Kimmel’s short suspension hit the company hard
The political whirlwind following far-right commentator Charlie Kirk’s death last month led to a lot of people losing their jobs, yet Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension caused more harm than Disney might have expected when it made the controversial decision.
‘Cancel culture’ was alive and thriving in the days following Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk’s death, with both Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi issuing serious warnings to those deemed to be ‘celebrating’ the murder.
Those on the political right swarmed in their masses to contact the employers of anyone speaking negatively about Kirk, and there was no bigger case of this than when late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was pulled from the air for what he said about the Republican reaction to his death.
While President Donald Trump revealed his own thoughts towards Kimmel on social media and one broadcaster demanded that the late-night host donate to Kirk’s family and Turning Point USA, others came to his defense.
Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension might have cost Disney more than it expected.
Kimmel received the support of actors, fellow comedians, and even former president Barack Obama, and that led ABC to reinstate his show less than a week later.
While that five-day period appeared to come and go in a flash, it wasn’t without hurt for Disney, which was on the receiving end of a large number of subscription cancellations in protest across its number of platforms, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+.
As shared by Gizmodo, investigative journalist Marisa Kabas revealed on Bluesky that Disney saw more than 1.7 million total paid streaming cancellations in the period between Kimmel’s suspension and return to TV screens (9/17-9/23), with that number coming across the aforementioned three streaming platforms.
Kabas previously noted that Disney “hastened Kimmel’s return because of a planned Disney+ streaming price increase announcement,” presumably fearing that the existing backlash towards the suspension decision wouldn’t pair well with asking people to pay even more.
People certainly did vote with their wallets on an impressive scale, with Kabas adding that the “number of cancellations Disney saw in the week after suspending Kimmel was 436% above baseline subscriber churn.”
It’s unclear whether there have been any significant subscription increases following the decision to bring back Kimmel, but that likely won’t be for a little while, as a large number of people will have had long-term ongoing subscriptions that won’t necessarily see any impact until they reach the endpoint that they paid for.
While it’s difficult to work out quite how much Disney is losing in monetary terms, as the prices across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ are all different, if every single one were signed up to the new yearly Disney+ price of $189.99 a year, it would cost the company as much as $322,983,000 annually.
