Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Market was on steroids yesterday…not sure what the pretense was this time?
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News The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors Extends Robert A. Iger’s Contract as CEO Through 2026
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Oh…you still think they have to tell the truth about park plans and D+…dont you?
My sweet little bird
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
The customer has no Barrier to Exit.
Netflix & WWE just changed things up. Let’s see what Bob does in response. I know!!! Let’s overpay EVEN MORE for the NBA broadcast rights!!!
pdude81
Well-Known Member
Live sports is a smart move to cut down the binge and purge style of subscription. Hopefully NFL and not NBA though
_caleb
Well-Known Member
What makes you think these departments are so disconnected? What criteria do you think the production side takes into consideration when deciding what projects to greenlight? And why would you think that “current customer behavior” wouldn’t be at least one factor?
_caleb
Well-Known Member
Customers HATE barriers to exit. Ask Comcast (Or used car dealerships).
JD80
Well-Known Member
Probably not the thread for this but was this discussed somewhere?
www.latimes.com
NFL is in advanced talks on taking a stake in Disney's ESPN
ESPN would take over the NFL's media operations in return for an equity stake in the channel, which faces a challenging future due to consumers cutting the pay TV cord.
www.latimes.com
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
I loooooathe Netflix. I come in for Stranger Things and then can't quit fast enough.You know you want to subscribe. All the cool kids are doing it.
I totally get where you're coming from. I would have dropped it years ago but too many members of my family still watch a lot of their content.
CaptainAmerica
Premium Member
Netflix be like...
I totally get where you're coming from. I would have dropped it years ago but too many members of my family still watch a lot of their content.
Netflix be like...
And he'll probably be mostly gone by the time the deal starts. He's already only working a handful of premium events.
Since 1932, the first and fourth year of whoever is lives at 1600 generated positive market returns. The ones not invested long term in the markets are missing out on ROI.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Because it’s Disney?
_caleb
Well-Known Member
But you know as well as anyone here how much data Disney has about you as a customer/guest/subscriber.
Data analytics is how Disney gets away with offering the minimum for maximum profits. Everyone here loves to whine and complain about how much they hate current Disney, yet they still give the mouse loads of money.
This DOESN'T mean they automatically know what to produce that will be a sure success. They make mistakes, they take some audiences for granted, they're subject to pandemics and social trends and economic downturns just like everyone else.
But Disney knows many are addicted to their products and that all the complaining doesn't line up with customer behavior. They knew they could cut DME because they knew it would have no real impact on attendance. They know how few rides we can experience in a day at the parks and still walk away thinking a day of standing in line was worth $150.
Disney knows that nostalgia will get us to watch yet another Toy Story sequel. They know that a live-action Rescuers Down Under will attract subscribers to D+ and draw new attention to the original film. They know they can keep cranking out a hundred variations on the same formulaic Marvel movie and that people will watch. Box office may be down as audiences are shifting to streaming, but Disney knows how the masses we spend money, so you can bet they're going to repeat any play that's proven to work as long as it works.
Almost everything people here complain about is just Disney following the data.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
Very true. I'm one of those customers.
Unfortunately though, this is one of those cases where customer and business interests don't align in a way that most businesses prefer.
For most businesses, one of the most expensive things they deal with is customer acquisition.
That means it's much better to keep the customers you have than it is to lose them and get new ones.
If you're not going to make it hard for them to leave, you need to either make it so cheap that staying really doesn't matter or make it compelling for them to stay which means providing the content they're really after.
Neither of those options rakes in the great profits they've been promising - certainly not the kind of profits needed to offset the declining theatrical revenue they've accelerated with their direct-to-consumer model.
Disney, since they make a disproportionate amount of their revenue from merchandising, licensing, theme park attractions with IP, etc. compared to other studios is in a unique position where they could treat production almost like a loss-leader if they could get budgets under control. I can certainly see that as a sustainable business model where they're able to undercut everyone else while keeping quality high* in a way no other streaming service could but that would be a survival of the fittest scenario.
