It’s been a lot of fun watching the coverage of The Book of Boba Fett ratings. After posting that the ratings were going to come in lower than desired based on information I was hearing from sources, as well as Google Trends data I was looking at, all of that turned out to be true days later. You see, despite how this is being spun by a variety of media outlets with different goals, The Book of Boba Fett is a free show on Disney+ that had one million less views than The Matrix Resurrections: a pay-extra film with horrible reviews that is also in theaters over on HBO Max.
So you’re telling me that a live action Star Wars property, something we haven’t had in a year, comes out and performs lower than a god-awful Matrix movie, which is also available in theaters, and that is somehow being spun as a win?
Need I remind you that Disney+ has an installed subscriber base of 40 million accounts in the United States, and only 1.7 million tuned in for The Book of Boba Fett? Anyone want to run that percentage for me?
1.7M US households watched the series premiere of #TheBookOfBobaFett in its first 5 days on #DisneyPlus.
Of the 25 largest DMAs, the Pacific Northwest over-indexed the most with Portland (+71%) and Seattle (+59%) watching at a higher rate than the US overall. #BobaFett pic.twitter.com/mJjYzsMvRL
— Samba TV (@samba_tv) January 5, 2022
But no, no, no… we’re being told it outperformed Hawkeye, everyone. What an accomplishment! How’s this for you, though? I come out with that article on January 2nd. On January 3rd, Samba TV releases viewership data, but mostly through a pro-Disney trade publication known as Deadline. If you don’t think industry insiders, executives, and Disney read this website, you have to believe in major coincidences. I came out with the article here, Bounding Into Comics did some digging and came up with similar results, and then bam, a month earlier than usual we have some data put out by a ratings company… but put in a particularly positive light and most of the data kept from the public.
So let’s talk about Samba TV for a minute, because I’m not particularly a fan of their stats being super worthwhile. The way they work (in a very simplified manner) is that they are installed on a bunch of smart television sets. Then, when those smart television sets tune into programs via the installed smart TV applications, that data is collected and aggregated by Samba TV. There’s a way to opt out, but essentially this is a big brother kind of thing that I’m not into. I like the Nielson method better, even if it takes way longer to peruse. The problem with the method Samba TV uses is that it cuts out a HUGE portion of consumers and then assumes that those same consumers act the way the Samba TV smart television users do. So, for example, the idea is that people who watch shows through their Playstation 5 have the exact same viewing habits as the people who watch shows through their smart television apps… because Samba TV can only see the smart television apps (to the best of my knowledge). I don’t think that’s true, and that’s where I think the disparity comes between Samba TV stats and Netflix released stats. An analogy would be if you measured the health of people who enjoy fruit, but then you only counted people who shopped at Walmart. Do I think they are the same as people who enjoy fruit but eat at Publix? No. And so I don’t think you can then extrapolate data from one subset of the population and apply it to everyone else.
Okay, that got into the weeds, and we’re into an article that has Gina Carano’s name in the title, yet I haven’t even covered it yet. Perhaps we should get into the subject…
Buried deep in the coverage of all this selective data about The Book of Boba Fett is a blurb that tells on Disney — particularly a tell that Lucasfilm has a problem they know is manifesting. Take a look at this:
Of the top 25 largest markets for Boba Fett, Portland, OR over-indexed the most (+71%), followed by Seattle, WA (+59%) and Sacramento, CA (+20%).
Now remember, we’re getting selective data. That is, we don’t get to know what the lowest performing markets are in the top 25. However, when we see the top three performing markets and they are correlated with three of the most left-leaning cities in America, there’s something we can start to figure out. These are not small numbers. I’m talking about Seattle and Portland, the two most left-wing cities in the country, are leading other markets by a whopping 71% and 59%. You don’t see that sort of a disparity except in cases where the starring celebrity grew up in that market.
Don’t forget, the driving force behind all of this Star Wars underperformance (it’s losing to The Matrix, people, stop listening to the spin) is not necessarily Kathleen Kennedy. People bought Disney+ to watch The Mandalorian in spite of Kathleen Kennedy. The driving force of the fanbase loathing Lucasfilm is the way Gina Carano was treated. You need to understand, and I have covered this before, to my surprise people actually cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions over the Gina Carano firing. Disney+ is largely in stagnation because of Gina Carano. Go look at the growth models and look when it didn’t just plateau, but even fell in numbers for a period of time. And when you’re looking at worldwide subscriptions (not the US subscriptions I’ve been describing), understand that much of the growth there in 2021 came from Hotstar subscriptions in India that cost about seventy cents per month.
Here’s the point I’m getting at:
I believe that Star Wars has become such a political brand after the firing of Gina Carano that it is bifurcating the entertainment marketplace. In fact, I think that Disney itself is alienating conservative and right-leaning individuals… and I think they know it very well. I think that because I have my own sources and I think that because we’re seeing tremendous over-indexing in the most liberal cities in America for The Book of Boba Fett. I’m willing to bet that the under-indexing markets are the more conservative places across the country. Whether you think that Gina Carano was right or wrong, whether you think conservatives are good or bad, whether you think certain parts of the country are “fly-over” or “Podunk”, it is a very bad thing to see entertainment succumb to partisanship of any kind.
