Analyst: Disney Is In "Spin Mode" Over Latest Ratings Disaster

I noted yesterday that the television app Samba reported that the new Force Is Female Star Wars failure Ahsoka had only garnered a Brian-Stelter-like 1.2 million views over its first few days of release, which is much worse than the previous Disney Star Wars disaster's ratings. Obi-Wan garnered 2.4 million viewers in its debut, and was, as far as I hear, just a wretched piece of shit top to bottom and back to front.

I hear that Ahsoka is far less aggressively awful, and that' a problem: You expect your terrible shows to get bad ratings. But if you put out a show that is good -- well, let's not get carried away; I hear Ahsoka is okay and at least has a bigger budget than these other cheapo-beepo Disney Star Wars shows -- and that also gets terrible ratings, that means people aren't deciding not to view based on the quality of a specific show.

That means they've tuned out the entire brand.

Like me. I've been off of Star Wars since forever. Now I'm off of Indiana Jones, too, which I never thought I'd be.

I loved Indiana Jones. Every time I've gone to the theater since I was a kid, I was going specifically to relive the experience of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark. My entire movie-going history has been nothing but chasing the dragon from that first transcendent, revelatory high I experienced watching Raiders.

And now? I mean, the whole thing's a bit stupid, isn't it?*

I'm only interested in this for the cultural-political ramifications. I would not watch a Star Wars show or movie if my only alternative was to eat a Bantha's butt.

But don't listen to me. I'm just an aging pseudo-nerd who is currently re-obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. Listen to Bounding Into Comics and Valiant Renegade.

Financial and box office analyst Valliant Renegade declared The Walt Disney Company was putting out some major spin when they announced that their latest Star Wars Disney+ series brought in 14 million views globally.

The official StarWars.com website announced in a blog post, "Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company are thrilled and humbled to announce that Part One of Ahsoka, "Master and Apprentice," was the most-watched title on Disney+ this past week. The debut episode garnered 14 million views, making the series number one globally on the streaming platform."

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy added, "Ahsoka has become a fan favorite with people of all ages and it's wonderful to see her continue to resonate with viewers in her very own headlining series."

"I want to recognize the fantastic work done by our creative team, led by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, the incredible cast led by Rosario Dawson, and our talented crew -- and on behalf of the team and all of Lucasfilm, we give our thanks to all the fans who have been with Ahsoka on every step of her journey and to all those who are just learning about her now in Ahsoka on Disney+," she added.

This ditzy disaster artist sounds like sandpaper on skin even in print.

This post came after it was reported by third party data tracking firm Samba TV that Ahsoka's viewership in the United States was far worse than previous Star Wars Disney+ series with the exception of Andor.

Samba TV reported Ahsoka was only watched by 1.2 million U.S. households over its first six days.

This was far less than previous premieres such as The Mandalorian Season 3, which they noted drew in 1.6 million U.S. households.

It was also below Obi-Wan Kenobi, which they reported as bringing in 2.14 million U.S. households in its first four days streaming on Disney+.

The ratings are based on views over a different number of days, so over three or four days Obi-Wan got 2.14 million, but over six days it got 2.4. Ahsoka got 1.2 million views over six days, and Obi-Wan got 2.4 over the same period, doubling Ahsoka's rating.

Reacting to this information, Valliant Renegade stated, "Ahsoka has now officially performed at half, half of Obi-Wan Kenobi and from as best we can tell about half of the six day total that would be the Season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian from a couple of years ago."

He then shared, "What's interesting about that is that over time The Walt Disney Company has added nearly 50% more subscribers to the Disney+ service going from around 30 million when Mando Season 2 premiered to today where there are about 45 million subscribers."

Later he states, "So as Disney+ subscribers have been going steadily up over the last several years the overall trend in viewership for Disney+'s 'core' content as Bob Iger calls it, that being both Star Wars and Marvel, for that matter, have been steadily on decline."

