Disney Explores the Sale of More Films and TV Series To Rivals (bloomberg.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Walt Disney Co. is 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.
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.
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.
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)
Re: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.
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:4, Interesting)
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: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.
Re: Not healthy for the market (Score:1)
They had to invest to content and infrastructure while at times subsidizing rivals and letting them use their networks. I'm I wrong? Asking the downvoter....but please, anyone answer.
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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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but maintaining the streaming infrastructure is expensive
Whatever other problems Disney+ has, it's not that "streaming infrastructure is expensive."
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but maintaining the streaming infrastructure is expensive
Whatever other problems Disney+ has, it's not that "streaming infrastructure is expensive."
Well, if you limit your thinking to the USA like you Americans are want to do then it probably isn't. Streaming stuff at high quality globally is expensive and keeping it going is a multi dimensional headache. You literally have to negotiate with thousands of all kinds of gatekeepers in hundreds of different countries. That's why the proposition of setting up a scrappy little startup to de-throne YouTube is a lot easier said than done. The question here is: Are the potential profits of Disney+ really so hig
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Streaming stuff at high quality globally is expensive and keeping it going is a multi dimensional headache. You literally have to negotiate with thousands of all kinds of gatekeepers in hundreds of different countries. That's why the proposition of setting up a scrappy little startup to de-throne YouTube is a lot easier said than done.
These are problems I know how to solve from a technical standpoint. I have that skillset.
The real problem is getting (and keeping) viewers. Which is the problem Disney seems to have, too. After they raised their prices (doubled them), they lost a lot of viewers.
Re:Not healthy for the market (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Not healthy for the market (Score:5, Informative)
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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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.
Actually, the economics still work the same way as your fees go to pay for stuff you don't watch as well. You just happen to have one set of viewing habits. Every use case is different, and depending on viewing habits you may pay less. I suspect most people wound up paying more or about the same; especially if they want things like local TV, sports, etc.
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1. With cable there felt like there was an arbitrary list of what could be shown, and you were a slave to a schedule someone else set until DVRs came around 2. With the advent of on demand, for many programs, it meant that no longer are you competing just with everyone else at that time of day, but against every program ever created, that is available on demand. In a moment it made some shows way more profitable and others, wor
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In the effort to try and maximize their own revenues they have limited some of their exposure on other networks
That's just it. A lot of people thought cable cutting would result in companies somehow deciding to forgo revenue via some a la carte offering. Not going to happen. They will do what they can to get maximum revenue from their catalog.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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But either way the block up front is far preferable to ads sprinkled in throughout the movie.
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And this is exactly the same as how movie theaters worked during the Golden Age. All of the big metropolitan theaters were either owned by one of the majors or had a contract with one of them to show their product exclusively. The little neighborhood houses either hooked up with some of the minor studios in Gower Gulch [wikipedia.org] or specialized in art films and foreign offerings.
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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.
Back then Netflix was a pseudo-monopoly who you had to subscribe to for any of the content. They were the cable company of streaming.
In all honesty Netflix shares some of the blame here. It was one thing when they were just re-streaming the other studios stuff. It's when Netflix started it's own production house that I think was a shot across the bow of WB, Disney, etc and they had to look at Netflix as a rival rather than a partnet and profit source.
No, Netflix went this route because they saw the writing on the wall. The producers wanted a bigger slice of the pie, and the best way for them to do that was to start their own service where they had total control and could reap all the rewards. Netflix didn't cause this, they were reacting to what they knew was coming. It was 100% the right call.
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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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But that's still bundling. It's just that instead of having to buy all of HBO or whatever, you would be picking which sub-bundles you'd get. Not that I think your idea is bad, it's just that you need to realize just what it is you're aski
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If you could have a Netflix subscription and add the "Disney kids" option and the "HBO fantasy" option and didn't have to pay for the "Disney Star Wars" option and the "HBO other stuff" option and it was reasonably-priced, well, that is what we wanted from un-bundling. But that's still bundling. It's just that instead of having to buy all of HBO or whatever, you would be picking which sub-bundles you'd get. Not that I think your idea is bad, it's just that you need to realize just what it is you're asking for.
To a certain degree yes, that's still bundling, but mostly because (for instance) Disney bought a bunch of properties.
