Entertainment

I'm not a specialist and I'm just guessing: licensing fees and streaming fees to the actors etc? Every view costs them a tiny bit of money. I guess over time it adds up. And from Disney's pov those shows don't bring in new subs or anything, so they only cost them money?

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This thread isn’t touching on the biggest impact which is being able to write down or impair these assets that are taken off streaming or shows in production that are cancelled (for Warner’s an amount in excess of $3B) - the impaired asset value is then taken as a loss which reduces the company’s tax burden.

Most of these shows pay residuals to actors, writers, directors, and production companies based on formulas of how many subscribers the service has. Notably, none of the services are willing to publish detailed viewership statistics, even privately to creators, so the shows have to pay the same amount regardless of whether 1 person is watching or 1 million people are watching every day.

Rather than throw good money after bad, the services would rather take the show off entirely and not have to pay any residuals going forward. Then, with the show/movie making no money going forward, they get to write down the fair value of that intellectual property, which also saves the parent company on taxes.

So it's a tax thing.

The specifics of the tax and accounting issues at play here are beyond me, but it seems to be related to how big the value of the stuff you offer is versus how much of the cost you can write off as a loss.

The Guardian talks about it today and summarizes the whole process as "In May, Disney+ announced a content removal plan designed to cut US$1.5bn worth of content, meaning it substantially reduces the company’s value, giving it a lot less tax to pay."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/aug/29/the-great-cancellation-why-megabucks-tv-shows-are-vanishing-without-a-trace

It's all fake, dumb monopoly money stuff and it sucks. Somebody track down an actual corporate accountant who can explain the process better than me, though. It's probably an interesting bit of detail to learn about.

Your best bet is to vote with your wallet. Can’t get Willow on Disney+? Then, Disney+ doesn’t get your money. I’ve been buying more physical media and downloading again like I’ve gone back in time 20 years.

Does this coincide with their price rise?! Less stuff for more money! Sounds correct.

IP is a clusterfuck of rights and licenses. The owners have generally made sure to wring the last cent out of this stuff, making it fairly complicated. So things can randomly end up removed from re-releases or over the air, due to time-limited licenses. E.g. Scrubs had a huge part of its iconic soundtrack nuked from streaming versions.

It's not about saving money on the backend, it's about not bombarding people with terrible shows like Netflix does. They're trying to trim the fat so that all you see are quote unquote bangers. For instance, the Willow show was hot garbage.

Lindelof

This one seems a different case. You have Lost which was written as it was being filmed and then you have one of the best single season shows of all time a decade later with Watchmen (series). He never planned it past the first season and it didn't need to be, which I quite prefer to, say, dragging out a show for 4 more seasons.

As for why things get removed - contracts for the rights and the cost of them. I need to go to be so in short, companies can leverage the popularity of their shows. Whatever network for Gray's Anatomy for example is exempt from all "Ad-Free" Hulu plans, because ABC or whatever's network contract with Hulu specified they'd still shows ads. Fox contracted the streaming rights for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia which lapsed in 2017, so Fox Century owned by Disney which owns Hulu and FX then were able to keep IASIP on Hulu alone (except for outside the U.S. where it's on Disney+...)

The most recent absurdity is formerly HBO formerly HBO Max now just Max having removed over around 30+, mostly animated, shows many of which were originals and are now no longer available anywhere.

I suggest looking into the cost of an Intel Quicksync server and a couple hundred for some high capacity hard drives and setting yourself up a media server. I like to support the content actively coming out, but I can't trust and rely on those to always be there. They aren't accessible if the internet is down or if there's a password mishap, but my server is up as long as there's power running.

The only thing I can think of is licencing fees: if Disney don't actually own the rights to a particular show, then they're paying fees to be able to provide it on their platform. If the number of people watching that series after subscribing to the service isn't high enough (and I imagine Disney put a lot of effort into tracking what subscribers are watching in order to determine which series are motivating people to start or continue a subscription), then effectively that series is losing them money.

It is, however, one of those cost-cutting measures that will bite them in the ass within 6-12 months. Cutting back the catalogue too much and only leaving the super popular stuff available will lead to subscribers going "well I've watched everything I want to watch, why am I spending money on this?" sooner than if there's a wider catalogue with a much broader range. Most people aren't going to keep subscribing to a streaming service just to watch the same 6 things on a loop.

There is, ultimately, only one solution to streaming services taking away the stuff you want to watch...

🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️

I am no expert, I only heard a podcast on the subject, but this is my understanding of it: People subscribe for new shows, and old shows are less profitable for the companies. Old shows require them to pay residual fees to the actors and creators involved, so a show that's been out for a while has a fixed cost associated with keeping it on the platform, but a vague, less easily measured 'profitability' based on how many subscribers stay on the platform because of it's large back library. So, by cutting a few of the shows that less people are viewing, they save the fixed costs, and only lose out on the handful of customers who might quit because of an old, beloved show. It's stupid, because it's short sighted. They get a small reduction in overhead costs at the expense of the overall value of the product, and they irritate their customer base.

I wish I remember which podcast it was, they explained it so much better. I think it was a Planet Money, maybe?

It's the same way there's new customer promos for cell phones and such. You're effectively punishing loyal customers, but you need to drive growth quarter over quarter. The money you save by screwing over existing customers can be spent on a flashy new show that might bring in new subscribers in the short term.

It's so they don't have to pay royalties to the people who made the shows.

unfortunately, in the age of streaming the measurement for success is not "how many people watch it" but "does it bring new subscribers and keep the current ones?".

if a show can be removed without fear of people cancelling their subscriptions, removing them saves them money.