When I was a kid, there were families that kept their children away from various TV shows or movies because it didn’t align with their beliefs. But much of the time, we felt those families were a little bit too protective, and our culture held together because we had shared values and shared moments of levity together. We gathered around the same neutral watering holes like sports, movies, and games. Today we don’t have that anymore. It’s not good for our country, it’s not good for our culture, it’s not good for stability, and I certainly don’t think it’s good for Disney if they alienate half their potential audience.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the following clip:
I have no problem with Michelle Obama being on a sitcom. I understand her popularity with some demographics and her lack of popularity with other demographics. But here’s why I can see there’s an issue that is killing The United States of America… and why that is coming in part through The Walt Disney Company. Black-ish is a sitcom on Disney’s ABC. Can any of you imagine any conservative figure that would be treated this way and hailed this way on any ABC sitcom?
Anyone?
Candace Owens?
Melania Trump?
I’m not trying to be political here, and if you’re reading this article that way, you’re not seeing what I’m saying.
What I’m trying to say is that The Walt Disney Company, a corporation that films near concentration camps and thanks the Chinese government that runs them, would not treat the heroes of half the country the same way they treat the heroes of the other half. One half of the country has political icons which are not allowed. The other half does. The problem then, also, is that this manner of handling personalities and how they’re treated in entertainment is fully integrating itself into the narratives of properties like Star Wars. And the public began to realize it in total with the firing of Gina Carano.
That’s how you get a Star Wars live action show debuting under a failed Matrix movie. And it doesn’t matter if you’re liberal or conservative, everyone should be concerned about this. Because of the very limited data we were given by Samba TV, it already seems apparent that half of the people who loved Star Wars have taken their toys and gone home. They don’t want to play anymore because they’ve been explicitly told they’re not welcome.
We should all be wary of that outcome.
I’m skeptical of Samba’s data as well given they claim shows like The Book of Boba Fett are outperforming The Witcher despite The Witcher being the top show on Netflix for two weeks and only being beaten by Cobra Kai Season 4 in its third week.
They claim only 800k watched Witcher Season 2 premiere… https://www.instagram.com/p/CXuGQolJ3e_/
Great point. And there’s something that people are forgetting about… so I should probably do an article on it at some point. This whole deal about putting half-cocked data out there and controlling the narrative is all part of what Disney and other entertainment companies were after when they tried to kill the cinema business. They very much tried to put AMC six-feet under during the pandemic, and this is 100% why. They’ve hidden “dislikes”, they’ve stripped Rotten Tomatoes of any utility, but they still can’t hide box office numbers… yet. They love having their streaming numbers hidden so they can control what the public knows about their hits and misses.
The crazy part is Walt Disney himself would be considered a ‘right winger’ now by the current company. ESG money has really screwed up a lot of industries in this country. Hope that funnel of money gets shut down soon.
I believe this to be true. I know many including myself who have dropped D+ and have not looked back. I also many who who would be willing to go back but not without Gina back and KK gone (but this will likely not happen). Some surf the seas as an alternative rather than give D+ any money. This is similar to woke NFL and woke NBA. The NFL has changed and ratings are up. The NBA has not and ratings are down.
“Don’t forget, the driving force behind all of this Star Wars underperformance (it’s losing to The Matrix, people, stop listening to the spin) is not necessarily Kathleen Kennedy. People bought Disney+ to watch The Mandalorian in spite of Kathleen Kennedy. The driving force of the fanbase loathing Lucasfilm is the way Gina Carano was treated.”
And don’t forget the one who drove Gina Carano out of Star Wars is Kathleen Kennedy. The fact that she can run the franchise to the ground and not be held accountable is unforgivable, and does not inspire much confidence in the future of Star Wars under Disney even when she is gone.
Disney Movies
I find Disney too political, so I’m picky on what Disney movies we see in theaters. For Marvel, only Spider-Man. Raya and Encanto were the other two. It wasn’t the pandemic. My family likes the movie theater. We’re vaccinated and everyone had Covid.
My family went to Disney World twice last year, and we tried booking a third trip for Christmas.
Our Disney+ will cancel after our three years is up. We don’t watch, and I’m tired of the politics.
I’d feel the same way if Disney was fawning over the right or left. The firing of Gina showed Disney going out of their way to terminate the right with prejudice.
My kids deserve a happy life, and Disney’s political direction shows a depressing future. I’m sorry, but the left is depressing. It’s a March towards government control and dictating our lives (size of a soda bottle, shower head water use, etc). The left never asks what people want and works to solve the issue. The left tells you how to live. Look at water use in California. California hasn’t developed water expansion since the 1990s. The water is dumped in the ocean when reservoirs are filled.
Overall Disney will have mountain size problems, and the current leadership sees everything through politics. Tim Allen will get a TV show, so Disney shows political balance. But Disney isn’t the nightly news, Disney needs to dump all politics.
When I was in college back in the early 2,000s Disney would recruit the most extreme leftwing people they could find at my school to be in an internship program that supposedly led to a Disney executive career. Some of the people they hired were the mirror image of the right wing extremists they hate. There seems to be a social engineering component to all this nonsense. Disney was seeking out emotionally unstable extremists for careers at Disney.