Hulu is raising the price of their Live TV for a second time in almost a year. They are raising the price by $10 per plan. So the Live TV bundle with ads will raise from 54.99 to $64.99 a month and the Live TV bundle without ads will raise from $60.99 a month to $70.99.

The change will impact new and existing customers and will start on December 18th. At this point people are starting to pay about as much as cable or satellite TV with a fraction of the channels.

Keep in mind Disney jacked the rates on Hulu $10 at about the same time last year.

Before that it was raised in February 2019 by $5. So in the course of less than two years the price will have increased $25 a month which is over 60%. Disney finalized the controlling interest in Hulu in March of 2019. So you can thank Disney for the increase. In a years time the price went from $45/$51 to $65/$71.

Disney is hemorrhaging money and it seems that since they can’t bleed out the park goers their new plan is to gouge the people on Hulu. Just in time for their Investor Day on December 10th.

Meanwhile they are doing a $1.99 a month for a year “special” through Cyber Monday to raise their subscriber numbers and then passing off the financial “loss” onto those already paying ridiculous prices for limited “Live TV” channels.

All the seem to care about right now is raising subscriber numbers. Even in their investment call that is what they focused on. How many subscribers they had on Disney+ and Hulu. Disney has increased the subscriber count on Hulu Live TV by 40% just in the past year.

Now they are going to start gouging harder.

I just can’t get past how greedy the Walt Disney Company has become:

• They furlough employees while reinstating pay to their top executives.
• They put up past clips of old “The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration” performances and pass it off as an “Anniversary Special.”
• They get rid of actual entertainment and slap up more “Instagram” Disney advertisement walls because the higher-ups believed that guests would rather post pictures to Instagram than see a real show. I could go on and on.
• When they had money they used it for stock buy-backs and dividend payments.
• They filed more cuts with options to cut more employees or stop paying in on pensions and retirement health benefits.

I could go on and on.

Now Disney has changed their focus to “direct-to-consumer” and they are going to start upping the costs on the subscribers to pay for it. 

I’m betting the prices for Disney+ are going to increase very soon as well.

Even the investors are worried that Disney is going to focus on quantity over quality and when asked CEO, Bob Chapek pretty much said that would be the case.

I don’t know why the Walt Disney Company keeps thinking people are going to put up with them. There are other options for Live TV and they are starting to become far cheaper. Right now people don’t have the money or security to be just handing them more for a service they could get elsewhere for less. The Disney name isn’t worth the cost for a lot of people and that number is growing.

As we’ve seen with things like the “Cuties” backlash, people will pull the plug on a service to make a point. Three significant price hikes adding up to over 60%, in less than 2 years, is going to make people reconsider.

What do you think? Comment and let us know.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter