Kimmel reinstatement preempted Disney+ price increase

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A quick one for you–

Monday night, just after sending out the latest edition of The Handbasket, I got a big scoop that I published on Bluesky: Disney was set to announce price increases for its streaming services on Tuesday, a source inside the company shared with me, which may have hastened the ABC parent company’s major decision Monday to bring Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show back on air.

Since Kimmel was suspended last week, there’s been mass outrage. To my eye it was the strongest pushback we’ve seen to authoritarian overreach during the second Trump administration so far. The combination of the FCC pressuring Disney over free speech they didn’t like combined with their parent company and affiliates bowing to the pressure left an intolerable taste in people’s mouths, and also reminded them that they can vote with their wallets.

Per Vulture, who was first to report the exact details of the increases, the new prices will go into effect 30 days from today. They reported that the Disney+/Hulu Bundle (with ads) will go from $11 a month to $13 a month; Disney+ Premium (no ads) will go up by $3—from $16 a month to $19 a month; Disney+ (with ads) will go up by $2—from $10 a month to $12 a month; and Hulu + Live TV (with ads) will go up by $7—from $83 a month to $90 a month.

The price increase was planned well before Charlie Kirk’s death and the wave of government censorship that followed. But it’s hard to believe that Disney couldn’t have postponed the increase until the uproar from this unforced error died down. I’m no Fortune 500 executive, but I am the CEO of my own media company (employee count: one), and this seems like an absurd call.

Despite any good will earned by Disney from the announcement that they were bringing Kimmel back, the price increase is likely to create another wave of backlash against a company that was already on perilously thin ice. More than a million people had canceled Disney streaming subscriptions as of Monday, the Disney source told me, and the company likely knew that trend would only continue the longer they kept Kimmel silenced. Once they brought him back, there may have been a window of opportunity to reel them back in. But just one night of sleep surely wasn’t enough to both win them back and convince them to pay more money.

Kimmel is set to return tonight during his regularly scheduled time slot at 11:35pm ET. But not every ABC affiliate will carry it: Stations owned by conservative companies Sinclair and Nexstar have vowed to continue their Kimmel blackout, accounting for more than 20% of all affiliates. Even so, assuming east coasters can stay awake that late, it could still be Kimmel’s highest rated show ever. It’s hard to think of another time when a single person had a more powerful platform to defend free speech.