And now some news from the Department of Awkward Timing: With the Jimmy Kimmel controversy swirling, word has emerged that Disney is raising the price of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ next month.
Subscribers started being notified Tuesday that as of October 21, a subscription to Disney+ will go up two dollars a month, to $11.99. Various bundles, with and without ads, are rising for combinations of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+.
The hikes are the fourth in four years by Disney, which is far from the only company raising prices in streaming. Across the industry, companies are continuing to lift costs for consumers, with media companies operating linear networks feeling pressure on that side due to cord-cutting.
After ABC and Disney suspended Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely last week, backlash built against Disney+, with a number of social media posts and celebrity testimonials pointing to canceled subscriptions. It is difficult to know exactly how many subscribers were lost in the short term, and price hikes also often cause churn as subscribers resist the new pricing, though over the longer haul the revenue gain makes it worth it for streaming service operators.
Disney CFO Hugh Johnston addressed the company’s outlook on streaming prices during a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts in November. The rate of inflation and the rising cost of a number of consumer goods has weighed on the economy and played a key role in the 2024 presidential election.
“We certainly look to continue to increase pricing in line with the value that we’re providing to consumers,” Johnston said. “And a lot of the growth that we’re seeing right now is because of the exceptional content that’s coming out of both the movie and the TV studios that’s obviously our proprietary content. So that’ll certainly enable us to increase pricing over time.”
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