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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Disney And Netflix In Several Short Tweets (updated)

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12 Responses to “Disney And Netflix In Several Short Tweets (updated)”

  1. Doug R says:

    I don’t get it. There’s only so many dollars out there. How many of these streams are we going to have to subscribe to? Although when you think about it the cable company wants to charge me $2 per station or $10 for a couple of stations I watch and a bunch of freeloaders.

  2. Mike says:

    As a parent of two small kids and a cord cutter, I’m not going to get rid of Netflix. But instead of getting Amazon or Hulu, I’d probably get Disney instead. It’ll probably still be a lot cheaper than cable.

  3. jspartisan says:

    Doug is right, but this is Disney. Disney, should have been leading from the FUCKING BEGINNING. Disney and Warners, have the libraries, that make a streaming service worth having. Are they worth ten bucks a month? FUCK NO! If Disney is fucking smart. They will price this shit at 5.99, the same with ESPN, and hope a large subscriber base makes the price worth it.

    If you have kids. You will need fucking Disney. If you love movies. You will need fucking Warners. If you love HBO, without the racist bullshit series? THEN YOU NEED NETFLIX! If you want a really good fucking streaming service, with a great library? That’s Hulu. That’s four. You can add HBO to it, and that’s about 50 bucks or more, and that’s about the base for streaming services. Seriously, Disney doing this is awesome, and I look forward to them OPENING THE FUCKING VAULTS. If they Boomerang this shit, then they are just shooting themselves in the foot. I want to stream Condorman, and he better be there day fucking one-ish.

  4. Ryan says:

    The subscription rate for the ESPN standalone will be interesting. So far, they have said:

    “The new service will include about 10,000 live games from leagues including Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer. It also will include collegiate sports and Grand Slam tennis coverage. Noticeably missing from the lineup in the forthcoming ESPN OTT service are NFL and NBA games — the two most popular pro sports in the U.S.”

    Presumably, the college football and basketball offerings will also be limited by the games that are already on individual conference networks (BIG Ten Network, SEC Network, etc.) Which leaves you with a handful of good college games, Baseball, MLS, Tennis for eight weeks a year and Hockey as the live events-not exactly the main drivers of ESPN viewership currently.

    Are people that attached to SportsCenter and those events that they’re willing to pay a separate bill every month? To Doug’s point-not only are there only so many dollars-there are only so many hours you can watch tv-when you realize you are suddenly subscribing to 5-6 separate services that you rarely use, do you go back to 1-2 to simplify? And isn’t that Netflix by default and Amazon because half of America has Prime?

    I would say that this also raises the question of hurting theatrical-if I have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO and Disney, I’m wondering why I would take a family of four to the theater to see a new movie when it costs the same as all those services combined per month.

  5. Mostly Lurking says:

    “I would say that this also raises the question of hurting theatrical-if I have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO and Disney, I’m wondering why I would take a family of four to the theater to see a new movie when it costs the same as all those services combined per month.”

    You could ask that same question now. Having HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Netlfix gets you pretty much any movie six-eight months after release for the same price as taking a family of four to the movies. Less if you include concessions.

  6. Ryan says:

    “You could ask that same question now. Having HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Netlfix gets you pretty much any movie six-eight months after release for the same price as taking a family of four to the movies. Less if you include concessions.”

    My point is that now you’re separating Disney out from Netflix, so you’re adding another subscription fee to the mix to keep some of the same content. If each studio follows suit, you’re getting more library content, but again another new subscription fee with only the same number of hours in the day to watch.

  7. Bulldog68 says:

    Never illegally downloaded a movie in my life. But trying to keep up with several subscription services will only send more people to illegal sites.

    I agree with JS though, Disney above all others, should have been leading this from the front.

    Very hard to give up Netflix if I had to choose between the two. Does anyone know what the current deal is with Disney and Marvel regarding all the Marvel shows that Netflix produces?

  8. hcat says:

    I don’t see other studios being able to follow suit as well. The Disney ESPN hits a broad demographic. Disney Channel programs and movies for kids, sports for adults, and abc repeats to binge watch with a pint of Hagan-daz for those spouses who don’t watch sports. And then they make Good Morning America, Nightline and the Evening news available to fully supplement your cable subscription.

