Remaining Disney+ Subscribers Are Mostly Watching Old Content While New Shows Sink To The Bottom
Disney has taken significant steps in integrating Hulu and Disney+, but the approach isn’t a straightforward acquisition or a merger. With that said, the two services offer their content through a single-app experience and a bundle subscription. This has revealed new information about Disney’s subscribers who apparently prefer the House of Mouse’s older content, including Hulu’s older shows.
Most Of The Top Performers Are A Year Old Or More
For context, most of the releases on Disney+’s top 10 most-watched movies are from 2023, with Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour being the only 2024 release on the streamer’s list. Likewise, when it comes to serialized content, Grey’s Anatomy sits at the top of the list, followed by Hulu’s Shogun, which was released in 2024. The recently released X-Men ’97—a massively popular animated series that has put Marvel back in the good graces of many fans—isn’t even in the top five television shows. However, given its rising popularity and sixth-place position, it will likely breach the top five bracket eventually.
The Trend Continues Globally
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour remains the top-viewed content in Canada, Mexico, Australia, and the UK, while the United States and South American states prefer Disney’s 2016 Moana, with the exception of Colombia and Argentina, whose residents prefer 2023’s Elemental. TV shows are a different matter; Canada, Mexico, and a good portion of European countries like Modern Family, the US, and the vast majority of South American countries like Bluey and the aforementioned X-Men ’97 dominate the top of the charts in Brazil.
Across The World It’s Long Running TV Shows Winning
Australia, Spain, and the majority of Central and Southeast Europe love Grey’s Anatomy, France likes Desperate Housewives, and Shogun dominated the charts in Poland, Romania, Japan, and Greece. Czechia and Slovakia residents love watching The Simpsons. This reveals a rather interesting trend among the streamers, particularly Disney and its biggest competitor, Netflix. Namely, judging by the shows and their respective release dates—not accounting for new seasons of serialized content—it would seem that Disney’s subscribers prefer older content.
On Netflix, It’s The New That Dominates
Sure, Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour isn’t really old, but we’re discussing rules and not exceptions here, and the Disney charts don’t lie. In contrast, Netflix’s top 10 charts are almost exclusively dominated by fresh content, like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is currently in its fifth week on the top 10 list, while Super Mario Bros., though released in 2023, is currently spending its fourteenth week on the top 10 movies list. Damsel, a movie about a dragon-fighting young woman starring Millie Bobby Brown, is in its third week among the top 10 most-watched movies.
So, it’s quite evident that streaming subscribers turn to Netflix for fresh, high-quality content and Disney for older, classic content. This reflects the ongoing sentiment towards the media giant and the decline in the quality of content it outputs—which the company admitted and shelved nearly half of its ongoing projects in the name of cutting quantity in favor of quality. Sure, the new X-Men ’97 might be an absolute winner for the House of Mouse and Marvel, but it most definitely isn’t enough to win the audiences back to Disney.
Source: FlixPatrol
