The Battle of the Streaming Services Is the Show That Will Never End
With the rise of HBO Max, Disney+, and AppleTV+, one thing is for sure: The big loser is traditional cable.
Disney+, a paid streaming service.
Source: Disney
On Aug. 4, 2015, Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger sent a tremor through the halls of media companies around the world when he acknowledged his cable network ESPN was losing subscribers. Cord cutting, once dismissed as a fantasy, was a reality. Disney shares plummeted, as did those of media companies across the U.S.
Most analysts agreed on the culprit: Netflix, the world’s largest paid streaming service. It had offered customers a cheaper, advertising-free alternative to cable that also let them watch what they wanted when they wanted. And every customer who canceled cable service had a particularly strong impact on ESPN, the most expensive cable network in the U.S.