    No other studio cuts such a broad swath or has such brand awareness. Universal’s parent company IS cable so I wouldn’t see them making any moves to make it easier for people to cut cords. Paramount does not have the television or movie library to pull this off, plus I am not sure which side of the Viacom divide SpongeBob and Southpark are on, but the NICK properties are more likely to land on the CBS All Access site than a paramount. And honestly if families are weighing entertainment options, no one is going with Nick over Disney. Sony and Lionsgate has a very thin but prestigious television library but they will have to piggy back with some other studio.

    “Having HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Netlfix gets you pretty much any movie six-eight months after release”

    You would also need either Amazon or EPIX to be complete but look at how the scale slides. HBO probably carries more theatrical studio films than the others combined. Netflix has one studio (the biggest) Starz has one (the fifth) and Epix has two (six and seven). I don’t know what people are watching on Showtime (Weinstein?). There is no way there are going to be eight different streamers of this size. Smaller studios will either be bought or Piggyback on Netflix or HBO GO.

    Though if I were a betting man I would say the Discovery Networks are the next to announce a subscription service to get out ahead of the crowd. And since they just bought Scripps that is going to be more of a priority in our household than any other service.

  9. Mostly Lurking says:

    “My point is that now you’re separating Disney out from Netflix, so you’re adding another subscription fee to the mix to keep some of the same content. If each studio follows suit, you’re getting more library content, but again another new subscription fee with only the same number of hours in the day to watch.”

    But that’s the opposite of what you said. You were saying that having a handful of channels would be more valuable than a family of four paying to go to the movies. All I was saying in response is that this is already the case. Splitting studios’ libraries over more streaming services would actually make the night at the movies more enticing because the more streaming services one needs to subscribe to, the more expensive it becomes in relation to the night out.

    I think hcat’s analysis makes sense in that there is a limited number of streaming services that will be able to succeed without canibalizing each other. If that was your original point, it did not come across, at least to me.

  10. palmtree says:

    It makes sense for Disney to start a streaming service, but CBS??? Any takers on how long that will last?

  11. Triple Option says:

    Just because Disney will be offering it, it doesn’t mean there’s going to a huge immediate migration. You can get the MLB package and NFL Sunday Ticket without having cable or directv but it accounts for only small percentage of their business.

    For years, cable networks have been screaming that ala cart pricing would be the death of them. Yet, each year they want to substantially bump the carriage fees they charge the cable and satellite companies. But these raised rates are what’s driving people to cut the cord. Cable networks have been telling service providers that they can cut their margins. What this does is give Disney more leverage come service renew time. “AT&T and Spectrum, you won’t give us $8/HH, fine, we’re out!”

    TW thought they could get near ESPN money for Sportsnet but no one blinked and that sent them down in flames. Now, even if a majority of households lose access to the Disney networks through traditional means, they’ll still be able to reach their content. Of course, if say, Spectrum and Directv don’t make new carriage deals, (fyi, I doubt that would really happen), the providers would just make up for the loss by jacking up internet access prices through U-verse and broadband. Yay, in the end, it’s still the consumer who loses!!

    There’s decent programming on “basic” cable. For me, though, live sports have kept me from cutting the cord. I’m not about to subscribe to 4 or more different services. There’ll come a point where I’ll have one or two, hopefully be happy, but most likely just learn to live without. There are plenty of shows and films stacked up in my queue as it is. I don’t currently have HBO or Showtime, would be nice, but just being clueless overhearing a couple of conversations from time to time, is not worth the extra $300/year.

  12. Hcat says:

    TO, you make a lot of good points, cable is not going away anymore that movie theaters are, there is just going to be more options. Cable will still exist as the all you can eat buffet but those of us with smaller appetites will choose a smaller variety of streaming services

    This will lead to greater carrier disputes since no one is about to drop their subscription fees, especially with fewer subscriber each year.
    The cable channels will simply claim that they were driven to stream on the web to reach the customers that cable couldn’t keep

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