Disney Explores the Sale of More Films and TV Series To Rivals (bloomberg.com)
- Reference: 0170263363
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/04/0154259/disney-explores-the-sale-of-more-films-and-tv-series-to-rivals
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/disney-explores-the-sale-of-more-films-tv-series-to-rivals
> Walt Disney Co. is [1]exploring more licensing of its films and television series to rival media outlets as pressure grows to curb the losses in its streaming TV business. The Burbank, California-based entertainment giant is seeking to earn more cash from its content library, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified as the talks are private. The move would represent a shift in strategy, as Disney has in recent years tried to keep much of its original programming exclusively on its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. [CEO Bob Iger], 71, will share more of his plans when the company reports financial results on Feb. 8, but he has already taken steps to reverse decisions made by his predecessor. He offered free photos and more lower-price tickets to theme-park guests irked by rising fees.
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> Although Disney already licenses some titles to other platforms including Amazon's Prime streaming service, it began to hoard content with the launch of Disney+ in 2019. Disney curtailed licensing of its own programs to third parties to boost that service. A deal that had Disney films running on Netflix was phased out, and the company touted how much of its new programming came from its own in-house studios. Wall Street cheered at the time because it meant the company was entirely focused on building out the streaming business. The shift was costly, however, as Disney surrendered billions of dollars from home video sales and licensing deals with other networks.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/disney-explores-the-sale-of-more-films-tv-series-to-rivals
Useless media monopolies. (Score:2)
All they do is set up roadblocks on roads other people built and demand money to see things you already saw. Their "original" content amounts to little more than exclusive sequels to franchises they don't even like or understand.
Re: Useless media monopolies. (Score:1)
And the state of normal broadcast tv is dismal. If you are not feeling like watch the news it is unusable for large parts of the morning and evenings and middays...it's like its engineered to push people away to pay tv.
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It is a poor business plan. Disney is the success it is because of the media blitz it created. Every outlet had Disney content. Because it was successful everyone wanted it. I am aware of options because Marvel was on Netflix. Now if I donâ(TM)t have Disney I have no idea if I want the content. I have to pay to preview.
It is like music people complaining how radio was a parasite. But radio was cheap advertising and got records sold. Now these whiners are living of Pennieâ(TM)s from streaming ser
Good (Score:2)
Pendulum had to start swinging back at some point.
We already subscribe to three or four streaming services at a time, when Disney pulled this we decided nope, didn't want their stuff enough to get yet another one. Screw that.
Their franchises are already too saturated (Score:2)
The main Disney franchises like Marvel and Star Wars are already being done to death, not sure why anyone would want to pay much for a license in an already over-saturated genre. Back when Netflix was licensing the Marvel stuff they didn't have to compete with Disney pumping out their own superhero films and TV shows left and right. They're going the comic book route and massively fragmenting their audience instead of delivering infrequent but high quality content. And with how expensive it is to make fi
Yawn....a comic book movie factory (Score:2)
The same tired formula recycled over and over and over.
Walt must be rolling over in his grave.
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> Walt must be rolling over in his grave.
[1]Do you want ice with that? [snopes.com]
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/suspended-animation/
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because the same tired children's book adaptations over and over and over was any different.
Semi-Exclusive (Score:2)
Disney risks alienating their Disney+ subscribers if they withhold content from Disney+ to license it to other streamers. What Disney should consider doing is semi-exclusive streaming licenses instead of the more traditional exclusive licenses. By semi-exclusive, they would not restrict Disney from streaming on Disney's own services, but would stop them from licensing them to other non-Disney services.
They might not get as much money, but what money they would get would essentially be free money for them.
Not healthy for the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer. It's good that Disney is starting to realize that fact. It would be better if they would spin off their streaming service altogether (or shut it down) and make all their content available to anyone willing to pay, regardless of which streaming service they use.
Re: Not healthy for the market (Score:2)
They can still keep all thier copyrights and trademarks while licensing them out. Best of both worlds.
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> Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer. It's good that Disney is starting to realize that fact. It would be better if they would spin off their streaming service altogether (or shut it down) and make all their content available to anyone willing to pay, regardless of which streaming service they use.
Setting up your own streaming service around your own little content collection seems like a good idea at first but maintaining the streaming infrastructure is expensive and when people get through watching the best stuff in your silo they quit the service with is what Disney is finding out. Turns out you can earn more money leasing your stuff out to different streaming providers than hoarding it in a silo, nobody could possibly have foreseen that!!
Re: Not healthy for the market (Score:2)
Like any modern business, their brains shut off the very moment they smelled the potential for 'bigger profits!'
That is the very reason that they, HBO, CBS, and pals all colluded to try and kill netflix.
They failed of course, but they did fuck the market in their idiocy.
That kind never actually learns from these kinds of mistakes, which is why they do it over and over again.
Re: Not healthy for the market (Score:1)
In all fairness broadcasters had to invest in the early web developing content and infrastructure for that, moving to cable developing content and infrastructure for that medium, moving back to the web now developing content and infrastructure just for that midium,.....all while supporting all previous standards. And be profitable while doing so.
Re: Not healthy for the market (Score:2)
Broadcasters didn't have to do any of that. Broadcasters broadcast. No need to create content. Content creators generally have an interest in making their content widely available, without exclusives. Keep it separated.
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> Turns out you can earn more money leasing your stuff out to different streaming providers than hoarding it in a silo, nobody could possibly have foreseen that!!
