{"id":319165,"date":"2025-10-20T18:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319165\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T18:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T18:08:09","slug":"disney-plus-hulu-cancellation-rates-doubled-during-kimmel-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319165\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Plus, Hulu Cancellation Rates Doubled During Kimmel Suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tABC\u2019s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night show last month<\/a> drove a surge in cancellations of Disney+ and Hulu<\/a> streaming services by consumers outraged over the move. However, both services also saw an increase in the number of sign-ups during the month of September, which helped offset those nixing their subscriptions, according to data released Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Sept. 17, ABC said \u201cJimmy Kimmel<\/a> Live!\u201d would be suspended \u201cindefinitely.\u201d That came following remarks the host made on his show two days prior about \u201cthe MAGA gang\u201d trying to score political points over the suspect charged with the murder of conservative activist Kirk, resulting in outrage on the right that led two big ABC affiliate groups \u2014 Nexstar and Sinclair \u2014 to announce they were pre-empting Kimmel. Disney brought Kimmel back on Tuesday, Sept. 23, with the show delivering TV ratings to\u00a0rank as its highest-rated episode ever<\/a>\u00a0even with the Sinclair and Nexstar boycotts.<\/p>\n

\n\tA wave of consumers canceled (or threaten to cancel) Hulu and\/or Disney+ to protest ABC\u2019s suspension Kimmel. And according to research firm Antenna, for the month of September 2025, the U.S. cancellation rate for Disney+ averaged 8% \u2014 double the 4% estimate for the prior two months. Similarly, Hulu\u2019s cancellation rate for the month was 10%, twice the 5% for the preceding two months. For September, the industry weighted average cancellation rate across nine premium services (Apple TV+, Discovery+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Starz) was 7%, according to Antenna.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, both Disney+ and Hulu had higher sign-ups in September than the two prior months, per Antenna. Disney+ had 2.18 million new subscribers (vs. 1.99 million in August and 1.65 million in July) and Hulu had 2.11 million (vs. 1.97 million and 1.73 million), according to Antenna\u2019s estimates. In addition, the number of gross adds for September of both Disney+ and Hulu saw a market share of 14% each (down compared with August but up vs. July). For the 12-month period from September 2024-September 2025, Disney+ sign-ups averaged 1.99 million and Hulu averaged 2.25 million, per Antenna.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne important caveat: Antenna\u2019s methodology does not cover subscriptions via Disney\u2019s wholesale streaming business, including its distribution deal with Charter. In addition, the Antenna data as released does not shed light on whether consumers who \u201ccanceled\u201d did so as part of switching, upgrading or downgrading their streaming plans.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother note of context about the Antenna data: Disney on Sept. 23 announced price increases across most Disney+, Hulu streaming plans and bundles<\/a>, and that naturally would have contributed to higher-than-usual cancellations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn announcing its June quarter results, Disney said<\/a> it expected total Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions to increase by more than 10 million, primarily driven by the company\u2019s expanded Charter deal \u2014 however, that was before the Kimmel brouhaha.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not clear what the ultimate result on net additions for Disney+ and Hulu were for the month of September, as that is not a category that is tracked by Antenna. But the increase in sign-ups would obviously have served to mitigate the cancellations the Disney-owned streamers saw for the month.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs of the end of June, core Disney+ subscribers stood at 128 million, up 1.8 million sequentially. Hulu subscribers reached 55.5 million, a net gain of 800,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tDisney, following in the footsteps of Netflix and others, will stop reporting the number of subscribers for its Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ streaming services<\/a>, saying the metric has become \u201cless meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses.\u201d The company will discontinue reporting subs and ARPU for Disney+ and Hulu with the first quarter of its fiscal 2026 (the last three months of calendar year 2025), and will no longer report the metrics for ESPN+ as of the September 2025 quarter. The company is scheduled to release September 2025 results on Nov. 13 after the market close.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to New York-based Antenna, its estimates are based on millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records, which are sourced from a variety of partners. The data includes digital purchase and cancellation receipts, consumer subscription signals, and credit, debit and banking data. Antenna says it cleans and models the raw data, and then subsequently weighs the panel to correct for demographic and behavioral skews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABC\u2019s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night show last month drove a surge in cancellations of Disney+ and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":319166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[13205,171,9925,11171,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-319165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-disney-plus","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hulu","11":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115407834531429935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}