What they want is more like thriving of the fattest.
*This would mean making high quality content that based on consumer appeal, seems to be alluding them right now. I don't mean good production but good production with good stories and scripts.
_caleb
Well-Known Member
Me, too!
Right. And with Disney+ Disney started with "make it so cheap there's no reason not to subscribe" AND they made it "so compelling it's worth paying for/watching ads" by adding nearly everything film, series they have.
Folks here keep saying this, but it's not the complete picture. The subscription model isn't new to Disney-- they've been doing it for years with The Disney Channel. And what everyone keeps forgetting is that Direct-to-Consumer is bringing the Company much closer to the customer. They know more about you and they have more opportunities to sell you stuff.
Disney+ is like having you stay on site during your WDW vacation. They want to trap you in a bubble so they can sell stuff to you. Right now, they're raising prices and cutting costs. But soon they'll roll out additional revenue streams (shopping, gaming, and social) that will cost them very little but will maximize profits.
Exactly. The line between entertainment content and marketing content is going to get increasingly blurry. The content will be high (enough) quality to keep customers, but costs will be low enough to keep them profitable (just like the Disney Channel) while also serving to funnel people to the parks and into greater degrees of brand loyalty.
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MrPromey
Well-Known Member
They did start it out that way and then quickly rose to a price nearly three times what it started at without ads, but also with ads.
I'd say they've moved past the "so cheap people don't need to think about it" phase except where they're getting it for free or near free with the ad options through another business or service.
Who knows? Maybe there is something sustainable there where the bulk of their customers don't directly pay and they make it up on volume with ads... Does that mean we can expect broadcast network quality output in the future?
We'll have to agree to disagree on their content being compelling at this point - at least not for anything beyond the binge-and-dump cycle for people paying attention to their subscriptions.
Unless you've got children or adults with cognitive disorders wanting to watch the same older content over and over and over again, that back catalog has little value when it comes to retaining subscribers and plunking money into three seasons of the Mandalorian is great but after the existing subscribers have watched all three, what's to keep them paying?
Are you old enough to remember when the Disney channel was a premium add-on service like HBO - a real subscription service?
I have vivid memories of going to my aunts house (single woman - no children) to watch it because we didn't have it in our cable package. I also remember a Disney channel digital watch she gave me which she'd gotten as part of a sign-up promotion as one of my prized possessions as a young child.
The problem with that model is Disney proved to be too niche at the time for it to really be sustainable with original content and there was the problem that people could drop them from their cable service after introductory offers ran out.
Where they got big was when they left that model and instead became a part of the basic package. There were no more negotiations with customers. No more having to advertise their channel or offer trinkets to get people to sign up. They negotiated just with the cable providers and once they made a deal, they basically got all those companies customers locked in until it was time to renew and after getting ESPN and a few other channels, they developed the kind of leverage needed to force their whole suite of programming onto cable providers' rosters.
They have absolutely none of that power with D+.
If their ultimate goal is to turn D+ into Amazon Prime, their doing an abysmal job at it. Amazon is finally offering ads on a streaming service that never was the original reason anyone signed up. With their complicated web of offerings, they've created a very sticky subscription model that still makes most of it's profit by juicing sales on their website.
If that's the model Disney is going after, it seems strange that they'd start with with the streaming service, raise prices, pull back on content and only after that, start to offer the services they expect to make bigger profit from.
Frankly, that looks like an incredibly stupid approach unless it was a late-in-the-game pivot.
And exactly what games and product are they going to be selling?
Star wars cloaks and spiderman masks?
Or do they think that with their $10+ for 2+ week shipping like they offer on their current online store, they're going to go up against Amazon with third party products and start selling those flushable adult wipes they run commercials for today?
What games?
They don't even have their own gaming studio so who is going to be making and who will be making the majority of profit over whatever this amounts to?
I'm not being rhetorical or trying to prove a point with these questions - I honestly don't know so if you do, please share.
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