Streaming News: Snap Launches Aussie Contest ; Disney+ Touts Streaming Numbers
The new exclusive streaming home for The Simpsons, Disney+, is touting 28.6 million paying subscribers which is nearly topping Disney’s sister streaming service which is holding steady at 30 million subscribers and this is before Disney+ continues international roll out over the next couple of months. That said, the entire streaming division is encroaching a billion dollars in operating losses.
[h/t: NY Times]
Last year, Snap, Inc put out a nationwide search for talent for original content for it’s Snapchat social platform. While we await winners for that, they are doing another one for specifically the Australia market having teamed up with Aussie producers Screen Australia. The rules are similar, they are looking for producers of content that could be a 10 episode original series with episodes clocking in at five minutes apiece.
Winning producers will get $15,000 AUD in development funding as well as an all-expenses-paid trip to Snapchat HQ in Los Angeles on May 18th where they will take part in the development process. They are looking for any narrative genre and you can see rules and regulations here.
Short of getting Roiland back, which I'm sure isn't going to happen, I don't even think they could get much better than the new voices from the previous season. And the ratings for season 7 weren't much lower on average than for season 6; it was pretty much just a normal season-to-season drop that most likely would have happened regardless.
I mean, look at the actual averages:
Season 1 - 1.57 million viewers Season 2 - 1.97 million viewers Season 3 - 2.33 million viewers Season 4 - 1.52 million viewers Season 5 - 0.96 million viewers Season 6 - 0.56 million viewers Season 7 - 0.42 million viewers
Ever since season 3, it had been having steep drops even with Roiland still involved; the season 6 to 7 drop is actually the smallest-percentage drop it's had since it started dropping, and if anything it's possible that changing the voice actors actually *boosted* interest a bit and prevented it from dropping even more.