Rolapp’s skepticism about how the sports JV (or “Spulu”) will be priced. Rolapp observes that if it’s priced in the $40-$50 per month range, then subscribing to YouTube TV (for example) would only be another $20 or so per month - and would include more NFL games, plus scripted and unscripted programming. This is exactly the point Colin and I have been making - the JV’s pricing window seems awfully narrow.

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On this week’s Inside the Stream Colin and I first discuss the trend toward SVOD services being bundled with one another. We agree the approach makes sense to cut churn and increase the lifetime value of subscribers. Next, Peacock has hit 30 million paying subscribers, which we believe is a healthy milestone for the three year-old service, though its losses are in the billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, WB Discovery has launched 11 FAST channels on Freevee, and Colin shares his thoughts on why the company could be more aggressive with FASTs. Last up, Disney moved the needle on integrating Hulu by adding a tile in the Disney+ UI for a beta group of subscribers.

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This week on Inside the Stream we discuss four items that caught our attention. First, according to Tivo’s Video Trends report, the number of TV services used has declined, and the mix has shifted from SVOD to FAST. Next up, in Canada, Disney+ has announced plans to limit password sharing. We also discuss Amazon’s plan to roll out ads in Prime Video in early 2024, and S&P’s forecast of declining ad revenue for niche cable TV networks.

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Disney reported its fiscal Q3 2023 this week, with Disney+ global subscribers (excluding Disney+ Hotstar) growing 800K to end at 105.7 million. Both ESPN+ and Hulu stayed approximately flat too. The sore point was Disney+ Hotstar, which lost 12.5 million subscribers to end at 40.4 million, primarily due to the loss of IPL cricket.

It is less clear what’s ahead for Disney+ subscribers with another $3 per month price increase planned, taking the ad-free tier up to $13.99 per month. With the ad-supported tier remaining at $8 per month, the company said it is guiding new subscribers to that tier. Meanwhile Disney will also begin imposing password sharing restrictions like Netflix has. Add in the strikes which will constrain new content, and it seems like elevated churn is on the way.

Colin and I discuss all of these changes and more, as Disney continues to evolve.

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Some big SVOD services are cutting content from their libraries, including certain originals. Most prominently, Disney recently said it’s taking a $1.5-$1.8 billion impairment charge related to content cuts.

The idea of “rotating” content in and out of libraries is nothing new in SVOD, but as profitability becomes paramount, the current cuts seem to be deeper and signal a shift in thinking. Whereas the past has been about “more is more” when building libraries, a “less is more” sentiment appears to be taking over.  

The question we explore is whether and to what extent subscribers will react? After all, if the content being cut is lightly viewed, then few people will notice (“if a tree falls in the forrest….”), and presumably the impact would be minimal. But, as Colin notes, there’s an audience for everything, and with SVOD subscribers having been spoiled by a bounty of riches, a perception of reduced choices could hit home.

One thought is that if this content can’t make it on SVOD, perhaps it will find a home on a FAST service. But that might not be an option, as Colin refers to recent discussions indicating FAST providers have become more disciplined given the explosion of free content and their push for profitability as well.

Net, net, as we discuss, there may well be content that isn’t viable on streaming. It’s not unprecedented; there’s lots of content that didn’t make the transition from VHS to digital, because the economics just weren’t there.

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Disney reported its fiscal 2023 first quarter this week, the first since Bob Iger returned to the CEO role. While other parts of the business are doing reasonably well, for Direct-to-Consumer, which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, subscriber gains were weak and ARPU was down. Iger also shared that Disney will cut its content spending by $3 billion this year. For Colin and me, all of that makes Disney’s DTC future seem murky.

Disney also plans to lay off 7,000 employees and take a $5.5 billion charge, while also stating it intends to restore its dividend by the end of the year - all a big victory for Wall Street. The layoff continues a disturbing pattern by most large tech and media companies (a topic about which I do a mini-rant during the podcast, sorry) which has put CEOs' lack of accountability on full display and smashed any delusions anyone might have had about any sort of an employer-employee "social contract" still existing (again sorry, I digress)

The most meaningful quote from Disney’s earnings call on late Wednesday was when Iger said “…the streaming business, which I believe is the future and has been growing, is not delivering basically the kind of profitability or bottom-line results that the linear business delivered for us over a few decades.”

Nor will it ever.

As Colin and I discuss this week (and as we’ve discussed ad nauseam in the past), the linear business model was based on the pay-TV multichannel bundle, which was the very definition of artificial economics. In the bundle, lots and lots of channels were delivered for a single price. The bundle’s monthly price steadily increased over the years as broadcast and cable TV networks raised their carriage fees paid by pay-TV operators.

