The Walt Disney Company saw a slight increase in streaming churn after it suspended talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for about a week last month, according to new data shared by Antenna this week.
Around four million customers pulled the plug on Hulu and three million ditched their subscription to Disney Plus in September, Antenna said, with the Kimmel situation the likely catalyst behind the higher churn.
Hulu saw its churn rate go from 5 percent to 10 percent in one month, while Disney Plus saw its churn rate go from 4 percent to 8 percent during the same time period, Antenna said.
The figures are based on opt-in financial metrics from bank statements and credit card accounts, which Antenna uses to gauge subscriber uptake and churn; the actual number of cancellations might be higher because some Disney streaming customers receive access through their wireless phone carriers, which Antenna doesn’t measure.
Disney stopped reporting its own subscriber numbers earlier this year, choosing instead to focus on engagement as a better health indicator for its streaming business. In May, the company said Disney Plus had more than 126 million global subscribers, including nearly 58 million customers in the U.S., while Hulu had just over 50 million customers.
Disney suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for about a week in mid-September, halting new episodes of the ABC late night talk program. The decision came shortly after Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, Inc. said it would pull the show from around 60 local ABC affiliates they own or operate, just a few hours after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr encouraged affiliates to do just that in response to a controversial monologue rooted in the fatal shooting of political activist Charlie Kirk.
The broadcasters claim their decision wasn’t influenced by Carr’s comments or their pending business related transactions, which require FCC approval before they can close. Carr characterized the situation as one where local affiliates exercised unique discretion in deciding which programs to air and whether certain shows fulfilled certain license-related obligations, including one that requires TV stations to serve their local communities.
Consumers weren’t convinced: Many took to social media, posting images of their cancelled Hulu and Disney Plus accounts. The backlash was swift, and ultimately convinced Disney to reinstate Kimmel’s show within days. Nexstar and Sinclair replaced Kimmel’s show with local news broadcasts for about three days until they returned the program to their affiliates.
The initial episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live attracted more than 6.2 million viewers to ABC and its affiliated stations, according to Nielsen ratings. It was the highest-rated episode of the show in more than a decade, but the momentum didn’t last, with Kimmel’s program averaging around 2.2 million viewers during the first week of October.
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