Good morning.
Last Friday, I wrote about Spotify Wrapped and then this past Monday, Spotify announced another round of layoffs. This was the third round of layoffs they’ve done this year. I don’t think the world’s best CRM campaign can cover up how ugly that is.
Even though there are layoffs going on seemingly everywhere right now (including some very close to home—I’ll let you Google about it) I’m going to focus on a few seemingly small things Disney has announced over the past week that I think are worth paying attention to.
Last week, I caught a story in Deadline about the first season of Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building running on ABC in January 2024. Disney, as you may know, now holds full control of Hulu after acquiring a 33% stake from Comcast in November.
At the end of November, Bob Iger discussed, once again, the fact that Disney has been producing too much content, particularly Marvel TV shows and films, over the past few years and not focusing on storytelling. This has been a track of messaging he’s been on since earlier this year.
That’s why the announcement of Disney using a season of a hit Hulu original show that is now three years old to program a linear TV network caught my eye. Earlier this year, Iger had said that ABC is “not core” to Disney’s business. Obviously he is changing tack—or experimenting on one of the most iconic properties in broadcasting history.
Then this week, Disney announced that the Pixar films they released during the height of the pandemic (Turning Red, Luca, and Soul) will all be getting theatrical releases in early 2024.
Now, look, both of these moves could be directly because of the strikes in Hollywood this year. That’s entirely possible. But I also think this continues a strategic shift that is happening across media: focusing less on new content and more on the power of the library and using existing channels to bring older content to new audiences for the first time or in new ways. Puck’s Matt Belloni seemed to agree with this idea on an episode of his podcast earlier this week.
There is simply too much content. There is too much to read, too much to watch, too much to listen to. Everyone is always catching up. If you are a company like Disney, why wouldn’t you use an early season of an existing show that has only ever aired on a streaming platform to fill air time on one of the major broadcast networks in the world? That’s just good marketing for the show and brings it to an audience that, most likely, isn’t using Hulu or aware of what Hulu has to offer. They may not even be aware of Only Murders In The Building. So why not find out what happens if you bring that show right to them?
The same thing goes for Pixar movies. Maybe a lot of the core audience streamed those movies on Disney+. But why not give parents the chance to take their kids to the theater for that experience? And also drive revenue on another line on the P&L. Subscription revenue only actualizes once a year—why not get some more on top of that from ticket sales? Drive that LTV up, ya know?
Those are the moves that Disney has done. This fall, AMC licensed episodes of their original TV shows to Max for a limited window. This fits in with Max’s strategy, which is seemingly: “Hey, we’re Max, we’ve got HBO and lots of other stuff. You’ll probably find something ya like. Also now we have live sports!” (In all seriousness, their move into live sports is something I’ll talk about another time because the state of where and how to watch live sports is fascinating right now.) And, for AMC, why not put your shows on another surface? Pick up some revenue in the short term and treat it like a marketing campaign for your network and your creative.
To me, at least, it seems like the game is becoming less about if your content is actually new, but more about if it seems new to the right people. And that means finding the right surfaces to showcase it on. Your own platform doesn’t cut it. The turf wars may be ending. And with ad supported tiers on basically all streaming services now, the difference between streaming and linear TV is kind of disappearing. (When I fire up a character-driven 70s drama on Paramount—I’m talking about something like Straight Time, which is dope and looks beautiful—I get greeted by ads because I don’t pay for the higher tier.) So why not use linear TV as a “free trial” for your subscription streaming service by showcasing old content there?
I don’t know if Disney’s experiment will work, but it is one of the more interesting moves I’ve seen this year and may point the way toward how the media business evolves in 2024.