MEDIAGPT | GLOBAL STREAMING
Hulu and ESPN programming folded into one app, plus a new recommendation engine and vertical video — "reducing churn may be the biggest opportunity we have"
Note: Won figures in the Korean edition of this article use KRW 1,440 to the dollar, the Seoul close at end-July 2026.
Disney is redesigning Disney+ as the single entry point to everything the company sells. Chief Executive Josh D'Amaro has told his leadership team to treat the service as the front door for fans worldwide, and the execution plan that has emerged runs on four tracks: a sharper recommendation algorithm, vertical video, the integration of Hulu and ESPN programming into one app, and a doubling of local-language production budgets in markets led by South Korea. Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley reported the plan for Bloomberg on July 30. A fully unified app experience is targeted for the second half of 2026.
The overhaul arrives as the streaming revenue equation shifts from acquiring subscribers to holding watch time. As pay-TV households thinned out and the cash the network business used to hand over got thinner with them, ad tiers, bundles and price increases became standard, and streaming moved past the stage of covering losses into the stage of earning a return.
Jung Han
The moment profit arrives, though, the scorecard changes. Holding a margin means holding down cancellations, and holding down cancellations means the app has to keep offering something to watch next. In the Media Distributor Gauge Nielsen released on July 28, Disney held 10.0% of US TV watch time in May 2026, second place. Streaming as a category climbed to 48.6% of all TV watch time, but Disney's slice of that growth trails YouTube by 3.8 points. That is why D'Amaro is working on the content budget and the app architecture at the same time.
Disney+, Hulu and ESPN together produced more than $20 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year, a scale trailing only Netflix and YouTube. Even so, shares in the Burbank company are down more than 40% over five years and about 13% in 2026 alone. Rob Fishman, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, sees improved streaming performance as D'Amaro's most realistic route to lifting a stalled share price.
Three Years of Erasing a $4 Billion Loss
A decade ago, as cable subscriptions began to slip, then-CEO Bob Iger made streaming the company's first priority. Disney spent more than $70 billion buying Fox's entertainment assets and billions more on engineers and Disney+ programming. The service cleared 10 million customers on its first day in November 2019 and passed 100 million in under two years, sending the stock to an all-time high.
The mood turned in 2022. When Netflix reported a subscriber decline, Wall Street began questioning the strategy of buying growth at a loss. Burning cash on streaming while the network business shrank read as exposure rather than investment, and the judgment of Iger and his successor Bob Chapek came under scrutiny — the debt taken on for Fox, the volume of Star Wars series, the case for owning ESPN.
When Dana Walden and Alan Bergman took over the entertainment division in February 2023, the streaming unit had lost roughly $4 billion in the prior fiscal year. Under pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz, the two cut commissions. Ampere Analysis counts Disney's newly commissioned series falling from about 340 titles in 2022 to the low 160s in 2025, close to a halving. Disney also raised the price of Disney+ nearly threefold and placed a cheaper ad-supported tier underneath it. Within three years the $4 billion loss had become a profit.
Figure 1. Series newly commissioned by Disney for streaming, 2020-2025
Walden told Bloomberg the company had gone from losing a great deal of money to building a service that represents Disney's potential, while adding that considerable room to grow remains.
The numbers have kept improving. In the quarter D'Amaro reported in May 2026, his first as CEO, combined Disney+ and Hulu operating income rose 88% to $582 million, pushing the streaming operating margin past 10% for the first time and lifting the shares 8% in a day. Company-wide revenue for the quarter was $25.2 billion, up 7%, with streaming revenue up 13%. Disney has guided to a streaming operating margin of at least 10% for fiscal 2026.
Figure 2. Disney direct-to-consumer quarterly operating income, FY2022-FY2025
▸ Disney streaming by the numbers
Paying Down Technical Debt, and 'One Disney'
Fixing the finances was half the job. Subscriber growth had slowed to a crawl, and owning Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm was not translating into visible advantage inside the app.
Nielsen's May 2026 Gauge, released July 28, put streaming at 48.6% of total US TV watch time, up 1.0 point on the month. Cable finished at 20.4% and broadcast at 19.2%, both showing the usual April-to-May decline. Total TV usage fell only 1% over the interval, a smaller drop than the 2-4% recorded in prior years.
