Disney+ Ad-Supported Plan to Limit Commercials to Four Minutes Per Hour

[MacGizmo]

And now NBC will be pulling their shows from HULU, so if you watch any of them, you'll be forced to subscribe to yet another service if you want to continue.

I'm almost afraid to add up all the subscription fees... it probably costs more than just paying for cable TV with DVR - and requires a pile of apps and log-ins to do it.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

There are too many commercials, and they are TOO DAMN LOUD!!!

Watch an unedited episode of the old Star Trek episodes, they run minutes longer with today's required dose of commercials. There was also a regulation put in place to stop broadcasters hiking the volume of commercials, and somehow it was eliminated. It's amazing to me that advertisers think that by YELLING AT VIEWERS, viewers will be more likely to buy their crap. Some commercials are REALLY LOUD, and some networks are noticeably louder than others, the Weather Channel being one of them, at least on my provider (U-Verse). There was even legislation in the works years ago to apply an audio 'tag' so that people could mute their TV to bypass the audio from the commercial, and so people recording content could have their recorder automatically pause at the start of a commercial block and resume recording after it was over. It was slaughtered by the bought DC establishment who also gave us direct to consumer pharmaceutical drug adverts.

I'm all in favor of doing away with ALL commercials, and having a 'commercial channel' (like all the junk selling channels like 'QVC'). I'm sure there will be people who will watch them. Heck, my mom was hooked on QVC. (Their crab cakes were heinous)

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

How much you wanna bet this gives Disney an excuse to raise the price of its $7.99 tier?

To pay them for counting the money they will receive for pushing them on their viewers.

I am growing to HATE YouTube on the Apple TV. Commercials, commercial, commercials!!!

It's also incredibly funny that the commercials don't have caching pauses in them but the content after them does. (They actually cach before they are viewed leaving a few seconds of dead air so I have time to get the remote and mute them, plus sometimes the pause is just 'cosmetic' as the commercial never comes, and I have to hurriedly unmute whatever I was watching) I've also noticed a ruthless plot lately: Most of the more highly viewed content that I watcvh has commercials that I can't dump after 5-seconds. I have dumped out of the content because I get commercials 2 at a time, and can't bail after 5 seconds. Yeah, if I could, I'd go back in time and strangle the genius that discovered the gullibility of people to suffer through commercials. I remember they added cards bound into books at one time, and they ended up having to yank that. Can't we go back to 'sponsored' content with a brief blurb happening not more than 4 times through the viewing? Please...

 

[erikkfi]

Sure, start at 4 minutes per hour with a target of 25 minutes per hour by 2030.

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

You said it’s astonishing that people put up with that many ads. Others might think it’s astonishing to have to pay £159 per year to be able to watch live TV, even if it’s streamed. On a phone. That is genuinely crazy.

Still don't really get what you're on about, it's not a competition. Both things can be crazy.

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

My point is that some people find things “genuinely crazy” while simultaneously operating in a situation that others find “genuinely crazy.”

But so what?! The thread wasn't about the licence fee, it was about ads! No idea why you're getting defensive. Are you Ian Television, CEO of American Television? Did I accidentally criticise your product?

 

[throwaway572937]

Netflix: hemorrhaging customers

Disney: two can play at this game

Get f***'ed both of y'all

More and more I am leaning towards only subscribing when there is something specific I want to see, then unsubscribing

They are the living embodiment of "you either die a hero" (fixing the ********* that was cable TV plans) "or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" (subscription hell and literally paying money to be advertised to)

 

[Deguello]

Moat people I know think that £3 a week is exceptionally good value to keep the BBC funded. It has some of the best TV content in the world, and actually makes a ton of money by licensing certain shows worldwide. That money gets funnelled back into production rather than shareholders' pockets.

The only reason BBC content remains such high quality is through its very high volume of subscribers which, as you suggest, is essentially compulsory for viewing in the UK.

Personally, I would not wish to see BBC funding changed. For the price of a cup of coffee each month, we get exceptional content and, of course, iPlayer. The UK government has it in mind to scrap the license fee, which I believe would be a grave mistake.

That’s fine, but comparing free OTA to paid OTA isn’t apples to apples.

 

[MJaP]

When visiting the USA I always found the amount of adverts insane... the ones that really boggled my mind were when an episode would end, you'd have commercials, then they'd show the closing credits, then they'd show even more adverts... or certain channels would speed up the programs to make a 30 minute show last 28 minutes in order to insert more ads.

 

[RedTheReader]

If it's not HD or 4K on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, it's the best looking SD content I've ever seen. I'd upload a screenshot but I'm not sure MacRumors wants me posting something that goes against the DRM terms of service for Disney+.

How can you screenshot it in the first place? Because it’s DRM protected content, wouldn’t it just render a black rectangle onto the screenshot? That’s been my experience, anyway.

