Disney+ Pulled 25 Shows and Isn’t Too Concerned About Fan Disappointment
Disney+ Pulled 25 Shows and Isn’t Too Concerned About Fan Disappointment
Titles like ‘A Small Light’ and ‘Togo’ have been removed from Disney+ even as the streamer prepares to hike its subscription rates.
Disney+ is apparently feeling pretty confident about its ability to shrug off the ire of customers, these days. The service has enacted a new round of title removals, pulling more than 20 shows and movies from its catalog in its latest efforts to streamline. The removals themselves aren’t all that rare, but the response from Disney when asked about the pulled titles reveals a company that has no qualms about facing backlash from customers, despite the public relations year it’s had.
Key Details:
- Titles removed from Disney+ include “Hailey’s On It,” “Love & WWE: Bianca & Montez,” and more.
- Disney defended the decision to remove the titles, saying they represented less than 2% of its catalog.
- Disney+ plans are increasing in price starting Oct. 17.
What's On Disney+ was the first to spot the title removals. It’s not the first time the streamer has pulled shows and movies from its inventory; in May 2023, Disney+ and Hulu both purged dozens of titles, including some selections that had been fairly popular among viewers.
The titles taken off Disney+ and Hulu in this latest round of removals include:
- America’s Funniest Home Videos: Animal Edition
- A Small Light
- The Biggest Little Farm: The Return
- Cesar Millan: Better Human, Better Dog
- Farm Dreams
- Freeks
- Genius MLX/X
- Going Fur Gold
- Hailey’s On It
- Home In The Wild
- Living For The Dead
- Locked Up: Abroad
- Love & WWE: Bianca & Montez
- Love In Fairhope
- Narco Wars
- Never Say Never with Jeff Jenkins
- Pretty Freaking Scary
- Saturdays
- Superhot: The Spicy World Of Pepper People
- Science Fair: The Series
- Science Fair
- Togo
- Top Ten: 80’s
- Wicked Tuna
- Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks Showdown
If any viewers thought Disney+ might be sympathetic to viewers when discussing the content pulls, however, they were disabused of that notion this week. TechRadar reached out to Disney+ for a statement about the removals, and the company gave a fairly haughty response.
“Like all media companies, we regularly review our titles and make assessments and content decisions based on what makes the most sense for the business,” a Disney spokesperson told TechRadar. “Collectively, it is less than 2% of our total titles globally. Fans still have unprecedented access to a wide variety of Disney’s film and television entertainment.”
To be sure, the spokesperson is correct in that all streaming services occasionally pull titles that are not performing to their standard. But that’s a pretty firm line for Disney+ to stand behind, particularly as it’s getting set to raise prices on nearly all standalone subscriptions and bundle options on Oct. 17. It’s a bold move at the least to tell people they have to pay more for less content, but Disney clearly feels it still has a library worth paying for.
This isn’t the first public relations storm Disney+ has had to weather this year, either. The company was slapped with a wrongful death lawsuit after an incident in one of its parks in October 2023, but tried to argue that because the plaintiff had agreed to Disney+ terms of service stipulating arbitration instead of a lawsuit, they did not have grounds to sue in the first place. Disney drew a huge backlash for that position and eventually withdrew the argument.
It doesn’t seem likely that the company will back down this time, however. Titles removed from a streamer rarely make their way back to it unless a huge groundswell of public support demands their restoration. Judging from its response to TechRadar’s query, it doesn’t appear that Disney+ is anticipating any such groundswell for the shows and movies recently pulled from its inventory.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”