New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

[Randall]

Mark Addy returns for The Full Monty - The Series. Begins streaming in June. Did not see that coming.

[Ben]

Yeah, it got announced a while back. Didn’t realise it was shot and ready to show though. Addy’s a nice guy who didn’t quite get the career he should have. I was with a pal of his when he got the call through that he’d landed Fred Flintstone, which was quite the moment.

[Daniel]

"Iger said the company expects to raise the price on its ad-free tier, while keeping the price of its ad-supported tier “modest,” thanks to its superior economics."

I'd hardly call the current price "modest"! $5/$6 would be more fair. And removing content, oh joy.

[Ben]

Yeah…streaming is maturing quickly and it’s slowly dawning on many that it’s not the be all and end all. The bubble is about to burst.

[Daniel]

Dropping today:

:
Secrets of the Zoo: Tampa
Life Below Zero
Crater
A Small Light – Episode 3 & 4
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Venom
The Muppets Mayhem

:
Criminal Minds: Evolution – New Episode
NCIS – New Episode
The Resident – New Episode (Season 6)
Bob's Burgers - New Episode - (Season 13)
The Great North - New Episode (Season 3)
Big Sky - New Episode
Good Trouble – New Episode (Season 4)
True Lies
Will Trent - New Episode
How I Met Your Father – New Episodes (Season 2)
Time Switch
Ad Astra

:
The Simpsons – New Episode (Season 34)
Bob's Burgers - New Episode (Season 13)
Great Expectations - New Episodes
Homeland
Class of ’09

:
How I Met Your Father – New Episode (Season 2)
Alaska Daily – New Episode
Abbott Elementary - New Episode (Season 2)
Will Trent - New Episode
Not Dead Yet – New Episode
America’s Funniest Home Videos: Seasons 20–22
Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – New Episodes
Kiff - New Episodes

[Daniel]

According to this tweet, a bunch of titles are scheduled to leave the France service on the 26th. Might be an indicator of what will be purged from ours:

Willow s1
Dans les coulisses de Willow
Big Shot s1-2
Le Narcisse Noir s1
Derrière l'Etoffe des Héros
Marvel Runaways s1-3
Future Man s1-3
Little Demon s1
A vous Chef s1
Héros fidèles avec Bill Farmer s1
Pizza Challenge s1
Le Monde selon Jeff Goldblum s1-2
Les Rois de la Glace
Le Tournois d'Everrealm
Les Petits Champiosn : Game changers s1-2
Le Mystérieux cercle bénédict
Marvel : Les Voix de Wakanda forever s1
La Grande Imposture s1
L'atelier de Justin s1
Clouds
Allo la Terre ici Ned s1
Etrange mais Vrai ! s3
Projet Héros Marvel s1
Sous les feux de la Rampe s1
Black Beauty
Pêre et fils : au bout du Monde s1
Marvel Mpower s1
Artemis Fowl
Dans les Etoiles s1
A Spark Story
Motherland fort Salem s1-3
Course au Centre de la Terre s1
Disney Mariage de Rêve s1-2
Chien guide d'Aveugle en devenir s1
L'Affaire Jeffrey MacDonald s1
Souvenir de Tournage s1
Les merveilles de l'Amérique s1
Les Pouvoirs Extraordinaires de la Nature s1
De l'Autre coté s1
Dollface s1-2
Le Seul et l'Unique Yvan
Magic Camp
Timmy Failure : Des Erreurs ont étaient commises
Howard
Everything's Trash s1
Pistol s1
Y, le dernier Homme s1
The Premise s1
Foodtastic s1
L'Amour au temp du Corona s1
Treize à la Douzaine 2022
Pentanonix : Noël autour du Monde
Stuntman
Wolfgang : un chef à Hollywood
Journal d'une future Présidente s1-2
L'Avenir leur appartient
StarGirl

If true, it's disgusting they're removing the Howard documentary on the same day the Little Mermaid remake opens.

[Ben]

Pooh.

Even worse is that they are removing core stuff that was a big part of what was promoted as the big D+ originals, like Howard, Black Beauty, Artemis and Willow, not to mention what looks like the Spark shorts, potentially.

However, maybe this is an indication of disc releases? You know, remove stuff from one platform and make it available on another…? Or is that just wishful thinking…?

[Daniel]

Speak of the devil. Here's a list of some of the titles being removed globally May 26:

The Mysterious Benedict Society [Disney+]
Big Shot [Disney+]
Turner & Hooch [Disney+]
Willow [Disney+]
The Making Of Willow [Disney+]
Just Beyond [Disney+]
The World According To Jeff Goldblum [Disney+]
Pistol [FX/Hulu]
Dollface [Hulu]
The Quest [Disney+]
The Hot Zone [Nat Geo/Hulu]
Y: The Last Man [FX/Hulu]
Maggie [Hulu]
Little Demon [FX/Hulu]
The Premise [Hulu]
Love In The Time Of Corona [Hulu]
Everything’s Trash [Hulu]
Best In Snow [Hulu]
Best In Dough [Hulu]
The One And Only Ivan [Disney+]
Timmy Failure [Disney+]
Be Our Chef [Disney+]
Magic Camp [Disney+]
Howard [Disney+]
Earth To Ned [Disney+]
Foodtastic [Disney+]
Stuntman [Disney+]
Disney Fairy Tale Weddings [Disney+]
Wolfgang [Disney+]
It’s a Dog’s Life With Bill Farmer [Disney+]

Yep, Howard. Crud.

[Ben]

Ha! Just came to post THR's same story. Yep, it’s happening:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 1235495857

Slightly longer list there, including aforementioned Artemis (which means my only D+ credit go bye-bye!) and Black Beauty, as well as a "warning" that this is a "first round of reductions".

Bummer about Pistol: I’ve had that on the list to watch for months as a friend worked on it, but they announce it’s going without giving any fair warning or time to squeeze it in.

If they think pulling stuff like this is going to settle less churn, they couldn’t be more wrong: people will get fed up with shows disappearing halfway through the, watching them and just stop bothering to subscribe or watch anything longform in case it goes.

Oh well, at least nothing major-major is ginger, though I would have liked to have gotten to Willow at somepoint. Good riddance to that Ivan pic, which was just nasty. And yet they leave Pinocchio on…?

Howard is an interesting one: it was actually independently produced and only picked up for D+ after completion. I actually have a stream of it from before the Disney credit was added, and apart from that it’s the exact same film. I wonder if the original producers only licensed it for two years, or something, and can now shop it around…?

Pretty sucky-sucky situation and to spring that so suddenly. And residuals aside, which are usually buyouts anyway, I still don’t get how this is saving dollars already spent on content already being watched. Does kind of make a mockery of how big and important a lot of these shows were presented as…and ultimately how much the company really believes in them and how well they did, or not.

Streaming's great, eh?

[gaastra]

It says they plan to license some of these to other streaming services also. Just glad the golden age disney films didn't get removed.

[Bill1978]

I find it odd that content created exclusively for Disney+ is getting removed just odd. It is decisions like this that makes me grateful I am still old school and purchase physical copies of shows/movies that I really like. I do miss the days of video stores when you knew you could walk in and find that 'old' movie for a watch. Today its hard to find them

I better watch the Howard documentary this weekend before it disappears.

[Randall]

Yep, yet another argument for maintaining a disc collection, though none of those shows are on discs themselves (yet). So, that is just the Willow TV show? It does seem bizarre to pull ballyhooed D+ original content, though they may see more value in licensing them out at this point. Most views likely happen within the first few weeks, I would guess.

More and more, we see the promise of streaming clash with reality. Streamers can't actually afford to make everything available all the time, even when they own it.

[Ben]

Seems it’s just the Willow series, which is nuts as it’s so new and probably still finding a few viewers, like me, who want to watch but haven’t gotten to it yet. Like Pistol, too, since I’ve been too busy catching up on all the Marvel shenanigans. What do they think we just sit in front of our sets watching this stuff 27/7?

I reckon Willow will get aired around the world. I can see the BBC ponying up a reasonable price for it for Saturday early evenings. The original film was a good ratings booster for them in the day and was always on. Pistol could end up on Sky here, it seems more their kind of thing. The rest I think will float around a bit, maybe pop back up here and there.

It’s clear from this and Warners now suggesting studios collab on more bundles that streaming isn’t really working out as they’d hoped. It kind of really is just the new video rental store, like really really back in the old days where you did actually pay a subscription to belong to a particular store and then rented from there. And then DTVs came along, just like streaming "originals".

It is also, remember, where Netflix came from in the first place…

[James]

Variety recently had a story explaining the reasoning from the studio perspective (using HBO Max as an example). I absolutely hate it because I think having the back catalog available at any time is the best thing about streaming, but I do understand their point.

The situation that Warner Bros. Discovery is scrambling to address by lightening the content load should be crystal clear to anyone who has ever worked in retail sales management. Simply put, HBO Max has an inventory problem. The long-tail theory of content that has fueled the streaming business conflicts with the focus on tentpole hits that has traditionally fueled the entertainment economy.

With the major exception of Netflix, no network or platform in the 75-year history of commercial television has amassed such a broad and deep library of content that is made available for on-demand public viewing as HBO Max has in its 27 months of existence. And that means no network has had to deal with the real-world problem of managing the long-term cost of maintaining such a voluminous inventory.

In the retail world, if a product doesn’t sell, at some point it comes off the shelf to make room for something new. That has long been the case in linear television too; if a show doesn’t find an audience, the cancellation ax falls. In the past, however, if CBS or NBC yanked a show, the network didn’t have to keep shelling out coin to make it available on demand. But that has been the norm in the streaming arena.

The bill adds up quickly when the costs of residual fees for actors, writers and directors are included — costs that are triggered no matter how many or how few people cue up a particular episode of a vintage series. There are also producer fees, music licensing fees and myriad other royalties that come into play. Industry sources say the cost varies widely on a title-by-title basis, depending on the underlying deal terms, but there is no version of keeping a show available for viewing on a platform that doesn’t incur at least tens of thousands of dollars in fees per series per year. For the lowest-performing 30% of HBO Max’s active library, that adds up to tens of millions of dollars a year.

At a time when Warner Bros. Discovery is facing serious post-merger financial pressure, there’s no question that lightening the load on HBO Max is a natural place to squeeze out some savings. This move was also made easier by the harsh reality that the shows being removed have virtually no viewership. In some cases, recently yanked shows had episodes that racked up zero views in a 12-month period. There is no spin on the long-tail theory — the sentiment that niche content that drives passion and engagement can be as valuable or more so than mass-appeal hits — that can support an economic argument to keep spending to drive zero views.

[Dacey]

Howard not being removed after all:

https://deadline.com/2023/05/disney-bac ... 235373329/