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When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. When Disney announced its streaming service all the way back in 2017, I was there to comment. I said all streaming services were going to blow up in price (I was right about that) but I was wrong about one big thing. I figured Disney would simply grab users by the throat and never let go. I thought they would wall off all their content so you had no choice but to subscribe or you'd never see Darth Vader, Princess Jasmine, or Tony Stark ever again. This would make Disney a ton of money, but make us all poor and unhappy.

Flash forward six years and you'll see videos like this one:


It is frankly inconceivable that an entertainment powerhouse like Disney could actually end its streaming venture altogether. Even the maker of that video admits to that. More likely, Disney+ will just stop being your one-stop shop for all that older content you crave. They'll focus on new releases, shop the more popular content to other streamers, and the rest will go in the "Disney vault" where you'll only see it every few years.

How did it come to this?

Because business laws can be stupid that's why. Somehow, it makes more sense financially not to carry something than to carry it. At least sometimes. If there's some sort of licensing or residual to be paid, a streamer can find itself paying for old content over and over. (Sorry streaming companies, I have no sympathy. Do you have any idea how many times I've re-bought The White Album?) Sometimes a company can get tax benefits by writing off something that didn't perform to expectations. And, at some point it just becomes expensive to maintain that many hard drives and data centers if you're making everything available all the time.

To put in plainly, these are stupid excuses and the laws that enable them should be changed. It should never be more profitable to have a flop than a hit. And it's kind of a jerk move to take residual income away from a performer who is entitled to it, just because you don't want to pay it. That's why a bunch of content creators have been on strike throughout the summer.

Will the dream of Disney+ truly die?

Yes, I think it will. Look, this blog is full of bad predictions I've made. It's not going to stop me from continuing to predict. For decades, Disney made money by creating fake scarcity with its content. They deliberately took movies off store shelves. They kept good films away from second-run theaters. They created buzz by only rolling out the stuff you want every few years then forced you to pay through the nose.

Disney continues to trade off this fake scarcity in its theme parks, where it can now cost over $1,000 a day for a family to visit. Yet, with all its marketing savvy they seem to be losing money. I say "seem" because it's all accounting tricks. When you're talking about movies that cost $500 million or more to make, there's no real understanding of how much money is really "made" or "lost" by the parent company. Scores of accountants make sure of that.

I pay for Disney+. It's not just for the new content. Am I really alone?

If the only reason I paid for Disney+ was its new content, I'd have canceled it by now. They've failed to bring the goods for at least a year. Instead, they've had a run of increasingly derivative MCU and Star Wars shows that just get worse and worse. I've been less and less impressed with their theatrical releases too. The company is determined to remake every old cartoon and replace the traditional animation with CGI. It hasn't worked.

I keep paying for Disney+, even though I could cancel at any time. Why? Because I can find stuff that I like watching over and over. I can watch all or some of the MCU films. I can watch Star Wars content from back when it was good. And, if I really want to go back and rewatch The Rescuers or Gus, I can do that too. There's enough catalog stuff to keep me coming back. At least for now.

Here's the funny thing that Disney, Netflix, and others seem to have forgotten: if you keep charging more money for less content, people will just stop coming. It's called a "value equation." It may not show up on your accountants' balance sheets but it is real. And if you don't start paying attention to it, your service won't be real for much longer. Just sayin.

The post STREAMING SATURDAY: The death of Disney+? appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.

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