The Disney Grooming Syndicate is facing a “wave of subscriber cancellations” over Disney+ price increases, Newsweek reports.
The outlet cited an example:
The embattled company looks to be dealing with a potential public relations nightmare in the United Kingdom where the cost of an annual Disney+ subscription is giving some subscribers sticker shock followed by out right cancellations:
The X user (formerly Twitter) @mellyfratelli, who lives in the United Kingdom, shared a screenshot of an email she received from Disney. It said from March 30, 2024, her premium subscription cost would increase to $139.50 (£109.90) a year.
She also shared a screenshot of her bank statement; it showed that, in 2020, she had paid $63.45 (£49.99) for the Disney+ annual premium subscription. In 2021, she spent $76.15 (£59.99), and in 2022, it cost her $101.40 (£79.90).
“Goodbye Disney+, you must be crazy x,” she captioned her post, which went viral. At the time of writing, it had been viewed more than 4.3 million times.
When they saw that “4.3 million” number, Disney executives must’ve dropped their baby catalogs in horror.
Another xweeter wrote, “Disney Plus more than doubling in price over 4 years is absolutely wild… [I]f only the caliber of content being released on the platform made the price seem worthwhile.”
If only…
This, of course, comes after a disastrous year at the box office for Disney on top of losing 1.3 million subscribers.
You gotta love it.
This is one of the primary reasons Hollywood had to be brought kicking and screaming into the streaming world.
You see, under the old cable/satellite TV system, there wasn’t much you and I could do about price gouging. One cable provider might gouge you a little less than another using a temporary discount, but you either overpaid or you lost all access to all TV. Cable TV was and is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. And that was deliberate — cable/satellite TV is a monopoly that forces you to pay for dozens of channels you never watch, including all those basement-rated Disney channels.
Streaming has fundamentally altered the way we consume television. Streaming is not an all-or-nothing proposition. We can cancel Disney+ and subscribe to Netflix. Then we can cancel Netflix and try Paramount+. That’s called churn, and Hollywood hates churn. Hollywood hates customers having a choice. Hollywood hates having to survive on merit. Hollywood loved the socialism of cable TV (where everyone was forced to pay for everyone else’s channels) because, under that system, merit didn’t matter. No matter how lousy the content, we had to pay for it.
Streaming is merit-based. We have to actually want Disney content to pay for Disney — and that’s why Disney is losing billions on its lousy streaming service, whereas before, it made billions on its lousy cable channels — even though no one watched those channels.
Keep canceling Disney+, America.
Do it for the children.
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