Last week it was frantic for Jimmy Kimmel: in just a few days, a joke about the murder of Charlie Kirk caused his dismissal, generated protests throughout the country and returned to the program. And, apparently unrelated, Disney raised the prices of its streaming platform. Everything was connected in a process that may have cost the company more than she expected.
What happened. Although reality bifurcó in multiple routes, summarizing, Late Night’s presenter Jimmy Kimmel was suspended on September 17 by Disney after jokes about the murder of Charlie Kirk in which he accused the government of instrumentalizing his death. The dismissal generated immediate criticism for alleged political censorship under pressure from the Trump administration and the Federal Communications Commission of the USA after the suspension were the pressures of the latter to companies that were waiting for the granting of permits for mergers. Kimmel returned on September 23, after they accentuated the protests that accused the government of pressing private entities against political enemies.
How much it cost Disney. Boicot public ads by stars and influencers They dropped Disney, at a cost of about 5,000 million dollars in stock value. The casualties were estimated around a million, but the journalist Marisa Kabas has obtained more precise information, from which media such as Discussing Film or Engadget have echoed: they became 1.7 million of subscribers who canceled their service between September 17 and 23, 436% above the usual cancellation rate. But the thing had to get worse, because Disney was about to make an unexpected ad.
A climb. Kabas herself also advanced Monday night to the official announcement: Disney was about to announce an increase in prices of her services of streamingand possible, that could have accelerated the decision of ABC (property of Disney) to return the program to Kimmel. They are ups between two and three dollars for the different Disney+ and Hulu packages, and obviously, it was planned long before the death of Charlie Kirk: the avalanche of cancellations due to the problem with Kimmel was only an addition to those that the company would already foresee when announcing the increases. Too much for a single company, which has rushed to return the presenter as an emergency measure. The question is … why didn’t they delay the announcement of the climbs?
Throw forward. There is talk of several possible reasons to, despite the image crisis, continue with the ads, most of the Disney category as a great corporation with hardly any waist to quickly react to these viral phenomena. On the one hand, it is that Disney traditionally announces this type of increase in October, with the beginning of its new fiscal year. This calendar has been respecting for years, it is a rigid program that does not fit for image crisis. On the other hand, it was possibly notified of clients and interested parties, without contemplating postponements.
Finally, there is the most important thing: it is a calculated risk, and Disney needs money. Despite the cancellations, the company decided to maintain the increase in the hope of stabilizing income. In addition, he avoided setting a dangerous precedent, to give in external pressures.
Disney, terrible year. It is not being a good year for Disney’s finances. Kimmel is only the last disaster (and all the fall remains in front) of a 2025 that started with a couple of potent cinematographic failures: ‘Captain America: Brave New World’, with performance lower than expected, and ‘Snow White’, a critical and box office puncture that has even led to rethinking the future of some remakes of classics in real image. Nor ‘Thunderbolts’ has welcomed what was expected. And Pixar and Star Wars, the other powerful franchises of the house, go through a popular pothole.
Of course, not everything has been disasters: ‘Lilo & Stitch’ has been one of the box office pumps of the year and a good 2026 is expected, with the new deliveries of ‘Avatar’ (which arrives in December of this year) and ‘Avengers’ (already for December that comes).
Header | Anthony Quintano
In WorldOfSoftware | The streaming economy is completely broken and things will only get worse within the coming years
