Q. I hope Discovery Plus is the greatest failure of all time. They’ve decided to steal our shows from our channels on satellite and move them to Discovery Plus and we can’t watch them unless we pay up. I hope they fail! Don’t you think people won’t fall for this and not subscribe and they will have to bring our shows back? — Sherry, Dayton, Ohio.
Sherry, as you note, Discovery has decided to offer new episodes of several popular Discovery-branded shows as Discovery+ exclusives such as Property Brothers: Forever Home, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal: Caught On Camera, among others. This means that longtime cable and satellite viewers of those shows either have to subscribe to Discovery+ or go without their favorites.
For many subscribers already paying $100 a month for a cable or satellite package, that’s a bridge too far, although Discovery+ plans start at a reasonable $4.99 a month. In e-mails to yours truly, and comments on social media sites, the loyal Discovery viewers say it’s the principle; they shouldn’t be asked to pay more when they have supported the channels over several years. Without their support, Discovery’s brand wouldn’t be powerful enough for the company to even start a streaming service.
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Discovery officials won’t say if the new episodes will ever be available on the Discovery-owned channels found on cable and satellite, prompting many viewers to express hope that the streaming service will fail. If it did, Discovery obviously would move the new episodes to the pay TV Discovery channels, such as HGTV, the Food Network, TLC, The Travel Channel, and Discovery.
But Sherry, I have bad news for you. Discovery’s strategy seems to be working. The company announced today that Discovery+ (and the company’s international streaming services) have 11 million subscribers and will likely hit 12 million by month’s end. While that includes some non-Discovery+ numbers, Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the “vast” majority represent paying Discovery+ customers. That’s an impressive count considering Discovery+ launched just seven weeks ago.
“We are off to a promising start in 2021 with the successful launch of Discovery+,” Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a statement following release of the company’s fourth quarter report. “We have now surpassed 11 million total paying direct-to-consumer subscribers globally and are on pace to be at 12 million by the end of the month, underscoring the value of the investments we’ve made in content, beloved personalities and brands with huge consumer appeal, supported by industry-leading DTC capabilities.”
So, Sherry, I don’t suspect that Discovery+ plans to change its strategy anytime soon. It’s working.
Now if the ratings for the pay TV Discovery channels start to falter, that’s another matter. Then company executives would have to reevaluate. But there’s no indication that is likely to happen. So for now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to subscribe to Discovery+ or do without.
Update: Zaslav said today that the moving of shows from pay TV to Discovery+ does not mean they will be gone forever.
“In terms of the content that we’re moving around, we’re really experimenting,” Zaslav told financial analysts in a conference call following the fourth quarter report release.
However, Zaslav did not commit to a time when the shows would be returned to the pay TV channels, if, that is, they are returned. For more on when they could return, read this.
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Sherry, hope that makes sense. Happy viewing, and stay safe!
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
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Oh well. That’s ok that Discovery Plus is succeeding. I still won’t get it. I want to wait until streaming is more reliable. Anyway I’m finding some good shows on other channels now that I haven’t been focused on animal planet and travel channel. Maybe this will give the other channels a boost and we will start getting new and better similar shows that cable viewers lost with Discovery Plus. Smithsonian Channel and Nat Geo Are two channels that are good. I feel bad for the people who have less options than me though. It just goes to show that profit not loyalty is really the American way.
I’m with you. Somehow this feels like a “bait and switch” and should be illegal somehow. I see the Discovery channels using Sling TV, the ONLY reason that I subscribe. Cable pkgs are outrageously expensive and I’m a penny watching retiree. It’s bad enough that the so called network offerings are starting to stream (CBS, NBC, etc) but all they want is to find ways to increase our costs. If the pirating continues I might be making a change as well. Ridiculous!
Amen!
How many of that 11 million subscriber number are paying Verizon subscribers getting the app free? The Discovery+ app is also not currently available in Canada and elsewhere. I would be questioning the accuracy of the total “paying” subscriber number. It’s in their best interest to hype the app as much as they can.
So, if that is the game Discovery+ is going to play, we are out! Those channels were our main channels. As soon as our contract is up with Dish, we are cutting it off. TV Man, you were sort of rude to Sherry from Dayton, Ohio. It is not as simple as just throwing in the towel and signing up for discovery+. If you don’t own a smart tv, no older than 2017, you have to buy a roku, etc In order to watch discovery+! So, paying only an extra $4.99 per month is not the only cost your looking at!
@FindDIY – these networks definitely inflate their numbers by including their free subs. AT&T has done this over and over. But either way, this train isn’t stopping. Whether Discovery+ succeeds or fails, streaming is the way they are all going. If it fails, it might slow things down a bit but it won’t stop it.
I was just reading an article last week that I meant to save to share here. I believe it was Forbes or somewhere like that. But the jist of the article was that these companies are being hammered by Wall Street to make the move to streaming. At the same time, however, they make more money on satellite and cable subs. So they’d rather the world not change at all. Cable for everyone. But they and Wall Street knows that’s not the future so they are trying walk the line of building their streaming future without killing their current cable model for as long as they can. Some of these companies are doing better than others. The shining example, and Wall Street darling, is Disney with their Disney+. They are spending tons of money to build up their streaming, and even though they make A LOT of money from ESPN cable/sat subs they are trying to find more and more ways to get better content on streaming – including perhaps making streaming available as part of the next NFL contract.
