Though Disney will probably never outright confirm it, it seems the power of the dollar is indeed what put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. During his brief but consequential suspension last month, there was a spike in search data around cancelling Disney+ and Hulu, the streaming services of Kimmel’s parent company. Anecdotally, it sounded like a lot of people were getting in on the act, including celebrities like Tatiana Maslany and Howard Stern. Now we have the data to back this up.
According to subscription analytics firm Antenna (via The Hollywood Reporter), Disney+ and Hulu cancellations doubled “from 4 percent and 5 percent in August to 8 percent and 10 percent in September.” This is particularly significant because “churn rates” were more or less stable throughout the year up to this point. And until September, Disney boasted a low churn rate second only to Netflix. But as a result of the protest, the data suggests a loss of “around three million subscribers” in that period.
It’s easy to imagine Disney seeing those numbers rolling in and deciding to make peace with Kimmel to hemorrhage the bleeding. At the same time, the company was fielding an open letter from the ACLU signed by over 400 celebrities in support of the late night host. That letter didn’t include a direct call to action, but losing millions of subscribers and pissing off A-list talent does not a good business model make. That said, THR notes that due to the timing of billing cycles around those cancellations, Disney probably won’t have to report it in its fiscal Q4 report, and the company has already announced it’ll stop reporting subscriber numbers in the upcoming fiscal Q1. So, despite those streaming customers “voting with their dollars,” so to speak, Disney will be able to obscure the true impact from its bottom line.
