Ben Shapiro let Disney have it after a legacy media outlet admitted the extent to which the woke company’s flagship streaming program is taking on water.
In response to a Wednesday article in The New York Times on Disney+ losing millions of subscribers and deciding to scale back advertising and significantly raise prices, Shapiro came out swinging during the June 10th edition of The Ben Shapiro Show. “Disney is taking it directly in the teeth, The New York Times of course is attributing this to larger market forces, but the reality is that Disney has completely blown out a large segment of its user base,” Shapiro said.
The Times report on Disney+ was grim, reporting on a massive decline in customers and revenue. The article also made clear that Disney was abandoning hopes of recruiting lots of new customers through marketing and would instead raise prices for existing customers. As reported by the article, “Disney’s streaming operation lost $512 million in the most-recent quarter, the company said, bringing total streaming losses since 2019, when Disney+ was introduced, to more than $11 billion. Disney+ lost roughly 11.7 million subscribers worldwide in the three months that ended July 1, for a new total of 146.1 million.” The article went on to mention that Disney+ would now be charging $14 for an ad-free experience, up from $11 in December and $8 before that. All while Disney-owned Hulu would also raise prices.
While the article pointed out that outside of India, Disney+ had gained 800,000 subscribers, Shapiro was not impressed, adding that, “they basically inflated their numbers by getting a bunch of people to sign up for the starter package in India and then everybody basically dropped off.” Shapiro further added, “that rate of growth is not going to make up for the kind of costs that they have been experiencing due to streaming.”
Shapiro brought up the example of his own family giving up on trips to Disney World, saying, “I can tell you that Disney has lost thousands of dollars from my family alone.” He said that many families felt the same way as his family and were deciding not to subscribe to Disney+ because Disney had “decided to spit in the eye of its consumer base and obviously that was highlighted by their conflict, for no reason whatsoever, with the state of Florida, over the question of sexual indoctrination of children.”
Shapiro referred to Disney’s opposition to Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Act,” which protected young children from gender ideology in the classroom. Many commentators have criticized Disney for this choice, as well as woke shows promoting critical race theory and gender ideology and leaked footage where a Disney employee bragged about the company’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.”
OutKick Founder Clay Travis recently noted Disney’s dismal recent performance on the stock market, among other crippling disasters for the corporation. The news from The Times is only the latest blow.
Ultimately, Shapiro was optimistic that Disney would be forced to course correct, “[Disney] have been victims of institutional capture by their own people,” Shapiro said, before adding, “as the market starts to decline Disney is going to have to do what every other company is doing and they’re going to have to get rid of their loss leaders, and guess what, wokeness is a loss leader, it is a massive loss leader.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact The Walt Disney Company at TWDC.corp.communications@disney.com and demand the company stop shoving woke propaganda down the American people’s throats.
