It has been announced that by the end of 2023, Disney+ and Hulu, both owned by Disney, will merge into one more robust streaming service. As a result, some content will be purged. The new merged streaming service will cost more, although a price point was not provided. (Presumably, it will be cheaper than subscribing to both right now.) Also, Hulu will remain as a standalone app for those that use its live television feature or for those that only subscribe to Hulu. This news comes from the latest investors’ call on Wednesday, May 10.
This is similar to the way Disney+ already functions around the world. Hulu is only available in the United States, so in other territories, a lot of its content is already available on Disney+.
It wasn’t revealed what content would be purged, but presumably, it’s none of the big-name stuff like the Star Wars and Marvel shows or any of Disney’s animated classics. But Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that the company would reduce the number of original projects for both outlets.
“We realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub-growth, and we’re getting much more surgical about what it is we make. So as we look to reduce content spend, we’re looking to reduce it in a way that should not have any impact at all on subs.”
We’ve already seen other services like HBO Max, a lot of content has been removed simply because not that many people watched them. And on every streaming service, there is “dead weight” content that is just sucking up storage space. There is also a lot of licensed product that could be dropped just to save on the licensing fees.
However, according to CFO Christine McCarthy, the company “will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion.” An impairment charge is similar to the tax write-down that HBO Max received for scrapping the Batgirl movie. In that case, that means the content can’t be made available ever again.
Do you subscribe to both Disney+ and Hulu? Would you prefer to have all of that content in one place, even at a higher price?
