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If it will boost subs, why not.
Disney is allready low cost and high quality though, so Ill gladly pay for the ad free experience
 
🤣 Like a majority of the people commenting here, you have no idea what you're talking about.



10 Highest Grossing MCU Movies At The Box Office

10) Captain Marvel (2019): $1.128 Billion
9) Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019): $1.131 Billion
8) Captain America: Civil War (2016): $1.153 Billion
7) Iron Man 3 (2013): $1.214 Billion
6) Black Panther (2018): $1.347 Billion
5) Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021): $1.368 Billion
4) Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015): $1.402 Billion
3) The Avengers (2012): $1.518 Billion
2) Avengers: Infinity War (2018): $2.048 Billion
1) Avengers: Endgame (2019): $2.797 Billion
Should’ve mentioned within the last year or so, though I thought that was obvious. Black Widow, Shang Chi, and The Eternals, all lost money, and Spiderman no way home showed that it wasn’t due to Covid. And Marvel TV shows were a hot mess. I’m sure they’ll have hits and there but the overall trend isn’t looking good for M She U phase 4.
 
Just what I want, a return to 80's Saturday morning bombarding my kids with toy and sugary cereal ads. I guess it could be worse, they could be like the radio and evening network television and constantly throw ED ads at us.
 
100% agree. Why would anyone in their right mind pay for a service that INCLUDES ads.

A few years ago there were over 100 million people who paid for cable/satellite tv in the U.S. (it's now around 80 million). Do you know what cable/satellite tv has? Ads.

Do you know how many Hulu subscribers there are in the U.S.? Over 40 million, and of those 40 million some 70% of them are on the ad-supported plan.

Do you know how many Peacock subscribers there are in the U.S.? Over 24.5 million of which 9 million are paying subscribers. And of the 9 million paid subscribers, the “vast majority” of them are on the discounted/ad-supported $4.99/mo plan. That's why Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that going forward, the company will focus its strategy around the ad-supported tiers.

It's the same story over at ViacomCBS (now Paramount).

That means you would be paying to essentially watch ads ... This is a precedent started by Paramount+ and I'll never purchase their service because of this. These services need to give customers a choice of a free tier with ads or a paid tier with no ads. Put it back on the advertisers, raise the price for advertising to them, not the customer please.
People have been paying for television with ads going all the way back to the 1980s with cable tv. I had cable tv back then and it started out as a service with no ads, but then they gradually inserted ads. And Hulu had ads way before Paramount+ existed.

I get the feeling you're too young to know any of this.
 
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Should’ve mentioned within the last year or so, though I thought that was obvious. Black Widow, Shang Chi, and The Eternals, all lost money, and Spiderman no way home showed that it wasn’t due to Covid. And Marvel TV shows were a hot mess. I’m sure they’ll have hits and there but the overall trend isn’t looking good for M She U phase 4.
You cannot compare Spider-Man: No Way Home to other Marvel movie releases like Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, or the Eternals.

- Spider-Man: No Way Home was a theater exclusive.
- Spider-Man is a major and well-known character in the MCU; Shang-Chi is a relative unknown to the majority of the people... same with the characters in The Eternals.
- Black Widow had a dual release meaning it was released at the theaters and on Disney+ at the same time; That's why Scarlett Johansson sued Disney and won.
- Many theaters still hadn't reopened when Black Widow was released.
- There were a lot less people who were vaccinated when Black Widow was released.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was released near the peak of the Delta variant.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings had a shorter theater exclusive window of 45 days before it was available on Disney+ (it's normally a 90 day window)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home still isn't available to stream and won't be until March 22 (90 day theater exclusive window).
 
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Ads before and after the played content would be ok. Not During it.
2023 renewal will be based on what they come up with..
 
I think we need to go back to the old days where TV shows were sponsored and featured product placement. Then everyone wins - advertisers get to advertise and people don't have to sit through commercials on their streaming platform.