Figure 3. How US TV watch time splits, Nielsen The Gauge, May 2026
The question is who takes that 48.6%. YouTube Main recorded a platform-best 13.8% and posted the largest monthly share gain of any streaming platform or media company at +0.4 points. Netflix held 8.0% and Prime Video reached a platform best of 4.5%. Disney's own platforms combined — Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu SVOD — came to 4.9%, some 3.1 points behind Netflix alone. That gap is the case for folding three services into one.
Figure 4. Share of US TV watch time by streaming platform, May 2026
At company level the picture changes. Disney held second place in the Media Distributor Gauge with 10.0%. YouTube led at 13.8% for a third consecutive month. NBCU and Versant combined for 8.4% (NBCU 6.2%, Versant 2.2%) in third, Netflix returned to fourth at 8.0%, and Paramount (7.7%), Fox (6.5%), Warner Bros. Discovery (5.7%) and Amazon (4.5%) followed. Should Fox complete its proposed Roku acquisition, adding the Roku Channel's 3.1% would put the combined company at 9.6%, just behind Disney. What carried Disney in May was ESPN rather than streaming: ESPN viewing rose 16% and its NBA Playoffs coverage took all six of the month's top cable telecasts.
Figure 5. Share of US TV watch time by media distributor, May 2026
Part of the explanation is technical. While Netflix and YouTube spent twenty years refining streaming products, Disney's various services ran for years on different stacks, down to the programming languages, databases and software tools. Iger said in 2024 that Disney needed to reach its rivals' level, then hired Adam Smith. As chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, Smith spent two years rebuilding the organisation and the stack. He describes the approach as fundamentally revamped and reports substantial progress on the experience. Nielsen measures US time spent on Disney+ up 21% year on year, and in March Disney's streaming services together recorded their highest monthly US viewership on record.
The concept Smith and Joe Earley are pushing is One Disney. At launch in 2019, Disney+ was read as a family app for Cinderella and Frozen, with Hulu handling adult general entertainment and ESPN handling sport. The work now is to establish that Disney+ carries not only Bluey and The Mandalorian but also The Bear and the NFL. Hulu viewing histories have been ported into Disney+ so recommendations recognise those subscribers, and watching an FX series on Disney+ costs the viewer nothing in functionality. Pushing bundles has held US churn at 3%, second-lowest in the industry after Netflix on Antenna's count.
Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston has said splitting the three services into separate businesses would add complexity without generating incremental revenue. The framing is that Disney+, Hulu and ESPN are brands that create content rather than standalone business units, monetised across whichever channels suit consumers and served by one central ad tech stack. The ESPN+ app stays; the standalone Hulu app does not. On the same call D'Amaro described reducing churn as possibly the single largest growth opportunity for Disney+, and said AI is being applied to ad targeting so partners can run dynamic brand messaging. A fully unified app experience is targeted for later in calendar 2026.
▸ Three tracks of the overhaul
The Chain of Command, Read Off the Org Chart
The Disney org charts published by Business Insider in July show the chain of command behind the overhaul. D'Amaro took over as chief executive on March 18, 2026, succeeding Iger. Dana Walden reports directly to him in the newly created role of president and chief creative officer. Thomas Mazloum filled the Disney Experiences chairmanship D'Amaro vacated; that segment generated roughly 57% of company profit in fiscal 2025, against company-wide revenue of $94.4 billion.
▸ Direct reports to Josh D'Amaro, CEO (support roles omitted)
The most consequential structural feature is that product and technology now sit under the creative organisation. Adam Smith is co-president of direct-to-consumer and chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, reporting to Walden; Joe Earley is the other DTC co-president on the same line. Alongside them sit Alan Bergman as chairman of studios, Debra O'Connell as chairman of television and John Landgraf as chairman of FX. Streaming product, programming and studio production are therefore coordinated within a single reporting line.
