Netflix Dominated Disney+ in the First Week of March

Things may not be heading for an immediate improvement for The Walt Disney Company CEO, Bob Chapek. On the one hand, he has one of the biggest crisis of leadership the Disney corporation has faced in more than a decade. Many of his underlings disagree with his planned April announcement that Disney would be pulling back from unnecessary politicization and social movements. That official company policy is likely now gone. Then he also is dealing with a massive conservative and moderate backlash as Disney’s social policies are becoming well-known in the mainstream… policies that he almost certainly wanted to drop but has been outfoxed on. These might include things like striking the term “boy” and the term “girl” from the theme parks. That’s la-la land level craziness. But on top of all that, Chapek’s phenomenal prior quarter in terms of financial success may not be easily duplicated.

The reason: Disney+.

The numbers for early March are out on Nielsen and it is all about Netflix all day long. There’s basically no Amazon. There’s really is no Paramount. HBO Max: what’s that? But you would think that Disney+ would have some shows and movies up there competing, right?

It turns out that Encanto is slowing down and the backup properties from Disney simply aren’t pulling their weight. Is the rest of the content simply not compelling enough, or were subscribers already tuning out the company? Keep in mind that this is all prior to the release of Turning Red, the film that some claimed featured politically leftist propaganda.

My Panda My Choice: Propaganda in a Pixar Film

If Turning Red and Moon Knight don’t absolutely blow up in terms of minutes watched, it may be a very rough spring for Disney+ and potentially a rough Q2. Let’s look at the stats:

Original Streaming Series

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Streamed in Millions

To say anything other than Netflix dominated in original content is flat-out wrong. The fact that shows like The Book of Boba Fett dropped off the face of the Earth after their finale crowd went away also shows that some of these Disney+ shows have no staying power. Sweet Magnolias is still up there and the hundred-million dollar live action Star Wars series went down instead.

Acquired Streaming Series

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Streamed in Millions

Again, it’s all Netflix except for a little cartoon with fifteen-minute pieces called Bluey. Bluey is awesome and Bluey is very traditionalist. Is it any wonder that Bob Chapek wanted to get away from the type of programming that is being decimated by Netflix?

Movies

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Streamed in Millions

Though Disney is able to hang on with Encanto, its numbers are dropping. As they do, a strange thing is happening: movies like Moana, Coco and Frozen — which before Encanto were mainstays — are absent from the top ten. That then begs the question: was Encanto cannibalizing the other Disney movies rather than fully growing new audiences? Of course there’s some overlap, but how in the world is Shrek in the top ten and Frozen isn’t? Where is Moana? Think about that.

All of this is to say that Netflix is back to domination in the streaming world… and that may be here to last weeks or months. Bob Chapek had better be crossing every finger and toe he has that Kenobi is awesome. If it’s not, he’ll be the one to blame, even though its the very employees that hate him who are driving the content failing to topple Netflix.

Maybe being the big cheese at Disney isn’t so much fun after all?

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