Apparently Disney is claiming 14 million viewers -- 14 million global viewers, not US (or even North American) viewers.

Valiant Renegade says that "does not seem terribly impressive" when compared to the ratings of House of the Dragon, which got ten million views in the US alone, and on just its first night. Over a week, it got 20 million views.

Valiant Renegade discusses Disney's bizarre New Math of obtaining its "14 million viewers" figure. Even though Disney actually knows, down to the viewer, down to the minute, how many viewers watched its shows and how many minutes they watched them for -- every time a viewer watches something, they interact with Disney's servers, and Disney's servers tabulate each viewer minute -- Disney chose an ass-backwards formulation of something like "dividing the total number of minutes watched divided by the total runtime available" to get its 14 million figure.

If you hide the real number, which you definitely have and which is easy to produce, in favor of some bizarro statistic that would baffle Strat-O-Matic nerds, you're doing that because the real numbers are bad.

WDW_Pro has an update on the Kathleen Kennedy situation. WDW_Pro is proud to say that, unlike some YouTubers (cough Doomcock cough), he personally has never previously reported that sources were telling him that Kaffeine Kennedy is on her way out.

But now he is hearing that. Her contract is up in 3Q 2024 and she won't be renewed. And Iger would like to get her out the door without her crying "R@pe!"

But the strike is complicating these plans. Kaffeine Kennedy would like to announce her retirement just before a big Hollywood awards show, like the Oscars best of all, so that she can collect a Lifetime Achievement Award within weeks of her announcement. She would like to point to all the wildly successful movies that were made by very talented men she fetched coffee for, and then quickly gloss over the string of massive failures she produced when she was actually in charge.

But with the strike on, there are no awards shows, and Kaffeine Kennedy won't go unless she can be guaranteed an award at a major public event as she leaves.

So she may just stay on through October 2024, waiting for her chance to get the recognition and applause she in no way deserves.

And speaking of strikes:

The strikes continue, and I am very happy.

Just hours after the studios and streamers made public their latest "comprehensive package" toward a deal with the striking WGA, the guild has responded -- and it seems the AMPTP and top CEOs might have overplayed their hand strategically.

In fact, 113 days into the writers strike, talks look to have broken down altogether -- again.

"On Monday of this week, we received an invitation to meet with Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav and Carol Lombardini," the WGA Negotiating Committee said in an email about tonight's meeting just sent out to members (see it in full below). "It was accompanied by a message that it was past time to end this strike and that the companies were finally ready to bargain a deal. We accepted that invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work."

At this point in its succinct note to members, the WGA unveils a very different POV on what went down with Iger, Sarandos and the gang and the August 11 proposal they put forth -- at least very different from the hyperbole the AMPTP put out there earlier Tuesday amid the press blackout. Besides taking a swipe at the CEOs for dramatically misreading the room, the guild's perspective reads much more that the AMPTP was trying to hype the whole thing and score some much-needed PR points tonight rather than seeking an end to Hollywood's long-running production shutdown and labor strife.

"Instead, on the 113th day of the strike -- and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side -- we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was," the Negotiating Committee led by Ellen Stutzman, David Goodman and Chris Keyser said of the off-site sit-down with the CEOs and AMPTP chief. "But this wasn't a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals."

Openly deriding the studios' public relations move Tuesday night, the WGA added: "This was the companies' plan from the beginning -- not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy -- to bet that we will turn on each other."

Well, you did call for a very costly strike that is destroying the industry even more than it was already destroying itself, so yeah, they want to break you. Well-spotted. Ten points to Gryffindor.

Disney bet the farm on streaming, and even entertainment reporters, who are generally shills for the industry, are admitting that streaming is a bust.

When the world looks back in, say, 30 years, the halcyon days of streaming will be looked upon as optimistic and fleeting--a time when Silicon Valley largesse meant Amazon would drop hundreds of millions of dollars on the Tolkien adaptation Rings of Power and Netflix would back money trucks up to Shonda Rhimes' house so she could develop Bridgerton. In all likelihood, those kinds of deals will still exist in 2053, but as competition in the streaming space gets tighter, the moonshot projects will likely be fewer and the emphasis on return-on-investment will only increase.

