Week 6: Disney+, Advertising, and Brand Impact

In the US as a whole, we've ditched cable television for many reasons: it was expensive and micro-charged, had specific hardware that was time-consuming to maintain, and a frankly overwhelming number of channels. Streaming seemed like the optimal solution, providing easy access to a central hub of media that didn't require additional set up past a username, password and credit card number, and the ability to play media at will reduced the need to trawl through hundreds of channels. 

The number of US Americans who don't use cable or satellite TV has plummeted to 56% according to a Pew Research report from March 2021. While we are eager to ditch the outdated TV services, streaming companies seem all too eager to remake them, as streaming services proliferate at a mind-boggling rate. While the big names still hold some sway, most of them are becoming increasingly niche: Netflix, for example, is moving from being an archive of sorts and focusing on new "Netflix Originals." It feels like every time I look up a movie that I've been wanting to watch, there are new streaming services. CNN, ABC, HGTV, NBC... they all have their own streaming services with their own programming. The difference between this and cable had been the absence of advertising except on free subscriptions, but now more and more are removing free subscriptions and instead offering "lower ad rates" with a lower price, and "ad free" at higher rates. It certainly feels like the media producers, shimmering dollar signs in their eyes, are reinventing cable.

Disney+ has one of the strongest brands in the US. Even looking at a simple breakdown of the entities they own is enough to make one's eyes water - they essentially control the media market. Disney+ has been their own flagship streaming service, and in a New York Times article published March 4, 2022 - Disney+ Will Introduce a Cheaper, Ad-Supported Version This Year - Disney has elected to hop on the trend as well, facing pressure to meet its 2024 deadline of being profitable as well as pressure from the rest of industry to emulate ye olden cable format. But the introduction of ads is controversial, since "[f]or decades, Disney Channel [...] marketed itself to parents as a safe space. It does not carry any advertising, even in programming aimed at older children." But with a brand as glacial in size and force, this change in ethos might begin to weaken the brand at the root. While Disney still holds true to the family focus, and in recent years have been successful in retaining the young childless adults (read: people with both time AND money, as opposed to adults with children, who are more likely to spend both time and money more judiciously) with nostalgia, they are still overwhelmingly a children's media company. In the era of bizarre, addictive, and sometimes horrendous children's videos on YouTube (The nightmare videos of children's YouTube - TED, The disturbing YouTube videos that are tricking children - BBC), parents are desperate for safe spaces online for their children, where they can trust the provider to moderate and control every single thing on their platform. The second advertisers are allowed on the streaming platform, that ability to control that content - even with Disney owning so much and wielding so much power, every single advertisement will be either a compromise on content or taking advantage of the under-developed brains of children to sell. 

It has been well known for quite some time that marketing to children and teens is detrimental to their development, as this research from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows, and several European countries have even made it illegal to market to children and teens. Parents, understandably, want to protect their children from these ill effects. It's more understandable on an "adult" platform, such as Hulu or Peacock, that there will be ads for a cheaper subscription, as adults have developed defenses against marketing and understand that they are being sold to. 

Disney, then, stands to weaken or even totally destroy their brand by becoming mainstream and providing ads. If they have no way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the streaming platforms, what incentive do parents have to continue to pay for the subscriptions? If it's streaming the movies, the cheaper option would not be to have Disney+ with ads, it would be to simply find a bootleg upload on YouTube. The question remains, who is Disney really helping with this? Is the pressure to become profitable by 2024 really worth losing the respect of families that it's built itself on?