IF you have a product that people are rejecting, that is creating bad experiences people are deciding not to pay for, and that is failing to meet goal after goal, you’d think you’d reassess and also try to find a market price point that worked, probably a lower one to get more people to try it and maybe, just maybe, find happiness worth the price.
That is, YOU would. Bob Iger and Disney Plus? Notsomuch.
(L-R): Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) with the Darksaber in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season three, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
It turns out that in the U.K., according to Newsweek as cited by Breitbart.com’s witty and wise media reporter John Nolte, Disney’s been having the same trouble attracting and keeping subscribers that they’ve had at home in the USA, but they are raising prices in some strange quest to speed up the losses—and if that was the goal, well, it is working.
And people are noticing. LOTS of people.
Aryan Simhadri as Grover, Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase, and Walker Scobell as Percy Jackson in PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS – “Episode 107” (Disney/David Bukach)
A U.K. based Twitter/X user named @mellyfratelli over in Jolly Olde England has shared her price increase experiences online. In 2020, she paid the U.S. Dollar equivalent in pounds Sterling of $63.45 for her annual Disney Plus subscription. In 2021? The price went up to $76.15. In 2022? $104.40. All this while the world experienced economic chaos, inflationary pressures on things you need, not just want, like food, shelter, fuel, etc. etc. etc.
And now, Disney has informed her that as of March 2024 her annual subscription will go to $139.50, and she’d decided enough is enough. She’s gone, baby, gone.
Goodbye Disney+, you must be crazy x pic.twitter.com/asOrxQcPMP
— Melly 💅🏻 ✨ (@mellyfratelli) February 24, 2024
Now you might think “Well, that’s tough but she’s one subscriber. Why does her experience matter in the grand scheme of things?” Well, want to know how many times her post of this, which she captioned “Goodbye Disney+, you must be crazy” was viewed (so far) on X?
If you guessed more than 4.4 MILLION times for this ONE person’s shared experience alone, you’re right, or were when the story ran a bit ago. By now? Who knows?
Emperor Palpatine in a scene from “STAR WARS: THE BAD BATCH”, season 3 exclusively on Disney+. © 2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Of course, as many tweeted back, if the quality of the product had increased it might be understandable, but when the shows, based on ratings numbers, are failing left and right no matter how many millions the Mouse spends on them, deciding to charge even more for the privilege of being under-entertained is something that gets noticed. And as we’ve learned from their compulsory legal financial filings, Disney+, which claims it is about to reach profitability any old time now, has lost 1.3 MILLION subscribers in just the last financial quarter.
Throw into the mix movies nobody wants to see that fail to put butts in seats in cinemas, proxy fights, insane cost overruns and reshoots, endlessly delayed and shoddily constructed park attractions that are not even slightly attractive, promises undelivered, deals announced to investors that aren’t really done deals yet, blue-sky visions cancelled or cut back, and you can see why things are a mess at Bob Iger’s Disney.
(L-R): Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Marvel Studios’ LOKI, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
But the streaming world has a unique perspective that was brought out by John Nolte who explained how different the world of streaming is from the prior universe of cable/satellite TV.
When we all had a single provider of on-screen entertainment, we had very little choice—there was one cable company licensed for our town, then later one or two more up in the sky, they offered a price or a few in bundles of channels, and if you wanted old movies and local channels you also paid for sports (often the biggest price component and almost always going to Disney’s ESPN) whether you wanted to or not. If you wanted travel, you got bundle billed for cooking shows whether you cared or not. If you didn’t have kids, you still got and were forced to pay for kids shows, often from Disney’s various channels.
You were stuck with what they put into your home, no matter your wants, needs, or taste. In short, it was take-it-or-leave-it compulsory payment for everything, which, as Nolte points out, was just how the various content makers liked it.
Emilia Clarke as G’iah in Marvel Studios’ SECRET INVASION, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Gareth Gatrell. © 2023 MARVEL.
As Nolte explains so well, “Streaming has fundamentally altered the way we consume television. Streaming is not an all-or-nothing proposition. We can cancel Disney+ and subscribe to Netflix. Then we can cancel Netflix and try Paramount+. That’s called churn, and Hollywood hates churn. Hollywood hates customers having a choice. Hollywood hates having to survive on merit. Hollywood loved the socialism of cable TV (where everyone was forced to pay for everyone else’s channels) because, under that system, merit didn’t matter. No matter how lousy the content, we had to pay for it.”
That world has changed, as he continues to elucidate: “Streaming is merit-based. We have to actually want Disney content to pay for Disney — and that’s why Disney is losing billions on its lousy streaming service, whereas before, it made billions on its lousy cable channels — even though no one watched those channels.”
And their answer to this problem is to raise prices again and again and they think we won’t notice? Many million X/Twitter readers say the Mouse is wrong.
