With Disney’s Move to Streaming, a New Era Begins<br />In a research report, Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen<br />and Company, summed up Disney’s streaming plans, especially for movies and television, as “aggressively” pushing “the traditional content business into terra incognita.”<br />Underscoring the uncertainty, Disney’s shares declined by more than 4 percent on Wednesday, to $102.83.<br />In a statement on Tuesday, Netflix said, “We continue to do business with the Walt<br />Disney Company on many fronts, including our ongoing deal with Marvel TV.”<br />Notably, Netflix has been building up a huge original movie operation, including spending the $90 million “Bright,” a forthcoming Will Smith movie.<br />As part of its announcement on Tuesday, Disney said<br />that it would spend heavily on original programming for its entertainment streaming service and pull future Disney and Pixar movies from Netflix.<br />LOS ANGELES — Disney set off a sonic boom in Hollywood by unveiling plans to start two Netflix-style services: For the first time in the streaming age, the world’s largest media company had decided<br />that embracing a new business model was more important than clinging to its existing one.<br />It’s not the end of Netflix.”<br />Disney’s streaming plans call for the introduction early next year of a subscription service to be built around ESPN’s sports programming.<br />Amazon last year acquired a significant amount of PBS’s library of original series to exclusively stream on its service,<br />and Netflix has said it expects to have 75 original children’s programs by the end of next year.
