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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

There's no precedent for breaking up a media company for monopolizing popular culture. But perhaps there should be.

Disney owns way too much. They can bully theater chains to show their films on as many screens as they want for as long as they desire, and then they take a lion's share of the revenue.

Disney can print money from all of the licensing, which isn't a problem save for the fact other entrants have a huge hurdle to overcome to get shelf space.

They water down their content for mass appeal, so it isn't artistically interesting. They also appease foreign governments like China. Again, it wouldn't be a problem if they weren't strong arming others out of the limited theater space.

Disney+ kicked off the streaming wars. Which is going to be fantastic as a consumer... :(

Disney is ridiculous. I say this despite the fact that I have a good bit of stock in the company.

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> Disney+ kicked off the streaming wars. Which is going to be fantastic as a consumer... :(

It actually is going to be fantastic as a consumer. Since people are cutting cable and going to Netflix, the money for content has to come from somewhere - it’s not sustainable to get unlimited quality content for everyone for $12/mo. If new streaming services didn’t appear, the only new content we would eventually have would be Netflix Originals - and if that’s all you want, you can continue just subscribing to Netflix! With Disney+ and others, it gives companies incentives to create great new content. There’s no chance we would have gotten say, the Mandalorian, on Netflix

Not if you like just one show on each streaming platform. Pay five times and navigate between five different interfaces. And they will have different scroll directions and organizational paradigms.

And the ability to cancel anytime is not a perk. For people with ADHD it's a nightmare.

There needs to be a Spotify for entertainment.

My primary is the lack of central distribution. I agree, $12/mo is probably too low to provide new content. I would generally be fine with paying more.

What I dislike is playing whackamole with what service I can get certain content from. Is this show on Hulu? Or is it Netflix? Oh, right, Disney pulled it from Netflix and now it's on Disney+. Continue ad nauseam. Getting notifications that new content from a series is available is likewise disparate across platforms.

There needs to be a central management point. Similar to how Amazon aggregates physical goods from many vendors, offering me a central and familiar interface to provide search, discovery and payments. They then handle distributing payment and providing the actual content.

Amazon's Fire TV provides me with some of this (i.e. I can say "play such and such show" and it will provide me with an interface that lets me open a provider that has the content), but the fact that it's not available on my computer and that it doesn't manage the subscriptions is somewhat painful.

Disney, even before the Fox acquisition, had multiple studios.

Films released under the Disney brand were mainstream, fairly tame films intended for mass family consumption.

Films released under the Touchstone label (Buena Vista before that) were a bit more adult, and featured various states of undress, coarse language, and significant amounts of (non-bloody) violence.

Films released under Miramax were for adults: any content that would be R-rated or less was acceptable. Until recently, Miramax held the record for most total Oscars earned by a studio even though it has been defunct for 9 years.

> "Disney is ridiculous. I say this despite the fact that I have a good bit of stock in the company."

I don't want to make this personal and/or sound troll-y but where do their ridiculousness end, and you being hypocritical begin?

I'm not defending Disney. But if they're obligated to serve shareholders, and you feel they're failing then sell. But to finance them and in turn mock them, well that's why Disney, Amazon, et al continue to do what they do.

I agree, voting with your wallet is most important.

Owning stock has nothing to do with voting with your wallet. Boycotts make sense; divestments are idiotic.

Boycotts say, "You won't get my money." How exactly are divestment any different? What _exactly_ makes them idiotic?

Boycotts prevent money transfer to a company (or other entity). Which can be successful, depending on market forces.

A divestment (almost universally) does not; it's just a transfer of ownership to people with a bigger priority on making money vs whatever moral objection you might have.

In the case of public stock, "cashing out" doesn't require the company to return the investment dollars to you. There is no money coming out of their pocket, only someone else purchasing your shares. (Except stock buybacks, which are voluntary, and in those instances, beneficial to the company.)

Done on a large scale, it artificially deflates the stock price of a company below it's true market value, enabling people who have less philosophical opposition to obtain stock that's essentially subsidized by the divesting parties. (There are a few very obscure exceptions, that might initially look like divestment kills a company, but it still ends up only being an ownership transfer, just to more powerful stakeholders.)

If anything, these orgs should be doing the opposite. Becoming more invested buys you more say in how a company is run. Encouraging divestment is like telling those "divestors" not to vote.

If your really hate something enough, you would buy (enough of) it in order to destroy (or at least change) it.

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