The problem here is that it's all in or not. If you're paying for the "ad free" version of a streaming service, it'd be annoying to still technically have ads.
 
You cannot compare Spider-Man: No Way Home to other Marvel movie releases like Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, or the Eternals.

- Spider-Man: No Way Home was a theater exclusive.
- Spider-Man is a major and well-known character in the MCU; Shang-Chi is a relative unknown to the majority of the people... same with the characters in The Eternals.
- Black Widow had a dual release meaning it was released at the theaters and on Disney+ at the same time; That's why Scarlett Johansson sued Disney and won.
- Many theaters still hadn't reopened when Black Widow was released.
- There were a lot less people who were vaccinated when Black Widow was released.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was released near the peak of the Delta variant.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings had a shorter theater exclusive window of 45 days before it was available on Disney+ (it's normally a 90 day window)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home still isn't available to stream and won't be until March 22 (90 day theater exclusive window).
Everything you listed sound like excuses.

* There’s no correlation between how well a character is known and how much money those movies make. Many financially successful MCU movies had characters that were not well known (eg., Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Guardians, etc.) whereas Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man did not fare well which is why they never completed the trilogy.

* Release date had little to do with how much money those movies made. Shang Chi made more than Eternals even though it came out earlier, and they all made around 400mm worldwide, a relatively poor showing for M she U movies. The fact is, all 3 movies were bad.

* Most movies make the bulk of their money in the first few weeks so a 45 day window was plenty. All 3 had a precipitous drop off after the first week which does not happen to great movies that have staying power.
 
Good business strategy to capture more market - but personally - I think the net cost will be less to pay for the higher tier ad-free version - no way I want my kids watching ads that push consumerism on them.
 
A few years ago there were over 100 million people who paid for cable/satellite tv in the U.S. (it's now around 80 million). Do you know what cable/satellite tv has? Ads.
Do you know what initially differentiated over-the-air programming and cable shows? Ads.
 
In other wods, a cheaper ad-supported version of Disney+ is not a stupid awful idea, and there's plenty of data to back this up.
It is a stupid awful idea because it's something that zero people want.

There is no data that any consumers want it.
 
Disney+ to offer a cheaper package? I imagine the Netflix board is holding an emergency meeting to decide how much to INCREASE their prices by to compete because Netflix.
 
So all those people using Hulu with ads are stupid?
Then again, Hulu with ads is about the same price as Disney+.
Since Disney is bigger than Comcast's NBC Universal, they need to do better.
Peacock is free but limited. Then $4.99 with ads and $9.99 without.
Disney might get away with $3.99 but $2.99 would be better.
Some are downgrading their Netflix to a lower price, even the SD version.
Okay, 1 person at Cord Cutters News has tried the SD plan. It all costs too much.
 
Everything you listed sound like excuses.

* There’s no correlation between how well a character is known and how much money those movies make. Many financially successful MCU movies had characters that were not well known (eg., Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Guardians, etc.) whereas Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man did not fare well which is why they never completed the trilogy.

🤦‍♂️ There absolutely is a correlation. A well-known character will usually be played by a familiar actor (Tom Holland is more well known than Simu Liu) and those movies will also have bigger budgets. Bigger budgets also mean more advertising dollars.

Sony reportedly spent over $200 million to advertise Spider-Man: No Way Home while The Eternals only got $100 million.

Movie studios also generally have lower box office expectations for these side movies vs their main/origin movies hence the lower budgets.

Andrew Garfield's version of Spider-Man was bad. I much prefered the Tobey Maguire version of Spider-Man, and the domestic box office numbers support that too as all 3 of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man films are in the top 5 (did better than Spider-Man: Homecoming) for box office receipts.

And Tobey Maguire's first Spider-Man film did better than both of Tom Holland's first two Spider-Man films. I think it's because at that time in his career Tobey Maguire was more familiar than Tom Holland was during the same point in this career.

spiderman.png




* Release date had little to do with how much money those movies made. Shang Chi made more than Eternals even though it came out earlier, and they all made around 400mm worldwide, a relatively poor showing for M she U movies. The fact is, all 3 movies were bad.

