“Today we are announcing a major step forward in strengthening our streaming offering by fully integrating Hulu into Disney+. This will create an impressive package of entertainment, pairing the highest-caliber brands and franchises, great general entertainment, family programming, news, and industry-leading live sports content in a single app,” CEO Bob Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston said on Disney’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday (via Variety). “By creating a truly differentiated streaming offering, we will be providing subscribers tremendous choice, convenience, quality, and enhanced personalization. This will enhance our ability to continue to grow profitability and margins in our entertainment streaming business through expected higher engagement, lower churn, and advertising revenue potential, as well as operational efficiencies that over time may result in savings that we can reinvest back into the business.”
Elsewhere on the call, Iger and Johnston announced it will no longer report subscriber numbers or average revenue per unit for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. Makes sense: We here at The A.V. Club are always talking about how the streamers are way too transparent with their numbers. In Disney’s opinion, those stats have become “less meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses.” Iger and Johnston stated that they are “focused on managing our businesses to deliver growth in a sustained way” and moving forward they “will provide information on Entertainment Direct-to-Consumer profitability.” Variety reports that streaming revenue increased six percent in the last quarter for a profit of $346 million. Subscribers across Disney+ and Hulu reached 183 million, an increase of 2.6 million from the previous quarter. In their statement, the execs wrote, “We believe our reporting going forward will better align with changes in the media landscape, the unique nature of our integrated assets, how we operate our businesses, and will reflect how management evaluates the progress and success of our strategic initiatives.”
