It seems to be a time of year where a bunch of people are making resolutions. If you’re Jewish, tomorrow night will mark the beginning of the year 5786, which will begin a stretch of High Holidays which culminates in effectively praying your way into another year inscribed in the Book of Life. So a lot of resolutions , with some elevated stakes if you choose to believe that. Given where I am financially and health-wise at this point (spoiler alert: not ideal on either count), I’ll come out of the side of believer.
But this year, at least on my timelines, driven more by ideology than religion, an awful lot of people are resolving to say goodbye forever to anything associated with any media entity that has anything to do with the immediate threat to civil rights that the decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel has produced, at least in their minds. I’ve counted at least three dozen over the past few days, with occasional links to other threads celebrating this life-altering decision to purge themselves of any content from Disney Plus, ABC, Hulu, Nexstar or Sinclair. Not since the early days of COVID vaccines have I seen such a consistent and enthusiastic scroll of back-slapping and self-flaggelating congratulations.
That’s especially true of those who have joined in protests that have occurred outside the Disney studio gates in Burbank or rallies outside the Disney-restored El Capitan Theatre in the heart of Hollywood that has housed JKL’s broadcasts. And those who are taking the microphone in Hollywood to rage against those heathenistic entities are being amplified and supported by the costumed super heroes that would otherwise be charging the tourists leaving Kimmel’s tapings $10 a pop for selfies but for now are waiving those costs in a true showing of solidarity.
I do respect those who have confided the depth of their determination as something related to being able to look their grandchildren in the eye and at least present a more compelling argument for the choices they made in the war on democracy at ones that they passionately believe will be looked at as being on the right side of history. And I do get strongly the emotion toward taking this seemingly necessary action is at this time, particularly as the principles involved are wrangling with lawyers and their consciences on what the next move in this national crisis will be.
But if I seem a bit more disbelieving and dismissive than usual it’s not just because my own personal beliefs just don’t quite align with yours. It’s because that history and, more importantly, research indicate that your ability to actually deliver the kind of impact you think you can shows pretty conclusively that intentions aside, the track record of delivering on it ain’t good at all.
It’s now roughly $17 a month to subscribe to the Disney bundle, up a whopping 21% from the graphic atop this musing, which would usually be reason enough for a protest march unto itself. So a little over $200 a year per household. For a company whose market cap currently sits at around $207 billion, it’s gonna take an awful lot of those hits to make even an 0.1% difference on that total. By my sketchy math, that’s about 1.04 million subscribers out of a current estimate of 183 million, at least according to 3Q25 figures published by Zack’s Investment Research. OK, it’s an aggressive but not outrageous goal.
Now that’s assuming that every single one of those subscribers actually sticks it out for 12 months and indeed goes without watching the Oscars, Grey’s Anatomy, Monday Night Football or The View–let alone any other personal favorites. But, again, empirical data suggests the likelihood of you doing so is, at best, weak. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Georg Szalai provided some hard numbers on that topic last summer:
Overall, 42 percent of U.S. streaming subscribers “regularly subscribe, cancel and resubscribe,” according to Ampere Consumer findings.
But specific to those of you who were savvy enough to bundle Disney, your likelihood to even drop it at all was significantly less than that:
(R)esearch also found “that Disney subscribers who had previously churned and then returned (aka ‘resubscribers’) to take the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle are 59 percent less likely to churn within 12 months than those who take Disney+ alone.”
And some additional findings from CBS NEWS’ Sara Moniuszko that dropped last New Year’s Eve indicates that the timeline of that recividist decision points more to sooner than later:
While it differs for everyone, a 2023 poll from Forbes Health found most people give up resolutions after less than four months. According to the survey, just under 1 in 10 people (8%) said their resolutions lasted a month, 21.9% reported two months, 22.2% reported three months and 13.1% said their resolutions lasted four months. Only 1% said they lasted for 11 or 12 months. A similar survey from Drive Research produced a still higher number of failed resolutions.
And as Moniuszko continued, the fault lies not in the stars but within ourselves:
While nearly half of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, only about 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, according to Columbia University. And even fewer, less than 10%, accomplish their goals. Resolutions often fail because people never turn them into habits, said author Justin Hale, an adviser and speaker at leadership and management consulting company Crucial Learning. “Research shows that 40% of what we do day in and day out are habits. Habits are things that you do without even thinking. You do those things like a routine, habitually, almost automatic,” he told CBS News. “The problem is people, when they want to be better in the new year, they never focus on understanding what are the exact behaviors that I need to be done to turn into habits, and what’s the plan I’m going to create to make that thing habitual.”
So if you get the sense that those bad bad executives at Disney aren’t taking you as seriously as you might want to think you should be, it’s because they have all of this data and more, including far more detailed and updated numbers than those that Szalai referenced. And because they may know you better than some of you know yourselves.
You want to join the movement, fine, you do you. I’d much rather hear from you in, say, a year, with conclusive evidence that you’ve at least been part of that sliver of successful resolvers that were actually able to make even the minutest dent in a company like Disney. Until then, maybe it’s best you keep that promise between you and your family members and save the rest of us on social media the necessity to see you exclaim “Done!” every time some urge to walk away from ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING is shared.
I didn’t share my news that I got my eighth COVID booster earlier this week on my feeds nor did I have a picture taken to memorialize that. This one is from spring ’21. That’s because it’s no longer as big a deal as we once thought. And, in time, neither will be whatever you decide to do about how and where you choose to watch TV.
Until next time…