[Medianext.MX]

Big and somehow hard news coming for Disney+ starting next week: as it addresses a lot of financial woes and losing subscriber numbers (in part due to Hotstar losing streaming rights to the IPL to Viacom18 and JioCinema), the platform is culling over 50 original shows (including two dozen original series, most of which were short-lived, another dozen of FX and Hulu Originals, made-for-streaming movies, and almost, if not all, music and entertainment specials). This move will happen globally, and affect all Disney+ operations worldwide (including Hotstar in India and Southeast Asia and Star+ in Latin America).

deadline.com 

Disney To Remove Dozens Of Series, Including ‘Big Shot’, ‘Will…
Disney is starting to pull content from streaming, with dozens of series and spe…
  Source: deadline.com

At the same time of announcing the move (which happened last week), Disney executives are planning to merge both Disney+ and Hulu offerings into a single app by the end of the year; this move is in part due to all platforms now sharing the same framework and tech stack, and the need to improve viewer activity and eventually avoiding subscribers to jump apps, but it is also designed to boost subscriptions to the Disney Bundle:

deadline.com 

Disney+ And Hulu To Combine Into One App By Year’s End, Bob Iger Says – Deadline
Disney is rolling out a single streaming app, featuring programming from Hulu an…
  Source: deadline.com

deadline.com 

Disney+ Loses More Subscribers But Overall Streaming Losses Improve As Company P…
Disney trimmed streaming losses in its fiscal second quarter but also shed 4 mil…
  Source: deadline.com

[all new phil]

Silly question here but how does removing shows that they own address falling numbers and profits? I can’t get my head around the logic.

[James2001]

Stuff disappearing without trace really is starting to become a major, major issue with streaming. At least with physical media you still have your copies, and likely second hand ones out there too you can buy, even if they stop selling the DVD/Blu-Ray in question. With streaming, it's just gone. Similar with digital downloads you may have purchased if you need to replace your computer or the DRM expires, it's all far too ephermeral and subject to the whims of big companies who can withdraw it with a moment's notice, whereas I still have 20 year old DVDs and 30 year old VHSs I can still watch even though they've long since stopped being sold.

I'm sure at one point it was touted that studios running their own streaming services with their own content, even though it meant content would be more fractured and you'd need more subscriptions, it wasn't likely to be withdrawn like it is when they're licensing it to third party services like Netflix and Amazon. Quite quickly proving to be a lie with all these high profile content purges (especially those apparently "gone for good" and unlikely to reappear anywhere as tax writeoffs, like with HBO Max).

[Neil Jones]

Silly question here but how does removing shows that they own address falling numbers and profits? I can’t get my head around the logic.

If you have stuff people want to watch, they'll watch it (and join to watch it).

If you just have a load of stuff that just sits there (and Disney will know what gets watched, what doesn't get watched and how popular anything is from the server logs), and nobody's watching it, then its not contributing to the viewership so it has to go. It'll probably end up in syndication on other channels somewhere in due course, as has happened on other streaming services.

I have some watching to do, as I've been meaning to see some of that stuff listed on the Deadline article, so suppose I'd better get my finger out while I still can.

It comes to something though when Disney+ original content is going to be dropped. All this behaviour does is enforce the underlying fact you don't have this problem with physical media (unless you break the disk or the player or something)

[James2001]

Ignore, accidentally quoted rather than edited.

[fanoftv]

There are some shows in that list that I’ve never heard of but would appeal to me when I’ve looked them up. That’s part of the problem when you have such a catalogue of programmes. The dropping of originals (something I don’t think that Netflix have done) is a real kick in the teeth for current subscribers and doesn’t seem to appeal to new subscribers either; as posted previously, they must be looking to sell broadcast rights to these shows to try to make more money.

[Brekkie]

Silly question here but how does removing shows that they own address falling numbers and profits? I can’t get my head around the logic.

There are residual fees to pay, which is part of the current WGA Strike disagreement.   Basically the streaming equivalent of a repeat fee though I suspect at a much lower rate - but will always be a point where if the fee exceeds what they can make from the show it's not worth it.

The fees are seemingly based on total subscribers rather than viewers of the specific content, so it makes little sense to Disney+ to pay a figures based on say 100m subscribers if they know only hundreds are watching that content.

nofilmschool.com 

Streaming Services and Residuals—How Do They Work?
It seems that the old days of getting compensated for your talent on a TV series…
  Source: nofilmschool.com

Also think funding wise syndication was critical in the broadcast model and streamers are realising hat holding on to rights for eternity to themselves is not the best way to monetise them and a streaming equivalent of syndication, noteably on ad supported platforms, opens up a new revenue stream.

[James2001]

There are residual fees to pay, which is part of the current WGA Strike disagreement. 

So to an extent this could be grandstanding against the strikers, with a rather petty "if you demand this, we'll just remove your content entirely" reaction?

[nwtv2003]

Going slightly OT, but I’ve noticed some non-Disney content appear on the platform in the last few weeks, notably Peppa Pig (of all things) and the Indiana Jones movies are due to be added shortly. It’s a Sin has also been added, which was HBO Max outside of the UK. I know they had all of the Spider-Man movies before now, but at least that’s Marvel. I’m surprised to see some proper non-Disney owned/associated content on the platform.

[James2001]

I seem to remember last year reading they'd signed a deal with all3media for some of their content too.

I remember Apple+ originally started out as just their own original content, that very quickly changed when they realised that it couldn't sustain a service on its own.