Until now, streamers have been spending money like drunken sailors on loss-leader crap, claiming that they have to lose a lot of money now to win the streaming wars to make money later. Disney, in particular, spent hugely to offer New and Exciting Star Wars and Marvel "content," spending $200 million+ per 6-8 episode series to produce stuff that looked only somewhat more expensive than T.J. Hooker.

And now that it's clear that no one will win the streaming wars -- Netflix will keep its top spot, which isn't so much a win as a "holding pat" -- all that spending must be wound down, and quickly.

Where is the Joe Biden of Hollywood to drop $2.4 trillion on a Vegas reboot?

This writing has been on the wall for a while, but got reinforced this week when The Hollywood Reporter pointed out that streamers are increasingly guiding users to ad-supported versions of their services, largely by increasing the cost of their ad-free tiers. Earlier this month, Disney announced that the cost per month of Disney+ and Hulu would be going up three bucks. Paramount+ swapped its $10 ad-free plan for a $12 one that includes Showtime. Netflix offers a $7/month ad-backed plan and a premium one that costs more than $15. Peacock, in July, upped the price of its ad-supported version by one dollar and its ad-free iteration by two.

As long foretold, this all just seems like streaming becoming the new cable TV. Now that there are more streaming services than there used to be network television stations, people are trying to save money on all those subscriptions. If ads help them do that, so be it.

But if every streamer is just a TV network, or some sort of modern-day HBO-in-the-'90s equivalent, that could leave content like The Peripheral or A League of Their Own in the lurch.

...

This is what we mean when we say no one is winning the streaming wars. It's not that one day there won't be streaming services, or that just one or two will dominate, it's that eventually mergers, consolidations, and spinoffs will leave viewers choosing between a handful of channels they really want, just like they chose cable packages in the past.

To be honest, none of the new crap is any better than the old crap -- often its just woke and vulgar -- and the old crap is free on Pluto and Tubi and FreeVee, so why pay for new crap?

One more Disney story: WDW_Pro (I think) and Legal Mindset also reported on an new shareholder suit lodged against Disney. It makes a claim that the Disney officers lied to shareholders about the prospects of Disney "Plus" ever becoming profitable, thus inducing them to hold on to a stock which would stagnate and then decline in value, costing them money.

And they add to it an even juicier allegation: that former CEO Bob Chapek and former CFO Christina McCarthy sold a big lot of their shares in Disney very near Disney's peak in 2021. And that they used insider information to make their decision to sell. The suit claims that these two knew that Disney "Plus" would not become profitable and would not meet it subscription goals in 2022 or 2023. They knew, it is alleged, that Disney's initial surge of subscriptions was over and that subscription growth was at a standstill.

But Bob Chapek did not tell shareholders that, the suit alleges. Rather, he went out publicly and declared that he was "confident" Disney "Plus" would be profitable by 2024.

Note that Disney "Plus" has racked up $1 billion to $1.5 billion in losses eery quarter and sure looks likely to continue doing so through 2024.

Legal Mindset says there is no way Disney will chance the discovery process so they will pay these shareholders off for their losses and legal bill.

The trouble is: Every other Disney shareholder will see this and may also demand similar compensation.

Fun, fun, fun.

Wow, Disney really is producing high-quality entertainment the whole family can enjoy!

* Okay I was exaggerating. Although my Indiana Jones fandom is much-diminished, I'd still watch Raiders again.

I'm less interested in the two (yes, 2) sequels, though, and I used to like those a lot. Now both feel like what they are -- franchise IP-exploitation cash-grabs.

And we've had so, so many franchise IP-exploitation cash-grabs lately.

Thanks to Alabama for that.

posted by Ace at 03:37 PM

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