> The more than 1.7 million cancellations represent less than one percent of all Disney+ subscribers, but the timing is considered problematic. Just a few weeks earlier, Disney had promised its investors an additional 10 million subscriptions by the end of September 2025.
> Some investors are now demanding access to internal documents regarding Kimmel’s suspension to better understand the management’s decision. This puts the company under pressure once again to create transparency and more clearly disclose the development of Disney+ subscribers.
This isn't just any metric. It impacts their bottom line.
Yes, the current impact is low, but the trend is going down when they expected it to go up.
Boycotts work. Voting with your dollars works. It's one of the few levers regular people have that can possibly make any impact.
”The problem isn’t that my PR is buggy, but that the reviewer is getting upset about it”
“Politically motivated” is the reason. This must be obvious.
Some of us actually travel for a living.
This event probably triggered a lot of their inactive subscribers like me to look at their bills. Not only will it lose a lot of these people but the required marketing efforts to bring me back would cost a lot more now too.
The only reason I would subscribe would be an interesting movie/tv show that I cannot find anywhere else. Frankly, these days if I find those, they just go onto my backlog... then there are also my games, books, bucket list things to do backlogs. So, I'm not subscribed to anything.
I wonder how many cancellations are related to the price increase?
I know I switched to a cheaper bundle around that time, and it had nothing to do with politics. I just didn’t see the relative value of ESPN if I’m paying that much more for it
It’s very convenient that investors can’t tease out the causes of cancellation because of the timing of this. It almost makes one wonder if the increase was planned, but moved up deliberately to muddy the waters.
Corporate fuckery all around.
Maybe they don't want feedback in all countries...
We’re based in the UK and cancelled via the website because there was no option for us to cancel via the Apple TV app (probably signed up on my laptop originally, I’d guess), and there was a comment field so I did not hold back in informing them exactly why I was cancelling.
So I wonder if the availability of the comment field varies by country or sign-up method - not that there’s any really good reason it should do.
Presumably those are the 5 reasons they think shareholders will want to hear.
Hacker News is the best quality.
> 436% above baseline subscriber churn
5 times the normal cancellations is no movement. A lot of that will people pulling the plug early so Disney will regain that share.
It never made sense, FCC was threatening Disney, they had a gun on them.
Unlike Rosanne or ABC cancelling Bill Maher (Who Jimmy Kimmel replaced), they canceled them because they were weak.
Edit: All/most of the streaming services make it impossible to opt in to shows. It’s either super clunky or they make decisions for you based on age. I find it’s easier to load up what I want in plex and use that as our digital shelf of DVDs.
Overall I do object to content providers pushing the responsibility for vetting content onto parents. Especially when one considers that, in the UK at least, broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV, are required to do this themselves for both broadcast and streaming, and for broadcast operate a 9pm watershed for content suitable only for adults[0], whereas streaming services charge higher and higher subscription fees and simply don’t bother. Rude.
[0] You can of course still choose to allow your kids access to this content but you effectively have to opt in rather than opting out.
It’s an unfortunate after thought. I don’t want my kids to shun technology but I also don’t want them to be taken by an algorithm.
gerikson•4mo ago
philipallstar•4mo ago
willis936•4mo ago
It will to take a while for culture and society to adjust to the reality of corporate incentives. Selling out the cooperative principle for short term profits at the expense of trust is how corporate media works.
bartread•4mo ago
This is a garbage website. Look at how the article reads like it’s unfinished, like half of it is missing and there’s no conclusion. Look at the absolute irrelevance of the articles and ads underneath the article.
It’s sort of unbelievable that it’s made it onto the front page here.
flippyhead•4mo ago
waltbosz•4mo ago
I feel like people often vote topics not content.
bartread•4mo ago
waltbosz•4mo ago
bartread•4mo ago
mattlutze•4mo ago