Disney To Remove More Content From Its Streaming Platforms Soon

News of Disney’s “strategic realignment” with the company laying off about thousands of employees, has been on the turf for some time now. Disney has now announced that it will soon be pulling content from its streaming platforms too. In addition to this, reports now suggest that Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, has hit a new low this year, with a record number of subscribers leaving the platform.

This information comes from Disney CFO Christine McCarthy, who announced the news during the company’s latest post-earnings call. According to Deadline, McCarthy stated this plan of pulling content from its streaming services is in line with its “strategic changes” in the company’s “approach to content curation.” Additionally, going forward, Disney will also be producing a lower volume of content. Here’s what McCarthy said:

“We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC [Direct-to-Consumer] services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation. As a result, we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms, and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion. The charge, which will not be recorded in our segment results will primarily be recognized in the third quarter as we complete our review and remove the content.

Going forward, we intend to produce lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.”

There now seems to be a pattern among these developments with Disney, starting with its layoffs, and its plans of reducing or pulling content progressively. Reports have now surfaced suggesting that the company is facing a major loss amidst all of this, at least in Disney+ subscriber count.

Disney+ records a steep decline in subscriber count

After late 2022’s record of the service losing about 2.4 million subscribers for the first time ever, Disney+ has now been recorded to have lost another 4 million of its subscribers in only the first three months of 2023. Disney’s subscriber base is currently as large as 157.8 million.

Variety reports that this decline was driven by Disney’s loss of market in India and parts of Southeast Asia. During the streaming service’s first recorded major drop in subscribers in 2022, losing streaming rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket league was cited as a major reason. Earlier this year, we also saw the removal of all HBO content from the service, right before HBO launched its own streaming service.

Regardless, Variety also mentions that Disney gained subscribers with Hulu and ESPN+ too. Hulu now has 48.2 million subscribers, while ESPN+ currently has 25.3 million subscribers.