I should disclose, by the way, that I do pay for Discovery+ and I haven’t had a cable or satellite subscription in like 6 year … so I’m a bit biased. 🙂 But I will say that we enjoy Discovery+ even though we get annoyed that there isn’t enough new episodes. The kids love Crikey It’s the Irwins, both the old episodes and the new ones each Sunday. Wife and I like to veg out to some of the old travel shows. But we wish they had new episodes of all the Travel Channel, History Channel, etc.
Streaming is sort of the way, but we have way too many streaming apps. I have several only because I share login credentials with family members so no one has to pay for all of them. I barely touch any of them.
I watch one channel of Discovery’s and it is one of the ones they gutted, so I would be pleased if cable companies decided to cut them out and give us a price break.
I’m not going to Discovery+ because the app looks like a huge mess. They aired the first (or second episode) on regular tv claiming that they were sneak previews of the new seasons and that there would be new episodes premiering every week. However, they seemed to have dropped all of them after two or three episodes. They must have laid off the people running the networks because they now have only people who don’t know what they are doing. I don’t see how they can develop new shows this way. All of the content that’s now exclusive was created to air on television.
@Adam O’Donnell – However the push was made to go streaming, whether it be Wall Street or otherwise, their execution of Discovery+ was pretty poor. It’s obvious there is a huge market of cable-cutters out there who don’t use a cable service. Why not just offer the same content across the board on both cable and streaming? You pick up some extra customers, keep the existing ones happy, and Wall Street can breath a sigh of relief now that you’re “streaming”. Would definitely make the transition easier as people continue to cut the cord…
Coercing existing cable customers to pay for content they were already getting as part of their cable package by starving their existing service of new content basically amounts to extortion, and is a good way to lose customers in the long run…
Yeah, I agree. I’m not sure that offering a new Criminal Minds show moves the needle on Paramount+ sign-ups or some exclusive version of a DIY show really boosts Discovery+ sign-ups. But they all seem to try that sort of thing. I feel like it’s all they know how to do. 🙂
If your shows have been taken from Discovery, food, and HV tv channels and put on discovery plus, then those original channels aren’t worth what they are charging Dish, DTV and other providers since doing this pracrice. Hope the providers drop them.
And thus continues the death spiral of cable tv. Young people are just not signing up for it – why would we, it’s so much more expensive than paying for internet service + sharing some streaming subscriptions, and if you don’t have a tv at all then cable isn’t even an option anyway.
So more and more content providers like Discovery are going where the customers are going – streaming. Cable becomes a worse and worse deal as shows go away while the price stays the same or even goes up, and you still have to watch ads for some reason despite paying absurd prices.
I’m not surprised that the launch is a success; my friend group that I do online watch parties with it realized there was some stuff on there we could watch together, so I pitched in an signed up. Pretty great deal so far.
Agreed. I’m probably a bit older than the “young people” with the shared sub friend groups. But I have 2 kids under 7 who have never known a world with cable TV. When we stay at hotels they marvel at commercials and are upset they can’t just pick what they want, when they want. (So now we travel with a Firestick and they don’t see the cable experience at all.)
Obviously this is the way things are going. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to get there completely, which companies get there first. The next 5-8 years are going to be really interesting when it comes to content. But they are also going to be a bit painful as some of these companies try to figure out how to set themselves up for the future while squeezing out as much money as they can from their “traditional” models.
I wonder what portion of those 11 million subscribers are NOT Verizon customers? IMO, that would be a better metric on which to determine demand and thus how “successful” the new streaming service actually is. I highly suspect that 11 million number is inflated due to influx of Verizon customers getting the service for free, a majority of which would probably be just as disgruntled without the “free” content as others using different providers. For a group of networks that produce passive content at best, it’ll be interesting to see the tally of subscribers when the free tier runs its course…
“Coercing existing cable customers to pay for content they were already getting as part of their cable package by starving their existing service of new content basically amounts to extortion, and is a good way to lose customers in the long run…” This explains what Discovery + is doing perfectly and why I am perfectly fine not starting to stream Discovery + (even though I love a few of their shows) My daughter is less thrilled by my decision but I will not be extorted even if it’s only for $4.99.
I downloaded free-trial and uninstalled 30 minutes later. I pay for premium cable and internet packages from Cox.We actively use Netflix, Prime, Disney, etc. Family members used to watch Food Network, ID, Animal Planet, etc. No we do not watch any of them. So tired of the longer commercial breaks that Discovery Plus taking up to sell me a glitch product that doesn’t work on several of my devices, for a channel I already pay for.
Oxygen, Bravo, Nat Geo…they are REALLY good!
We are Spectrum customers. Not only are we losing new shows on channels to streaming like Motor Trend, History, HGTV, Science, Discovery, TLC, but when we watch the old reruns that are shown on these channels we are bombarded with ads for the new streaming services! For shows we can’t even watch on our paid cable channels! It’s a disaster! Ellen