:rolleyes: Release date is very important for a movie. Ever hear of the term "summer blockbuster?" Do you know why the movie studios tend to release their tent pole movies during the summer? Do you know what a "tent pole" movie is? FYI, Shang Chi was released during the summer... well, late summer but still summer; The Eternals was released in the fall.

Here's another term you may not be familiar with: "Dump Months." It refers to the months for movie releases that aren't expected to do that well. The Eternals was released in one of those periods and that could explain why Shang Chi did better at the box office. 🤷‍♂️

I haven't seen The Eternals yet and am not particularly interested in it either due to lack of familiarity of the story and characters. I think the only reason The Eternals got a bigger ad budget than Shang Chi is because of the big name cast members... I didn't know Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek are in it.
 
... So this is specifically targeting the poor. ... Nobody's forcing them to do anything just like nobody's forcing students to get loans, nobody's forcing people to go to a particular doctor to take care of their health, nobody was forcing people to work unpaid internships or stay at jobs they hate, nobody's forcing people to buy houses at an inflated cost, nobody's forcing people to buy expensive healthy food over cheap junk food. ... Disney isn't doing this because they're a charity, they're doing it to squeeze a tiny fraction more value out of poor people. .... If the content was really compelling, they should have the confidence to charge people when they use it, not charge a fee every month whether the use it or not. But I digress.
You sound an awful lot like you started out with a particular narrative (something like, "streaming services are miserable cash grabs, every company is 100% evil, and everyone is out to hurt the poor"), and you're fitting their actions into your narrative and then attaching motivations and thoughts to their actions because they fit your narrative, not because you have any proof that they're true.

All your examples - student loans, doctors/health, jobs, housing, food - are effectively necessities of life (education is important, health/work/housing/food are necessities), where a streaming service is a luxury, an entertainment item, something not needed to survive. Comparing Disney+ to the things you list as if they're equivalent is somewhere between absurd and offensive.

I know people who have a ton of money, who read books and watch DVDs from the public library (and they read a lot more books than they watch movies), and don't subscribe to any streaming services - not because they can't afford to pay for the streaming services, but because they'd rather read books (their kids don't get much screen time, and they're the smartest and most inventive kids I've ever met).

Streaming services, in particular, very much want to charge a monthly fee, not just because they have ongoing costs (servers, bandwidth, licensing rights for back catalog) but because they use that money to fund the production or acquisition of new content - being able to look at the spreadsheets and say, "we've got $X million coming in next month from subscriptions" gives them a reasonable footing for producing new content. If it were pay-per-view, that gives them much less certainty over what funds they'll have available in the future, and they'll be less likely to greenlight new productions.

And if you want pay-per-view on movies, that's easily available - it's called renting (or purchasing). Go to the iTunes store and rent all sorts of movies - pay only for the ones you choose to watch, and don't rent the others.

As well, there are many people who will pay for a streaming service for one month, and watch all they want to watch on that service, and then cancel. And maybe come back again and do the same thing in six months or a year (some do this cycling through the various streaming services, one at a time). You can make one single payment of $8, and have a whole month's worth of Star Wars movies, Marvel movies, and everything else Disney has to offer. It'd likely cost twice that to watch a single movie in a theater for two hours. Hell, $8 isn't much more than it costs to rent a single movie. And, again, it's for a month's worth of all-you-can-eat movies / shows. Explain to me again how that's a hardship?

The lower-cost ad-supported versions of streaming services aren't an attack on poor people, they're an alternative for people who don't care about ads. Personally, I do care about ads, and will pay a couple dollars extra to avoid them, but many people don't care about them (witness the popularity of "free" ad-supported apps, often when a comparable paid app could be bought for a one-time charge of a couple dollars - often that isn't people forgoing the $2 because they can't afford it - they bought a phone after all - it's often because they don't care about the ads).
 
