EconomyFinancialPay TV after Disney's goodbye: what now?

Pay TV after Disney's goodbye: what now?

Streaming platforms seek to strengthen their content offer in the face of the emergence of new video-on-demand applications. For this reason, Disney decided to remove its Disney XD, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Kids, FXM and Star Life channels from pay television to move them to its Over-the-top (OTT) application.

The decision will affect pay television, which is currently seeking to adapt to the reconversion of digital content consumption through alliances with the same streaming platforms and maintaining premium channels, such as HBO or Paramount, so as not to lose the interest of consumers.

The departure of Disney, the main provider of children’s programs, puts at risk the children’s content grid, one of the most consumed in the country, as well as the packaging products offered by the cable companies that sell Izzi, Sky, Megacable, Dish and Totalplay, whose premium segment is relevant to contract a subscription.

“What will happen is the cessation of access to Premium packages, such as Star Premium, which will disappear as of March, that will be a significant loss of programming. How is it going to be contracted from now on if they are only going to be able to be broadcast through the Star + platforms?”, says Radamés Camargo, research manager for The Ciu consultancy.

According to the 2021 national survey of audiovisual content consumption, prepared by the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT), the channels most watched by children on restricted television are Disney Chanel, Disney Junior, Disney XD and Star Chanel.

Precisely, one of the reasons for contracting restricted television, comment the analysts consulted, is the access to programs for children, especially those of Disney. For this reason, cable companies will have the main challenge of finding a replacement to fill the void that their content will leave in children’s audiences. And it will be complicated.

“The production of children’s content is the most complex and onerous and there are very few who develop it. Disney is a children’s reference and it is true that parents hire cable or satellite so that the child can see cartoons there. Cable television is really going to lose one of the most important offers,” says Jorge Bravo, president of the Mexican Association of the Right to Information (Amedi).

Cable companies such as Totalplay and Megacable, which were not available for this text, would keep the children’s offer of Discovery Kids, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Boomerang.

For his part, Izzi commented that, even without Disney, there is a wide variety of family content for all ages that they can offer, so it will not affect their Izzi Kids application.

And the future?

The future of audiovisual content is on the internet and streaming platforms are understanding it. For this reason, the exit of Disney from restricted television will mark the beginning of other possible leaks of important production companies to focus on the consolidation of their digital product.

For analysts, cable companies must change their strategy to be current and attractive compared to video-on-demand platforms, since until now the only thing that keeps them essential is their packaging, which includes the Internet and the OTTs themselves.

“Pay television has not been able to adapt, except that they include platforms as part of their offer. I think its main mistake was to feed the platforms themselves so that, as a pay television system, it could save you. You were feeding the giant that is now practically devouring you,” says Bravo.

Among the options that cable companies have is to become an ‘everything everywhere’, a download content application that can be given to users for contracting the cable system. Dish is one of the companies that already has this modality.

However, experts consider that this option for the cable companies is to return to depending on the big producers and, although they add their own content, they are of lower quality compared to that of HBO or Disney.

“Every time the content offered by cable companies is of lower quality compared to the other options available. Perhaps sports will now be their only strength,” says Claudia Benassini, a specialist in pay television issues and a researcher at La Salle University.

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