Disney to Remove Dozens of Series from Disney+ & Hulu | Hacker News Reader

Disney to Remove Dozens of Series from Disney+ & Hulu

deadline.com

14 pointsadrian_mrd13 comments

Willow was surprisingly entertaining. It’s a Disney owned IP, Disney production so it’s strange to be pulled off after only a year.

I wonder if they had really high payout terms for this and Y (a high profile adaptation of a great comic book that was one of the worst tv shows I’ve ever seen) and so it’s cheaper to remove it than pay residuals.

This makes me wonder that there’s some payout just for including it rather than just based on number of views.

Netflix never removed their own content so I guess Disney and HBO are doing something dumb with the licenses they set up.

Was just thinking about how some shows are simply seen as not to exist at all because they are not available on streaming services

When in reality, the best quality stuff that already had licensing agreements are the things not on streaming services

Makes it hard to tell a friend about something that they cant watch in their included subscriptions at no additional cost, or discover on your own

This is broken, need something similar to cable style discovery or something else besides piracy

What is going on? Why are they removing their own content? They want to make their packages less attractive?

It is a process known as enshitification, and it's just simply part of how Capitalism works. Things can't stay good for too long because the Capitalists have to throw heaps of profit down their bottomless pits.

Maybe to avoid paying residuals to the actors, producers, etc.

I wonder if people have set up watch-bots to amplify viewing numbers and earn residuals that way. Don't Spotify have that problem?

Ha, imagine having a service sought after by Hollywood directors and actors, but just the B-to-Z-list ones..

I was under the impression things are purposefully rotated in and out so people cannot binge the whole catalog and then never pay again. That's how it's done in many video games at least.

That was the "Disney Vault" system they used for DVDs IIRC. Stupid but maybe it works.

I've heard they're also going to raise prices. I guess it's time to quickly finish watching what you were still planning to watch.

Related Planet Money:

Dude, where’s my streaming TV show?: Why platforms like HBO Max are removing streaming TV shows

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161382179/hbo-max-disappeari...

This is the same company that had (still has?) “the vault” for decades to create an artificial demand / fervor when things do come out.

They are removing junk to maintain their reputation as a collection of quality content.

Piracy, The Better Choice(tm)

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