▸ Direct reports to Dana Walden, president and chief creative officer
Under Smith sit product engineering (Andre Rohe), content platforms and operations (Chris Lawson), product management (Erin Teague), ad platforms (Tony Donohoe) and design (Meghan Borsic) in parallel. The recommendation algorithm, vertical video and AI ad targeting are not scattered across departments; they move within one reporting line. Rohe's organisation carries separate media engineering, growth engineering and India product and technology groups, while Teague's has dedicated vice presidents for sports products and news products — a signal that how sport and news surface inside the app is being treated as a product problem rather than a scheduling one.
▸ Direct reports to Adam Smith, co-president DTC and CPTO
Eric Schrier, who will spend the local-language budget, sits under Earley on the DTC line, with the title of president of Disney Television Studios and global original television strategy — studio production and streaming original strategy held in one seat. Disney+ itself is run by president Alisa Bowen, with viewer experience, subscription planning and programming and content curation split beneath her at senior vice president level. Hulu strategic planning and operations survives as a separate vice presidency inside Lauren Tempest's content planning and partnerships group, so licensing management persists even after the standalone Hulu app is retired.
▸ Direct reports to Joe Earley, co-president, direct-to-consumer
For Korean counterparties there are two doors. Platform and content negotiations run through Tony Zameczkowski, SVP and general manager for DTC in Asia Pacific, on Earley's line. Regional business overall runs through Luke Kang, president of The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, on Pitaro's line. Placing the Asia Pacific regional presidency under the ESPN chairman implies that sports rights and regional distribution are handled together. Advertising sits with Rita Ferro, president of Disney Advertising, and platform distribution with James Zasowski, both on the same line.
▸ Direct reports to Jimmy Pitaro, chairman, ESPN
The dispersal of data responsibility is visible too. Susan Doniz Firka, the enterprise chief information and data officer, reports to CFO Johnston; DTC data and analytics sits with Chas Murphy on Earley's line; data analytics inside product engineering sits on Smith's. How that three-way structure absorbs the work of porting Hulu viewing history into Disney+ and delivering a fully unified app experience later in 2026 will determine the pace of execution. The consolidation also involved layoffs this spring.
▸ Direct reports to Hugh Johnston, CFO (principal roles)
The Growth Is Overseas, and Korea Is Inside It
Disney rejects the suggestion that its programming is thin. Combining networks and streaming, only YouTube beats it on share of TV time. In Nielsen's 2025 annual streaming tally, published through its ARTEY Awards, four of the ten most-watched titles are Disney-owned. Bluey led with 45.2 billion viewing minutes and Grey's Anatomy followed at 40.9 billion, with Bob's Burgers (34.0 billion) and Family Guy (33.3 billion) behind them. The four together account for 153.4 billion minutes, close to half the viewing across the entire top ten. In theatres Disney released Toy Story 5 and The Devil Wears Prada 2, and last year's top-grossing film worldwide was Zootopia 2.
▸ Ten most-watched streaming titles in the US, 2025
Figure 6. Ten most-watched streaming titles in the US, 2025 (Nielsen)
Read the other way, the same table says something else. Only one of the ten is a streaming original — Netflix's Stranger Things. The other nine are library titles that first ran on broadcast or cable, and Disney's four are all network properties apart from Bluey. The Grey's Anatomy figure combines viewing on Hulu and on Netflix, which carries seasons one through twenty-one. A substantial share of the watch time Disney claims in streaming therefore comes from its library, and some of it accrues on a competitor's platform. That is precisely where Wells Fargo's release-cadence objection and the licensing-revenue argument intersect.
Narrow the window to a single month and the picture shifts again. Nielsen's most-watched streaming title in May 2026 was the finale of Prime Video's The Boys at 5 billion viewing minutes, followed by Netflix's acquired series La Brea at over 4 billion. No Disney title placed near the top. The most-watched film of 2025, for the record, was Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters.
Even so, the headroom is international. Disney has long run the classic Hollywood model of exporting its programming. Marvel and Pixar travel everywhere, but there is a ceiling on how large a streaming service can grow in a given market without local production. Netflix and YouTube have both used local content to get past that ceiling, and Disney is following the same route.
