Ref: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/08/0 ... ng-service
Disney these days is a lot more than kids movies. They own the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, for instance, and tons of mainstream movies along with their back catalog.
I find the size of the investment and the tech angle to be interesting:
Disney’s streaming service will be built off technology from BAMTech, the MLB-founded video streaming platform. Disney was already a major investor in BAMTech, and today it’s making an even bigger investment — of $1.58 billion — giving it a 75 percent stake in the company. The acquisition still requires regulatory approval.
I also read on Twitter that Wall Street has reacted negatively.
Commenters are saying that we may be getting to the "tipping point" where people are OK with having a small number of paid subscription services but are going to get overwhelmed with subscribing to all these different silos. I agree with that. Others are saying that people might be making an exception for Disney, because they do have a lot of content and parents will do almost anything to keep their kiddies amused except spend more of their own time keeping the kiddies amused. I kind of agree with that. I think Disney has the content, the branding and now the tech to pull it off. On the other hand, Disney has the track record of charging dearly for everything they do.
Another thing being mentioned is that Disney (parent company of ESPN) will set up its own ESPN streaming channels. Not sure how those will overlap with ESPN on cable. It's tricky territory because content providers usually don't offer their streaming rights along with the cable TV rights.
So, going forward, how many subscription services do you think you'll be carrying after Disney leaves Netflix?
For me, I still see Netflix, Amazon Prime and not Disney as paid services. Unpaid stuff I use a lot is YouTube and PBS.
In the future I can picture myself getting some sort of NFL streaming service if the over-the-air content disappears and if it's not too expensive. Time will tell on that. NFL is used to living high off the hog, and it's going to be ugly if/when they have to get used to a different kind of revenue stream.