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There are occasionally ads that I like. That's not a lie. Hell, some people watch the SuperBowl to see the ads.
Nobody likes it when the shows they are invested in are interrupted with ads.

Ads can be fun as their own little self-contained thing, especially if they're really well-executed Super Bowl ads. I'll give you that.

But the vast majority of people want to watch an entire movie, or entire episode of a show, without the forced interruption of ads. That's just the truth.
 
It is a stupid awful idea because it's something that zero people want.

There is no data that any consumers want it.
I provide the data showing otherwise back on page 3, starting at post # 62

Either you haven't read it or you don't understand it.

Content providers wouldn't be offering lower priced ad-supported plans if consumers didn't choose them.
 
You sound an awful lot like you started out with a particular narrative (something like, "streaming services are miserable cash grabs, every company is 100% evil, and everyone is out to hurt the poor"), and you're fitting their actions into your narrative and then attaching motivations and thoughts to their actions because they fit your narrative, not because you have any proof that they're true.
Okay? I do think that streaming services are miserable cash grabs, that most companies are primarily evil, and do tend to notice companies doing more and more to squeeze every remaining drop of value from the lower class. What proof are you expecting - an audio recording of Disney execs discussing this specifically as a means of milking just a little bit extra value out of the poor? What difference does it make if that's the stated motivation or not, or whether there's proof or not, when the end result is the same?

All your examples - student loans, doctors/health, jobs, housing, food - are effectively necessities of life (education is important, health/work/housing/food are necessities), where a streaming service is a luxury, an entertainment item, something not needed to survive. Comparing Disney+ to the things you list as if they're equivalent is somewhere between absurd and offensive.
Sure, the're not perfect comparisons. I was just pointing out that you can always say nobody's forcing anyone to do anything, just that if people to whom $5 is a lot of money (can you think of a one-word descriptor for such individuals?) want to have a little bit of entertainment in an otherwise bleak, paycheck-to-paycheck life riddled with debt, that they'll have to jump through the hoops of viewing ads. By viewing these ads, they're generating enough value for Disney to knock a few bucks off their monthly entertainment. Dance, monkeys, dance for your discount! Burn these ads into your subconscious, and buy the advertised product!
I know people who have a ton of money, who read books and watch DVDs from the public library (and they read a lot more books than they watch movies), and don't subscribe to any streaming services - not because they can't afford to pay for the streaming services, but because they'd rather read books (their kids don't get much screen time, and they're the smartest and most inventive kids I've ever met).
I sincerely think this is great. I know it's hard to tell with me, but no sarcasm intended. I'm willing to bet that their being well off is highly correlated with these behaviors if not partially or fully caused by them, and that their children will be much better off than those who have an iPad in hand from age two.
Streaming services, in particular, very much want to charge a monthly fee, not just because they have ongoing costs (servers, bandwidth, licensing rights for back catalog) but because they use that money to fund the production or acquisition of new content - being able to look at the spreadsheets and say, "we've got $X million coming in next month from subscriptions" gives them a reasonable footing for producing new content. If it were pay-per-view, that gives them much less certainty over what funds they'll have available in the future, and they'll be less likely to greenlight new productions.
This is a good point at face value, but prior to streaming services companies still produced great content. They just did it by taking some of the profits from their previously good content and investing them wisely in new content. Obviously it's more profitable to charge a bunch of people monthly that are barely using the service. That's the Planet Fitness model and it's trash, is all I'm saying. Make good content, collect profit, make more good content - don't play games with recurring charges whether a customer is using your product or not.
And if you want pay-per-view on movies, that's easily available - it's called renting (or purchasing). Go to the iTunes store and rent all sorts of movies - pay only for the ones you choose to watch, and don't rent the others.
I already vote with my wallet across all my spending, where possible. I was just posting an opinion on a public forum.
As well, there are many people who will pay for a streaming service for one month, and watch all they want to watch on that service, and then cancel. And maybe come back again and do the same thing in six months or a year (some do this cycling through the various streaming services, one at a time). You can make one single payment of $8, and have a whole month's worth of Star Wars movies, Marvel movies, and everything else Disney has to offer. It'd likely cost twice that to watch a single movie in a theater for two hours. Hell, $8 isn't much more than it costs to rent a single movie. And, again, it's for a month's worth of all-you-can-eat movies / shows. Explain to me again how that's a hardship?
It's a "hardship" as you call it because instead of just charging people based on how much they consume (a familiar concept: we go to the grocery store, and the more groceries we leave with, the more we pay), they're playing games where some users sign up for a month and watch content for 12 hours a day while others pay every month and barely use the service. It doesn't fit well with the reality of how this media is being consumed, they're playing games to juice the most out of users as possible. Yes, some users sign up for a month, watch everything they want, and cancel their subscription, but for every one of those users, many will pay their subscription while not using the service. Nobody's forcing anyone to, it's just a super crappy business model. Absolutely disgusting, and if it's for the reason you stated (predictable profitability) I'd argue that shows zero confidence in their ability to create compelling new content, if it's about the content at all. It's probably more about shareholders, the content is incidental.
The lower-cost ad-supported versions of streaming services aren't an attack on poor people, they're an alternative for people who don't care about ads. Personally, I do care about ads, and will pay a couple dollars extra to avoid them, but many people don't care about them (witness the popularity of "free" ad-supported apps, often when a comparable paid app could be bought for a one-time charge of a couple dollars - often that isn't people forgoing the $2 because they can't afford it - they bought a phone after all - it's often because they don't care about the ads).
"People who don't care about ads" are overwhelmingly either uneducated (don't realize that whether they pay attention to the ads or not, they're being manipulated by them), poor (need the $5 or whatever savings per month), or both. I'm not saying 100% - just that these two categories cover most "people who don't care about ads". This is squeezing just a bit of extra value out of the poor - people who couldn't afford it before can now afford it with ads, and people that could barely afford it or aren't educated enough to resist marketing will use the ad-supported tier and generate slightly more value for Disney than they did previously. I maintain that calling this an "attack on the poor" or whatever I said is fair. But it's not like the poor or uneducated will do anything about it, so who cares? Certainly not Disney - this is more profitable for them. And you and I and whoever else will pay extra for no ads still have that option, so certainly none of us care. There's not a lot left, but I wonder how corporations will squeeze even more value from the poor next?

