The Wonderful World of Disney(plus)

 Disney gives a big plus for Cord-cutters

by Matthew Braunschweig

November 21, 2019

I spent several years in the television media industry. You might think that in order to produce all those shows and newscasts that there is tons of digital technology involved in the process, but the fact of the matter is, there is not. In my experience, the Chiefs of the Engineering departments tend to have been in those jobs for decades and, mence, they are experts in analog tech. I worked for a chief who dispised digital techonology. He claimed it was unreliable (mind you, this was in 2017) and so he never upgraded anything hat wasn’t mandated by the FCC regulations.This lack of attention has actually been a very big plus for the brave souls whom have cut the cords over r recent years. I myself dropped cable in 2016 and haven’t looked back. There is no shortage of content to watch Over-the-Air (OTA), but there have been some aspects of the cable that have been missed, but, Disney is making huge strides to fill that void.

The Empire Strikes (period)

Disney plus became available less than 2 weeks ago, and it is safe to say that it is the most successful streaming service lauch ever. It took years for Netflix to get its streaming up to scale and phase out those little red envelopes in the mailboxes (after all, they called it Netflix and not USMail-Flix for a reason). But Disney, in less than 10 days has burst on to the home entertainment scene so grandly that people can’t remember what life was like before it (aka, 2 weeks ago).

So what is Disney’s Magic? How, with a single app, have they completely transformed the streaming entertainment market? Frankly, this is a question people have been asking with utter futility for decades. I mean, what the hell was the deal with Frozen? It was the story of a couple ice queens and a talking snowman. But, I own it and watch it almost as often as Star Wars, which, disney also owns. So I’m not going to attempt to explain how they’ve done it, but rather I’ll address what they’ve done.

The Disney+ bundle is the single most significant change in entertainment in the past century. It is going to directly and substantially impact all cable and satellite providers. It has made cord-cutting accessible to people beyond the ”anti-establishment” nerds who adopted it years ago (like me). Until now households had been afraid of getting rid of cable, but with the Disney plus bundle, they are going to realize that the vast majority of their time is being spent on their streaming services. Is cable dead? No. But it is going to need to tighten its belt, actually, it might need a whole new belt that is about one-third the size of their current belt.

A new(ish) hope

Remember VCR’s? Cable companies turned those into obsolete, flashing clocks when they introduced the DVR. Not only did it replace the VCR, it increased consumers recording substantially by making it easier. On-demand has now done that same thing to the DVR. Why worry about recording something when you can just watch it whenever you want, right?

But what about all those 100’s of channels you get on able? Well, the fact is, there are probably about 4 of those channels that are regularly watched in each household, and two of those, ESPN and Disney Channel, are now part of the Disney+ bundle. Well, ok, those channels aren’t specifically available, but much of their content is. For the other 290 channels consumers pay the cable companies for, there are viable (and yes, completely legal) alternatives. If you don’t have it yet, get Pluto TV on your favorite streaming device. It is dozens of those rarely watched cable channels streaming free. I highly recommend the Choo-Choo train channel. 24/7/365 of trains chugging around the world. Wait! I just realized? Pluto TV. PLUTO! If that isn’t a property prime for acquisition by Disney, I don’t know what is.

The value Disney is delivering is beyond phenomenal as well. For less than the cost of one movie ticket subscribers get essentially everything the largest, most successful entertainment company has ever made. In fact, the next biggest group to suffer from Disney+’s success is movie theaters themselves. Families are not going to pay close to $100 to take everyone to see a movie with Trolls or some subtle political statement in the guise of family fun when they can just stay home in their jammies eating pop secret and watching a movie that is still popular after 70 years.

The Menacing Phantom

Finally, I love to share the story about how I was watching some wise old investment advisor talking about how netflix stock has peaked. He talked about how that weekend he had been talking to his grandkids and they said they had not seen Star Wars and he said lets change that, and proceeded to search for those movies on Netflix. Lo and behold, he didn’t find them and hence he declared that Netflix was NOT that big of a deal and the stock price was over=inflated. The stock was at $20 a share that day. At last check, it is a bit above $300. People trust this guy and others like him with trillions of dollars. Amazing.

Return of the Non-Demand

I’ve only scratched the surface of the impact Disney+ has had, and I think they are just beginning (bold statement, considering they’ve been around 10 days). Actually, I think one thing they could do to shake things up even further would be to throw a curve-ball to the industry and innovate "Non-Demand". By this, I mean, bring back “The Wonderful World of Disney”. That show was on every Saturday night when I was a kid and families would gather around the TV to watch a cartoon or short, followed by a Disney classic like Davey Crockett or Herbie the Love Bug. They should bring this back, not on-demand, but "non-demand" aka, at a specific time an ONLY at that time, not available for streaming later. And make it completely free to anyone with an internet connection, no subscription required. I hope they hear me (if so, please give me a free lifetime subscription for my wonderful “wonderful world of Disney” idea).