The “elephant in the room” was that most pay-TV subscribers watched only a handful of TV networks, and yet paid for ALL of them. By far the biggest beneficiaries of pay-TV’s artificial economics were sports networks, with ESPN at the very top of the list. I first wrote about the “sports tax” 12 years ago in “Not a Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year.” Things have only gotten worse for non-sports fans since. However, with streaming’s rise, the elephant is now fully visible, and has driven cord-cutting to record levels.

And just as the Internet has ruthlessly rationalized the economics of practically every other industry, it is now doing the same to the TV industry. The Internet allows zero room for artificial economics and anyone who violates this precept is an ostrich with their heads fully underground. Iger understands this, and his quote should fairly be seen as a signal to Wall Street that Disney is extremely unlikely to ever achieve historical financial performance in its TV businesses.

As if all of that weren’t enough, Iger then went on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” yesterday and told David Faber that “Everything is on the table…" with respect to Hulu’s eventual ownership resolution (reminder, Disney has a deal in which Comcast can force Disney to buy its 30% stake for a set minimum price that would translate into around $9 billion).

Iger’s comments basically turned Hulu into a hot potato. Really dedicated VideoNuze readers will recall that almost 5 years ago, in March, 2018 I wrote “Why Comcast Should Take Control of Hulu.” Then, subsequent to Comcast’s Peacock reveal in January, 2020, I followed up with “Quick Math Shows Comcast Missed Out On Almost $6 Billion in Revenue By Not Buying the Rest of Hulu.”

Instead, Comcast/NBCU launched Peacock and will have lost over $5.5 billion on it just between 2022-2023. If Comcast does come back in and buy Disney’s 70% stake in Hulu it will rank as the #1 irony in all the years I’ve been in the industry.

And it would make Disney’s DTC future even murkier still.

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Although Disney gained a healthy 14.6 million direct-to-consumer subscribers in its fiscal fourth quarter reported this week, it also lost nearly $1.5 billion in the segment. That raised its annual DTC loss for fiscal 2022 to over $4 billion, more than twice the $1.7 billion it lost in fiscal 2021. Disney reiterated that it expects DTC losses will decrease going forward and that Disney+ specifically will achieve profitability in fiscal 2024, absent a “meaningful shift in the economic climate.”

On this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, nScreenMedia’s Colin Dixon and I examine the various cross-currents impacting Disney’s DTC business going forward. These include declining ARPU at Disney+ domestically and Disney+ Hotstar, upcoming price increases, SVOD and FAST competition, content costs and more. The stakes are high for Disney to turn the corner on DTC profitability but it isn’t clear when or how that will happen.

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On this week’s podcast Colin Dixon from nScreenMedia and I discuss Q3 2022 bumpiness for four companies heavily focused on streaming. Comcast reported a small gain of 10K residential broadband subscribers compared with 281K a year ago. It also lost 540K residential video subscribers compared with a loss of 382K a year ago, as cord-cutting and cord-nevering continue.

Meanwhile YouTube ad revenue was down 2% in Q3, after a blistering period of growth during the past couple of years. Apple TV+ is raising its monthly rate by $2, betting subscribers see enhanced value in its 3 year-old service. And Disney’s CEO envisions Disney+ being tied closer to its theme park business. We explore all of them and share our thoughts.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Disney+ added nearly 12 million subscribers in the recent holiday quarter, an encouraging sign that bundling Disney+ with Hulu and ESPN+ is a highly effective strategy. Disney+ also had strong gains in the US and Canada market, adding 6.6 million subscribers in the quarter, while Netflix by comparison added only 1.2 million. Colin and I dig into all the Disney+ numbers and discuss what might be next.

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Late last week Disney told its Hulu + Live TV subscribers that Disney+ and ESPN+ would be bundled starting Dec. 21st, and that their rate would be increasing by $5 per month. Coming off an anemic fiscal Q4 ’21 in which Disney+ added just 2.1 million subscribers, the lowest by far since launching in late 2019, the intra-company move meant the automatic addition of 4 million Hulu + Live TV subscribers to Disney+’s total in one magical wave of CEO Bob Chapek’s wand.

I received a number of emails from VideoNuze readers to the effect of “that kind of corporate trickery doesn’t feel like a positive sign for Disney+.” I don’t dispute that there’s merit to that line of thinking, but I’d discount it. The step up in Disney+ subscribers in fiscal Q1 ’22 will be so delineated that it means Wall Street won’t give Disney+ any credit for it because investors are tunnel-visioned on Disney+’s organic growth heading in 2022 (that’s kind of what happens when an SVOD service goes from a standing start to 118 million subscribers in less than two years…expectations become quite high).

I’d assert that the tunnel vision on Disney+’s growth is causing under appreciation of what may be a far more important driver of Disney’s decision to bundle Disney+: Hulu’s burgeoning opportunity in connected TV advertising.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Disney+ now has 118.1 million subscribers, less than 2 years since its launch. But Disney+ added just 2.1 million subscribers in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2021, a huge slowdown from the blistering pace of the past 2 years. This raises the question many investors are asking: can Disney+ reignite growth in 2022, and if so, how? Colin and I explore these questions on this week’s podcast.

