The Handbasket journalist Marisa Kabas is reporting on Bluesky that Disney saw more than 1.7 million total paid streaming cancellations during the week of September 17th-23rd.
The total allegedly includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN and was confirmed by her Disney source. That falloff reportedly marked a 436% increase over the usual baseline subscriber churn rate.
Disney-owned ABC suspended the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live on September 17th before announcing it would be reinstated on September 22nd.
During that time the story made national headlines with people seeing it as a free speech issue, namely due to comments from FCC chairman Brendan Carr and pressure from conservative network affiliates Nexstar and Sinclair. As a result, talk spread online people threatening or actually quitting their Disney+ subscriptions in protest.
How the streamer will fare next week will also be interesting. Late on the 23rd came the announcement of price increases for the Disney+ service, which will potentially lead to more cancellations or those who did cancel not signing back up anytime soon.
The reporter’s source also claimed that Disney sped up the return of the late night show because it had planned to announce the price hike last Tuesday.
Source: The Handbasket