Actually, everyone and anyone with at least one-half a functional brain-cell foresaw that. The only ones who did not are nutbars and MBA's.
It would appear that the nutbars and MBA's are finally getting confronted with reality.
Note my use of "nutbars and MBA's" -- in my experience, all MBA's are nutbars, but not all nutbars have MBA's.
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Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer
I do chuckle when I read this. As an older GenXer, I'm old enough to remember when people used to complain about "channel bundling" from their cable TV provider.
"Let me buy channels a la carte!" people would scream.
Now, 30 years later, content is siloed into a la carte options and people want the opposite.
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But that's just is, a few years back when Netflix was still a bit green in streaming it was like that. Before the major studios all had their own streaming platforms you could find stuff licensed out pretty regularly.
Now, if I want WB/HBO shows, they are nowhere but HBO MAX (and even many of theirs are just blinked away to save on royalties). $15 sir
Paramount shows? Paramount plus good sir. $15
All those decades of NBC and Universal? Peacock, $15 you rubes.
Disney? Obviously its exclusive to Disney+. $15.
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> But that's just is, a few years back when Netflix was still a bit green in streaming it was like that. Before the major studios all had their own streaming platforms you could find stuff licensed out pretty regularly.
> Now, if I want WB/HBO shows, they are nowhere but HBO MAX (and even many of theirs are just blinked away to save on royalties). $15 sir
While HBO may have added WB, HBO was a standalone premium service way before streaming was even a possibility. You wanted HBO shows? You paid for HBO.
> Yes I can "choose" my channels but that's true in the letter of the idea, certainly not the spirit.
Everybody somehow though it meant they old buy what they want cheaper, but the economics doesn't work out. A cable bundle paid based on subscribers, so even if only 30% watched your stuff yo still got fees based on the total subscribers, not viewers. When you went at it alone, you had to charge 3x as much just to get what you got before; and needed to get p
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> People though becasue I paid X for a bundle somehow, since they would not buy everything in the bundle, the cost wold be some fraction of X. Unfortunately the economics do not work that way.
That's exactly how it works. With Netflix/Amazon Prime, I unbundle all of the useless crap I had to pay for with Cable. I pay $25/month for streaming, which is a 90% reduction in the price I paid with Cable for a fraction of streaming's utility.
Unbundling has worked exactly as I had always wanted.
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You're not going to get what you want by "unbundling the streaming platforms". What you'll get is:
Netflix licenses 30% of the Disney content made over the last 5 years
Unbundled Hulu licenses 30% of the Disney content made over the last 5 years
Unbundled Peacock licenses 30% of the Disney content made over the last 5 years
The other 10%? Nobody licensed it so it's literally unavailable. The stuff older than 5 years? 5% of it will appear on Tubi, Crackle, and other free streaming services. At most. You
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I, for one, quite like the Peacock ad-supported model where they show you the block of ads up front, then show you the entire movie. (Full Disclosure: I think I get this service 'free' as part of my T-Mobile plan. So I'm not sure how much this would cost me, and still be shown ads.)
But either way the block up front is far preferable to ads sprinkled in throughout the movie.
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> Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer
> I do chuckle when I read this. As an older GenXer, I'm old enough to remember when people used to complain about "channel bundling" from their cable TV provider. "Let me buy channels a la carte!" people would scream. Now, 30 years later, content is siloed into a la carte options and people want the opposite.
I remember it as well, and argued you could very well wind up paying more, or losing channels targeting a small but loyal audience, because of the way the economics of bundling works. People assumed because they paid X but only wanted a few channels that somehow they would pay less because, well, magic.
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> Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer
> I do chuckle when I read this. As an older GenXer, I'm old enough to remember when people used to complain about "channel bundling" from their cable TV provider. "Let me buy channels a la carte!" people would scream. Now, 30 years later, content is siloed into a la carte options and people want the opposite.
It's not really the same thing. With cable channel bundling, the objection was that you had to pay $X to get Y channels, only one of which you wanted. The choice that was desired was the option to pick individual specific channels such that as long as you picked fewer than Y, you'd pay less than $X.
With streaming silo distribution many streamers have bundled internally. There's plenty of stuff on Disney+ or Netflix etc that would have been separate "channels" on cable. Worse, the price has gone up dra
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A la carte means to select each content producer I want, but have it delivered over a single delivery provider. This is exactly what we had with Netflix until the content producers thought they would make more money by being both producer and provider.
No one is pining for the days of Cable bundling. I am hoping that all the network silos die off, and everyone returns to the model where Netflix is the singular streaming provider it once was. I have no idea how profitable that is for the content producers, an
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> "Let me buy channels a la carte!" people would scream. Now, 30 years later, content is siloed into a la carte options and people want the opposite.
Except it *isnt* a la carte. Its locked into a service with a bunch of other material I am not interested in paying for or watching.
Its literally the same bundles as 30 years ago to the present time, except now instead of a single cable company you deal with, it's 5+.
All we *wanted* (as a GenX born '73) was a way to *select* the things we *WANT* to watch. Not have more conglomerate outlets to go to watch it.
Same shit then, same shit now.
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> Exclusive content silos are unhealthy for the market and the consumer. It's good that Disney is starting to realize that fact. It would be better if they would spin off their streaming service altogether (or shut it down) and make all their content available to anyone willing to pay, regardless of which streaming service they use.
I doubt that would happen. Disney is very proud and protective of its back catalog, a more likely scenario if they killed Disney+ is an exclusive arrangement with one service such as Apple TV+ or Hulu.