Meanwhile, Hulu keeps chugging along, albeit in the shadow of Disney+. But as we also discuss, Hulu is already likely profitable (at least marginally), but looking out, it is poised to become a genuine profit engine for Disney. That’s because Hulu is one of a handful of scaled, ad-supported services and its Live TV + SVOD services is already generating nearly $85 per month in average revenue per subscriber. As CTV advertising becomes increasingly central to advertisers, Hulu is well-positioned to benefit.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

This week Colin and I parse Disney’s “Black Widow” opening weekend numbers, building on my analysis from yesterday. We agree that it is premature to extrapolate much from “Black Widow” and anyone doing so is on slippery ground. On the one hand, Disney getting 45% of its opening weekend from Disney+ PVOD is very impressive; on the other hand, it is far from definitive proof that streaming’s role will be robust in the first release window going forward.

The backdrop to all of this is of course consumers’ decision-making about whether to stay home and watch any of the myriad streaming originals available in the current “Peak TV” era, or choose to return to the theater. Inevitably, we observe the sizable role that quality plays in this decision-making process. Sadly, streaming TV and movies are going in completely opposite directions on this front, with the former getting relentlessly better and the latter getting relentlessly worse. I believe this alone is a key contributor to consumers choosing to stay home, as I wrote last week in “5 Reasons Going to the Movies is Facing an Irreversible Demise.”

Please let us know what you think!

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Note I’ll continue to publish Inside the Stream in the prior feed

Since waking up Monday morning to the news reports that Disney’s “Black Widow” had an opening weekend of $158.8 million at the box office globally and another $60 million in rentals on Disney+ I’ve been thinking about how to interpret the numbers. I’ve chatted with industry colleagues, read much of the reporting and done a little back-of-the-envelope analysis, which I share below.

My top line takeaway: for now at the least, the opening numbers are a real brain teaser. There is simply no way to conclude anything definitive or even semi-definitive from “Black Widow” and anyone who is extrapolating from them is out over their skis. Rather, “Black Widow” provides all of us another little glimpse into what’s possible (note, not necessarily probable) as streaming becomes increasingly mainstream and the industry grapples with how to navigate the post-Covid world.

The glimpse becomes more meaningful by trying to understand the numbers at as deep a level as realistically possible; an exercise that itself is like catching a greased pig.

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Yesterday’s news that Universal Pictures will release certain of its 2022 movies on Peacock no more than four months after their theatrical premiere was just the latest move by the owner of both a studio and a streaming service (in this case Comcast) to accelerate the demise of going to a theater to see a movie.

Universal’s move shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Back in April, 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Universal decided to release “Trolls World Tour” as a digital rental to mitigate the closure of theaters. That touched off a highly public war of words with AMC Theaters’ head Adam Aron, who threatened to no longer carry Universal’s movies. Aron and NBCU head Jeff Shell ultimately buried the hatchet, signing a new deal that compressed the theatrical window from 90 days to 17. Aron may have gotten the last laugh when AMC’s stock unexpectedly got caught up in the meme frenzy and the company raised over $1.2 billion by issuing new shares over the past few months.

Of course, Universal is following a playbook being run by other cross-owned studios/streaming services. Disney has simultaneously released a number of its movies in theaters and on Disney+, experimenting with the premium rental model. ViacomCBS is compressing the theatrical window for Paramount movies to get them onto Paramount+ as quickly as possible. And of course WarnerMedia set off a firestorm back in December, ’20 when it abruptly announced all of its 2021 Warner Bros.’ slate would be simultaneously released on HBO Max (that decision was reversed for the 2022 slate).

Taken together, it’s pretty clear that studios are delicately, yet aggressively, prioritizing their streaming services over theatrical, irrespective of whatever soothing assurances studio executives continue to offer about the importance of the theater experience to assuage chain owners. But in reality, the studios’ moves are just one of at least 5 reasons why going to the movies is facing an irreversible demise as streaming upends every corner of the media and entertainment industry.

Read the 5 reasons

The U.S. SVOD market has undergone significant fragmentation over the past two years as new services have launched, according to the Q1 2021 Growth Report from Antenna, an SVOD insights provider. In Q1 ’19, Netflix and Hulu together accounted for over three-quarters (78%) of all SVOD subscriptions. But two years later, in Q1 ’21, their combined share fell to just over half (51%), with Disney taking 17%, HBO Max 11%, Paramount+ 7%, Starz 6%, Showtime 4% and discovery+, Peacock and Apple TV+ all at 2%.

Antenna didn’t report Amazon Prime Video numbers. Amazon said in its Q1 ’21 earnings report that 175 million Prime members have streamed TV shows and movies in the past year, though it didn’t provide any breakdown of U.S. share vs. rest of world.

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