 

[guzhogi]

If they're really going to include ads, I really hope they add them at breaks in the action, and in between scenes. I really hate YouTube ads that come right in the middle of a word. I've seen some YouTube videos that have chapter marks. In other streaming services, maybe have ads between two chapter breaks.

 

[Deguello]

Still don't really get what you're on about, it's not a competition. Both things can be crazy.

They can both be crazy. One of them largely can be avoided, though.

What I’m on about is that comparing the ads baked in to the various sources needs a reference to the monetary costs of those various sources. It doesn’t cost £159 a year to watch live TV in the US. You think it’s crazy that there are so many commercials. I think paying to watch live TV — even if it’s nothing more than streaming the video on a phone — is more crazy.

 

[JippaLippa]

To be honest, I think Disney+ has quite a fair price.
If you pay it annually, if already pays itself if you watch 10 films and a 1,2 series per year.

 

[webkit]

I wish it were so benevolent. I’m afraid the last thing media executives want to do is give people more choices. They are simply trying to maximize revenue. They want to make money off of the subscription and the ad revenue. Length of ad time will slowly increase each year. They’ll hope we won’t notice, and we won’t.

In the future, if they keep ad free subscriptions, they will price them like Apple prices memory upgrades. Ad free will be an luxury tier that most people won’t want to or can’t pay for.

Regardless of the motives, the end result can still be more choices and less expensive options for the customer. On the content provider side, instead of having one ad-free price option where they get 100% of their revenue from subscriptions, they have a second pay/ad option where they may get 50% from subscriptions and 50% from advertising with advertising meant to make up for the reduced subscription revenue. A customer gets to choose which type of plan they want instead of being "forced" into one or the other.

Ad-free or ad-supported, it seems people will always be complaining about prices. Decades ago, the Disney Channel could cost the equivalent of around $20 to $30+/month in today's dollars and that required a cable or satellite plan yet now Disney+ is only $7.99/month and people are moaning that the ad-free plan may go up to $8.99 or $9.99 which would still be a fraction of what the Disney Channel (with less content!) had cost in the past.

Streaming services are not a necessity and customers (and competition) help dictate market pricing. If people feel a particular streaming service is no longer worth the money, they will stop subscribing and that can impact what a provider charges or will put them out of business.

 

[max2]

I am guessing the ad-supported tier will also remove the option to download content for offline playback? However, nothing beats those idiots at Netflix limiting HD / 4K to the premium plan in 2022

Agreed.

 

[hcherry]

I’m okay with this option provided kids profiles don’t show ads.

 

[anthogag]

Four minutes of commercials is eight 30 second commercials. That's still too much....because commercials really suck!
4 commercials per hour, put them at the start and end of the hour.

Disney's ad-supported option should be free.

 

[dysamoria]

And then later they’ll increase it to 6 minutes, and then 8, and then 10…

No. I do NOT PAY to watch commercials. Not ever.

 

[sjalfr]

We've almost completed the circle with the "paying and seeing ads or pay through the nose" scheme. I feel they are pushing us back towards torrents and illegal streaming again.

 

[LV426]

That’s fine, but comparing free OTA to paid OTA isn’t apples to apples.

Just as well I wasn't doing that, then.

 

[RemedyRabbit]

If someone in the UK wanted to stream a live football game on Amazon Prime, it would be illegal to do so without having paid for a TV license, right?

(Edit: One can’t even legally watch the ad-supported stations without having paid the £159 license, or anything live, even on a phone, if I understand it correctly.)

My point is that some people find things “genuinely crazy” while simultaneously operating in a situation that others find “genuinely crazy.”

My bad I only answered your question as I assumed you didn’t know the answer. Didn’t realise that you were just setting yourself up to be a smart arse, maybe I should have know better.

Perhaps next time consider actually stating what you know and attempting to engender a constructive discussion with others, rather than treating everything as a two sided debate to try and “win” with gotcha posts designed to make yourself feel smart ?

Take it easy ?

 

[Spike1999]

Seriously Disney, have you not seen Netflix‘s share price lately…

 

[neuropsychguy]

How can you screenshot it in the first place? Because it’s DRM protected content, wouldn’t it just render a black rectangle onto the screenshot? That’s been my experience, anyway.

There's at least one Chrome extension that works -- not full-screen but you can capture an image from the player within the window.

 

[Minxy]

Just four minutes per hour is great. YouTube ads have become so aggressive it feels like there’s four minutes of ads per minute.

 

[webkit]

Disney's ad-supported option should be free.

They have to weigh how much advertisers would be willing to pay against the amount of advertising customers are willing to accept and compare to the revenue they may receive from an ad-free subscription. To get a reasonable balance, some amount of subscriber revenue is typically still needed but customers will ultimately help determine how much by how many sign up and how much content they view. Most premium streaming service ad-supported subs run about 50% to 70% of the ad-free plan and I assume Disney pricing will fall into that range as well.