The Walt Disney Company isn’t doing so hot right now. Besides potentially being the single biggest media company ever (Waystar Royco, anyone?), that legacy apparently isn’t enough to stop the company’s streamer – Disney+ – from losing subscribers. Before the company’s quarterly earnings call today, CEO Bob Iger revealed that its streaming service had lost 4 million subscribers in the last quarter alone, according to Vulture.
If you thought that was bad, you obviously didn’t see Disney’s previous quarterly earnings call, which revealed the loss of 2.4 million subscribers. You’re probably asking yourself; why? Was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania that bad? Yes, but also, no. Most cancellers come from Asia – India, specifically – due to the company recently losing the rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL). On the Western side of things, the company only managed to lose 300,000 US subscribers this time around, with raised prices being the culprit.
Going the HBO route
Despite all that, Walt Disney isn’t just a streaming company. While these figures would be devastating for, say, Netflix, all the House of Mouse has to do is point to its surplus of other money-making avenues, which is exactly what it did. Disney managed to beat Wall Street’s expectations what with its absurd theme-park revenue and mass layoffs that continue to make the rounds in the business and tech worlds. And we’re sure the never-ending train of theatrical releases didn’t hurt either.
You might be thinking that Disney will pull a little more from its coffers to recoup those subscribers. You’d be wrong. Instead, according to Disney’s chief financial officer Christine McCarthy, it’ll be doing the opposite: removing content.
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“We will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion,” McCarthy reportedly told investors. The plan could take effect as soon as the third quarter, and it would include “produc[ing] lower volumes of content.” If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because it’s a plan of action similar to that of the service formerly known as HBO Max.
For now, we have no clue as to what content Disney+ is eyeing up for removal over the coming months. We can guess that it won’t involve its larger franchises – Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar – or any of its own original content. As for where it’ll disappear to, we couldn’t say. Probably the same vault the company is keeping Walt Disney’s cryogenically-frozen head alive in.
Source: Vulture