Jimmy Kimmel's Cancellation Not Expected To Have Visible Impact On Disney

TV & Film

Oct 1

How much did the mass cancellations of Disney+ subscriptions influence the company's decision to reinstall Jimmy Kimmel's late show?

The (sad) truth is that we might very well never know.

While the independent journalist Marisa Kabas estimated that about 1.7 million customers withdrew from the streaming service after Kimmel's ousting, and even Howard Stern explained that he would forego his devotion to Frozen and Encanto until Disney reversed its course, the actual financial impact on the mouse house might be negligible.

Or at least hard to tell.

It might just be a coincidence that, around the time the company faced public backlash regarding Kimmel's cancellation, they also announced a price hike for Disney+. While this price increase will impact the company’s financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter, any subscriber cancellations will only affect its first fiscal quarter, which started in October, so it's like comparing apples and oranges.

Add to this that the company last month announced that it would stop publicly breaking down the subscriber numbers for its streaming service:

“We believe quarterly updates on the number of paid subscribers and ARPU have become less meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses,” Disney CEO Bob Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston told investors. “While we will no longer disclose subscribers and ARPU, we will provide information on Entertainment Direct-to-Consumer profitability.”

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Disney had previously expected a "modest growth" of its subscriber base for Q1, which could now become zero growth due to the Kimmel affair, but the higher prices will ensure that the profitability of Disney+ will still rise.

Bringing Kimmel's show back has spared the company from public wrath for now, but it still has to deal with the pressure of the FCC and the Trump administration, who will surely have a watchful eye on the future behaviour of the popular late-night host.

Needham analyst Laura Martin goes as far as to suggest that Disney should "shut down ABC" completely to avoid further complications.

“Tactically, we recommend DIS launch simulcasts of all ABC broadcast content on Hulu (in addition to its ABC app), so DIS’s viewers can always watch DIS’s content on an unregulated platform, in order to preserve revenue,” Martin wrote in a recent investors' note.

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