Disney's Streaming Services: Disney+ (and Hulu, ESPN+, Star, & hotstar)

MisterPenguin

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Original Poster
Q: I meet lovely people on a daily basis who are fans of #Willow, who are the reason the @DisneyPlus Series was made. Please tell me @WaltDisneyCo, what do I say to these subscribers when they ask why they can’t watch the series any more?

A: People coming up to you is confirmation bias. You aren't polling the population through random sampling. Instead, you're projecting that the few who liked the show, and are telling you so, represent enough people to justify the cost of a program that didn't do as well as we hoped it would. Disney+ is running in the red -- for now. It can't afford holding onto properties which are licensed or have payments of residuals without that property drawing and sustaining subscribers -- which Willow wasn't doing. Maybe we can put your program on a PVOD service until we can afford to house it on Disney+. You have an agent who can explain these things to you, rather than make a public beef and burn bridges, no?
 
_caleb

_caleb

Well-Known Member
Write-offs seem sad and losing something we that once added perceived value to our D+ subscriptions isn’t great. But it is business and while Disney is totally fine producing multiple $250 movies each year that will only bring in a small fraction of their costs, they don’t want to pay associated costs with a series few people watched (and they know how few watched it).
 
D

DCBaker

Premium Member
The cast for Monsters At Work Season 2 was announced today at New York Comic Con. Season 2 is set to debut on Disney+ in 2024.

"Season two guest stars reprising their roles from the Monsters Inc. franchise include Aubrey Plaza (The White Lotus) as Claire Wheeler, Nathan Fillion (ABC’s The Rookie) as Johnny Worthington III, and Bobby Moynihan (Saturday Night Live) as Chet Alexander.

Additional guest cast includes Jennifer Coolidge (The White Lotus), Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death), Janelle James (Abbott Elementary), Jenifer Lewis (ABC’s black-ish), Ali Wong (Beef), Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live), Paula Pell (Saturday Night Live), Danny Pudi (Community), Cody Rigsby (Peloton instructor, Author, TV personality), Jimmy Tatro (ABC’s Home Economics), Danny Trejo (Machete), Joe Lo Truglio (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Alan Tudyk (Resident Alien).

The series stars Billy Crystal (Mike Wazowski), John Goodman (James P Sullivan aka Sulley), Ben Feldman (Tylor Tuskmon), Mindy Kaling (Val Little), Henry Winkler (Fritz), Lucas Neff (Duncan) and Alanna Ubach (Cutter)."

deadline.com

Disney’s ‘Monsters at Work’ Season Two Guest Cast Unveiled At New York Comic Con

Monsters at Work executive producer Kevin Deters revealed the second season guest cast today at New York Comic Con, along with a sneak peek screening ahead of its debut in 2024. Season tw…
deadline.com deadline.com
 
Tha Realest

Tha Realest

Well-Known Member
MisterPenguin said:
Q: I meet lovely people on a daily basis who are fans of #Willow, who are the reason the @DisneyPlus Series was made. Please tell me @WaltDisneyCo, what do I say to these subscribers when they ask why they can’t watch the series any more?

A: People coming up to you is confirmation bias. You aren't polling the population through random sampling. Instead, you're projecting that the few who liked the show, and are telling you so, represent enough people to justify the cost of a program that didn't do as well as we hoped it would. Disney+ is running in the red -- for now. It can't afford holding onto properties which are licensed or have payments of residuals without that property drawing and sustaining subscribers -- which Willow wasn't doing. Maybe we can put your program on a PVOD service until we can afford to house it on Disney+. You have an agent who can explain these things to you, rather than make a public beef and burn bridges, no?
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This is Daikini-splaining
 
D

doctornick

Well-Known Member
Disney Analyst said:
But also, what is the logic of removing your own original series?
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I can't imagine the demand for Willow the TV series is all that great, especially as it was kinda mediocre.

That said, it's tough for me to understand how not continuing to carry it (and other series) is all that much of a cost savings considering they are already made an paid for. The money for residuals is miniscule for something like that and only occurs if people are watching the shows anyway (which would be a good thing for the service). If people are on ad tier watching it, all the better as the service makes money with the ads.

Furthermore, there is the intangible value of just having more "stuff" on the service making it look for robust and having value. Disney+ has a problem where it just seems bare bones with not a lot of originals. Removing a chunk of the stuff actually made for the service does it a disservice IMHO by making it seem even less robust.

Furthermore, I just hate that some really quality things that didn't catch on (e.g. Mysterious Benedict Society, Earth to Ned, etc) are simply lost and unavailable to be seen by any new potential customers. I feel like there is probably some better algorithm that D+ could have in recommending such shows to folks given other things they have watched.