Also, nobody was literally asking to subscribe to a single TV show. People objected to having to pick a package that contained The Derp Channel, Dumb Stuff News Network and Paint Drying Watcher's World in order to obtain access to The Awesome Stuff Channel. Everybody understood that The Awesome Stuff Channel does contain some stinkers. But the other channels don't contain anything we w
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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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This is exactly what we had with Netflix until the content producers thought they would make more money by being both producer and provider.
What Netflix sub did you have that let you "select each content producer you wanted"? The DVD by Mail was maybe the only time they had anything like that. With Netflix, like cable, you paid for every bit of content they have, if you want to watch it or not.
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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.
Re:Not healthy for the market (Score:5, Informative)
Much of the complaint about bundling was related to one channel: ESPN. It was impossible to get many channels without paying the ESPN tax.
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"siloed into a la carte options"
Siloed is the opposite of a la carte. It logically impossible to silo into a la carte options.
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"siloed into a la carte options"
Siloed is the opposite of a la carte. It logically impossible to silo into a la carte options.
Bullshit. Unless you want to pay for individual shows (and you can, but I'm betting you are too cheap to do it) then, by your definition, ala carte doesn't, and can't exist at all. Ala carte cable would have been you pick channels you wanted. You didn't get to pick what shows on those channels you wanted to pay for. Same with streaming. You pick the service that has the content you want, and you ignore the ones that don't.
No what you and people like you really want is a monopoly service that has all the
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No, content isn't a la carte, you're still paying for all the programming on the entire streaming service when all you want is a single program.
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Streaming services in their current form have far more content than any one channel. Their business model is far closer to bundled channels than to a la carte.
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It's kind of the same now. They think they can have a single service like Netflix with every show for $14/mo or whatever it is right now. That's not going to happen either.
TLDR: People are cheapskates.
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That's not really what happened though. Nobody got an ala carte cable option. They got Netflix and Hulu etc. instead, only to watch the services fragment based on buyouts and content library leveraging.
If people had actually gotten ala carte cable, they might still be on cable!
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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.
Useless media monopolies. (Score:2)
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 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.
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Pendulum had to start swinging back at some point.
And the timing of the pendulum swing was foreordained, as Disney had plans to increase prices from the beginning (originally $5 a month to new customers). It was only so low to attract a customer base.
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And when Disney sells shows across 5 or 10 different services, I gather you won't be complaining about that, correct?
Complaining that their shows are now available on services I already have? Er, no, probably not, why would I?
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So you are going to sign up for 5 or 10 services to watch all their shows, but not to Disney plus? That's the economic sense I'd expect of boomers.
Reading isn't really your thing, is it?
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.
Do you want ice with that? [snopes.com]
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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.
Disney has failed on its back catalog (Score:5, Interesting)
Disney has a huge number of theatrical cartoon shorts made between the 1921 Laug-O-Gram series and the 1960s. I'm not going to do the work to count, but by observation is seems that less than half of these are available for viewing on Disney+. Keep in mind that Bob Iger promised us customers "everything" multiple times. Disney seems to add somewhere between 0 and 5 classic cartoon shorts a year to Disney+. They could easily encode the missing shorts and make them available. Hell, I'm a home video hobbyist and even I know enough that I could easily encode a cartoon a day for Disney if they gave me access and paid me a cheap fee to do it, but they have no interest in doing it themselves. They have something like over 40 years worth of shows from the TV series known at various times as Disneyland/Wonderful World Of Color/Wonderful World Of Disney, yet I think we have only 7 episodes available to watch on Disney+. The historically significant original Mickey Mouse Club show ran for 3 years in the 1950s and we have only the first 5 episodes available and those were restored many years ago. They could probably encode all of this stuff for maybe $1 million in labor costs, yet they would rather spend $80 million on a streaming series that nobody really wanted and probably caused no new consumers to sign up for.
We wouldn't be in this mess... (Score:3)
If the Paramount Consent Decree was still in place. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr... [justice.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
This was the lawsuit that separated the studios from the theaters (in addition to many other things), which led to a boom in the variety of films being shown in theaters. Kind of the exact opposite of what's happening these days, with almost every movie being a sequel or a reboot, and studios setting up walled gardens (streaming services) around their content. That's also why you see so many television stations moving shows to streaming only, and taking them off the air/cable waves. And also why we are seeing these streaming services being filled with content for content's sake, with seemingly little regard for quality.
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Never paid for Disney + (Score:2)