😍 2022-09-15 00:06:00 – Paris/France.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek, emerging from a promotional blitz at the company's D23 conference last weekend, reiterated many of those messages for a Wall Street audience, but took a more definitive tone. than ever when describing the future of Hulu.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech conference, Chapek noted that although Hulu has been operated by Disney since 2019, its combination with Disney+ will have to wait due to Comcast's financial interests in the service. Under the terms of a deal the companies made when Disney acquired most of 21st Century Fox, Disney can buy out Comcast in early 2024. Chapek said he would "love" to execute the takeover sooner, but he has indicated that Comcast was in no hurry. Recent estimates have pegged the value of the stake at $27,5 billion and that number is not expected to decline at a time when the assets of Streaming continue to be popular.
"The thing that worries you when you're Disney is brand friction, with some of the content that we can have in general entertainment," Chapek said. "I am amazed every day in this work of the elasticity of the Disney brand. I would tell you that we had no backtracking in terms of including this general entertainment content on a proposal of Streaming Disney-branded "in territories outside of the United States" I'm not saying it would be received exactly that way in the United States, but it does give us reason to believe that we have more degrees of freedom than anyone else would never have suspected.
According to the latest quarterly report, Disney said Disney+ had 152,1 million subscribers and Hulu had 46,2 million. Disney+ is global, while Hulu remains US-only In previous public appearances and press interviews, including some last weekend at D23 (and this interview with Deadline), Chapek took a more circumspect tone about to the mix of Hulu and Disney+. But their rally is long overdue by many industry insiders and watchers, and it would align with ongoing strategies at Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and other companies as the market for Streaming matures. Significant savings would also be unlocked by the move.
At the same time, the task of putting programming as a dystopian drama A servant's tale, topical comedies like Plan B et The happiest season or edgy F/X titles like american horror story alongside Pixar movies or other PG-rated fare has always posed a unique challenge. Still, Chapek said he became convinced by consumer feedback and company data that such an offering could be rolled out and “not be subject to consumer organ rejection.”
Continue to grow in the Streaming remains a key strategic objective for Disney. While overall it now has more total subscriptions than Netflix, many customers subscribe to more than one of its services, while the base of more than 220 million Netflix is not duplicated. In addition to helping him grow, Chapek said a combination could minimize what he called "consumer friction" from trying to switch between two mobile apps. Streaming different. "In the long term, we can avoid this, and 2024 isn't that far away," he said.
Even in the United States, Disney has realigned its programming to stock Disney+ with more titles not directly tied to its original five mainstays of Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, National Geographic, and Disney. He moved ABC mainstays like Dancing with the Stars and Black-ish to the Streaming, after seeing strong tuning and new subscriptions for Peter Jackson's Beatles docuseries Come back last fall.
Pricing was another major topic during the 40-minute session. Asked what kind of price increases are possible down the line — even as the company prepares to implement its second major hike later this year — Chapek said he doesn't expect a price increase. churn rate. Therefore, he suggested, further increases may soon occur. "That's what the market will bear, which directly reflects the price/value ratio, and I think we're well undervalued relative to the value we provide," he said. “We owe it to our shareholders to try to have that recognized. »
Data from Disney+'s nearly 3-year run and ESPN+'s path, which launched in May 2018, will help inform pricing decisions, Chapek said.
Disney next month will drop to $10,99 for the ad-free plan, before rolling out to an ad-supported tier. Subscribers who want to continue paying $7,99 for Disney+ will be able to do so as long as they don't mind watching ads. Hulu's ad-free tier, meanwhile, is dropping from $12,99 to $14,99 per month, and its ad-supported version will drop from $6,99 to $7,99. ESPN+ said in July that its unbundled version jumped nearly 40% from $6,99 to $9,99.
While a bit of sticker shock is inevitable, Chapek said the price Disney+ started at — $6,99 in November 2019 — is "absurd" in retrospect and makes comparisons stark. In April 2019, when Disney announced the initial price of Disney+, to audible gasps among the Wall Street crowd and media in attendance, the level of investment in programming was not what it had become, a supported Chapek. Yet, coming near the bottom of the market Streaming “Helped us get to where we are, with these huge undercounts,” he acknowledged. “It's hard to believe we're only three years away. »
SOURCE: Reviews News
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