I probably should've done something different than replying to your wall of text with a wall of text, but you made some good points and heck, I have to say I enjoyed writing it a little bit. No hard feelings, even though we mostly disagree I made you a meme:

1646423048304.jpeg
 
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Because for streaming services that offer a free or discounted ad-supported tier, they're seeing bigger subscriber growth numbers, particularly in international markets where people don't have as much disposable income as those in the U.S. and other developed countries.

When Viacom (now Paramount) reported their most recent earnings, they saw the biggest growth in their free ad-supported Pluto service; Subscribers increased by 10 million (vs the 4.2 million that was expected) to 64 million total.

Comcast reported similar results. I quote:



It's also why most Hulu subscribers are on the ad-supported tier.


Ad-supported services also see a higher Average Monthly Revenue Per Subscriber number. Take Hulu as an example. When their ad-supported tier was $5.99/mo, it was reported that it generated more than $15 per subscriber compared to their ad-free tier that was, at the time, $11.99/mo



If Disney wants to increase their Average Monthly Revenue Per Paid Subscriber, a discounted ad-supported tier will do it.
You're absolutely right, but this is disgusting. The ad economy is pure cancer for society, but I guess this is the direction we collectively are voting to head
 
But the vast majority of people want to watch an entire movie, or entire episode of a show, without the forced interruption of ads. That's just the truth.
I agree, but you're moving the goalposts a little, given your original assertion that everybody hates ads and we're lying if we say otherwise.
 
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