And a complete aside, I wish D+ had a "rate this program" type feedback after you watch something. So that (1) they can see how a program is received (just someone finishing it doesn't mean that they particularly enjoyed it; sometimes you finish it as a "sunk cost") and (2) to fine tune what a customer likes so recommendations can be more tailored to their interest.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Disney Analyst said:
But also, what is the logic of removing your own original series?
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Essentially it's a move to recoup taxes, which someone deemed was worth more money than keeping series they knew would underperform.

D+ is entitled to pay the studios over a period of time for the programming they owe them. Say that's 30% year one of the ?200million they spent on the Willow series. They will normally slowly depreciate it over time.

In this case however, Willow was a total bust. So while they may have 'spent' 60 million on it already, they remove it from the service and declare the other 140 million as a 'loss'. Yes they spent 200 million already regardless, but by declaring that 140 million as a loss the company can pay less taxes (140*50%).

So somewhere someone comes to the conclusion Willow is simply not worth keeping on the service for '70' million dollars of money they'd have to pay in taxes on their Revenue.

Hence we had that 1.5billion dollar content impairment last quarter.

Disney didn't 'lose' that money last quarter, it already spent it long ago. But by sacrificing those series last quarter they were able to declare a larger 'loss' and technically not pay taxes. All while technically keeping the money they did make last quarter.

This can only be done on new series though. Once they've depreciated something there is nothing to really write off. They can't burn Brother Bear for 100million because it's pretty much been depreciated to zero dollars.
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
More specifically than my sort of made up numbers, this chart from the quarterly earnings shows what they did. Essentially they sacrificed the series to get a tax return. There's some other shenanigans in here, but the important thing to note is Disney made (and actually kept) 2.959 billion last quarter. But for tax purposes they reported that they lost 134. It's kind of why their stock price is a bit misrepresentative on some of its measures, the company is making more in actuality than they are claiming they are for filings.

The actual specific dollar figure they got 'tax wise' from content impairments is nested further down in their filings.

"The current quarter loss from continuing operations before income taxes included the $2,440 million Content Impairment Charge. Income tax on continuing operations included a benefit of $568 million from this charge using the Company’s marginal income tax rate of approximately 23%. Due to the significance of this charge on pre-tax income, our reported effective tax rate for the current quarter is negative 14.2%. "


Screen Shot 2023-10-16 at 8.28.46 PM.png



So the question becomes, were the series they wrote down still worth 568 million dollars? I'm posing that mostly rhetorically.
 
Hawkeye_2018

Hawkeye_2018

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
Essentially it's a move to recoup taxes, which someone deemed was worth more money than keeping series they knew would underperform.

D+ is entitled to pay the studios over a period of time for the programming they owe them. Say that's 30% year one of the ?200million they spent on the Willow series. They will normally slowly depreciate it over time.

In this case however, Willow was a total bust. So while they may have 'spent' 60 million on it already, they remove it from the service and declare the other 140 million as a 'loss'. Yes they spent 200 million already regardless, but by declaring that 140 million as a loss the company can pay less taxes (140*50%).

So somewhere someone comes to the conclusion Willow is simply not worth keeping on the service for '70' million dollars of money they'd have to pay in taxes on their Revenue.

Hence we had that 1.5billion dollar content impairment last quarter.

Disney didn't 'lose' that money last quarter, it already spent it long ago. But by sacrificing those series last quarter they were able to declare a larger 'loss' and technically not pay taxes. All while technically keeping the money they did make last quarter.

This can only be done on new series though. Once they've depreciated something there is nothing to really write off. They can't burn Brother Bear for 100million because it's pretty much been depreciated to zero dollars.
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what about releasing it on digital or disc to buy? Would that still negate the write off?
 
BrianLo

BrianLo

Well-Known Member
Hawkeye_2018 said:
what about releasing it on digital or disc to buy? Would that still negate the write off?
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Yes, selling it in any form would be a reversal. Though if they can find a partner or revenue stream for them, some of it will be reversed. They aren't opposed for someone else paying for the budget gradually.

Maybe the likes of Willow and the Mysterious Benedict Society, but some of it is just content that will likely be buried to time if it really can't fetch any money from anyone.
 
CaptainAmerica

CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
doctornick said:
How would that work? Would it just be the Hotstar component? (I believe they also use the Hotstar branding in SE Asia)

Would it include Disney+ (name and programming)? Is it possible that Disney will retain the D+ name and branding for India and re-launch D+ there in the future?
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Sounds to me like they're exiting India entirely.
 
Disney Irish

Disney Irish

Premium Member
doctornick said:
How would that work? Would it just be the Hotstar component? (I believe they also use the Hotstar branding in SE Asia)

Would it include Disney+ (name and programming)? Is it possible that Disney will retain the D+ name and branding for India and re-launch D+ there in the future?
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The way I read it was that Disney would keep a minority stake in the service. So Reliance would become the operator and majority owner. This would be similar to how Hulu was run for the last 4 years.
 

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