Walden has put Eric Schrier in charge of building the local-language pipeline. Disney plans to double that budget over the next few years and is bidding on sports rights in markets including Latin America and Australia. Walden has said the plan is to increase content spend, particularly outside the US, and to expand creative output significantly.
Bloomberg's identification of Korea as a lead market for that expansion matches Disney's recent output there. Disney+ released Trigger, Hyper Knife, Nine Puzzle, Pine: The Country Bumpkins, Polaris, The Murky Stream, Mercy for None and Made in Korea across 2025, and has lined up The Remarried Empress, A Shop for Killers season two and Fate Battle 49 for 2026. The genre slate is the same signal as the budget increase: an unwillingness to stay boxed into the family-friendly image. Disney+ also ran esports tournaments as global live streams in partnership with the Korea e-Sports Association.
Disney+'s actual position in Korea, however, still sits some distance from that ambition. IGAWorks' Mobile Index counted a combined 42.83 million monthly active users across Korea's five main streaming apps in June 2026, with Netflix passing 16 million for the first time at 16.17 million. Disney+ recorded 3.13 million that month, down 15.8% from May — the steepest fall among the five. The pattern from February, when the debut of Fate Battle 49 lifted Disney+ from 2.45 million to 2.95 million, a 20% jump, did not hold. A single title drives substantial acquisition; the acquisition does not stay. That is the problem Disney+ keeps rediscovering in Korea, and it is the same problem D'Amaro named when he called churn reduction the company's biggest opportunity.
Figure 7. Monthly active users of Korea's main streaming apps, June 2026
D'Amaro's endpoint reaches past streaming. He is exploring turning Disney+ into a super app spanning theme-park tickets, cruise bookings, games and merchandise. The technical and licensing work of folding Hulu fully into Disney+ still has to finish first, which puts everything layered on top of it later in the sequence.
Wall Street's Rebuttal: Get Out of Streaming Instead
There is a direct rebuttal to all of this. In a note dated July 12, Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall argued that Disney should exit distribution and return to a production and licensing model, laying out the case for going back to the old business model of producing rather than distributing and estimating it could add roughly 40% to the share price. His arithmetic: if Sony receives about $1 billion a year from Netflix for its pay-one output deal, Disney — with roughly three times the global box office — could command close to $4 billion for global pay-one alone, and adding pay-two windows and the library could push licensing revenue past $15 billion a year by fiscal 2028, lifting earnings per share by about 10%. Wells Fargo kept its Overweight rating while cutting its price target to $125 from $146. Disney closed at $95.62 on the trading day before the note.
Cahall's argument has two strands: that it is an open question whether Disney's release cadence is dense enough to manage churn and support long-term margins, and that putting the library on a competing global streamer would not damage the box office, the experiences business or brand value. Disney has not taken the suggestion. Reporting suggests it is examining the opposite direction, including live-TV bundles and even free tiers. Third-quarter results due in August will supply the first data on which reading holds.
Fishman sees the potential for Disney's streaming services to be the best in the business, with a condition attached: the company has to give investors something to be excited about and then execute on it.
What This Means for Korean Operators
The negotiating position changes first. Korea is named explicitly in the markets where Disney is doubling local-language spend. A second large buyer is entering a market where Netflix has effectively set the price line for production. The increase, though, comes on top of a commissioning volume already cut roughly in half, so the realistic room is in rates and terms rather than episode counts. Where secondary rights and international distribution rights sit, and how follow-on season options are structured, are the clauses that matter. That the negotiating channel is split between the DTC Asia Pacific general manager and the Asia Pacific regional president is worth factoring into how contact is routed.
The buying criterion has moved as well. Disney is spending on vertical video and recommendation engines because of churn, and churn turns less on how loud a single title is than on how easily a viewer finds the next thing. Disney+'s Korean pattern — a 20% MAU jump on a premiere followed by a fall — illustrates the point precisely. What Korean producers should be putting in a pitch is not only an audience projection but a design for the viewing path a series creates inside the platform. Packages that bundle vertical clips, behind-the-scenes material and spin-offs are beginning to price above standalone titles. That Nielsen's annual top ten is filled with library titles also says the terms for re-distributing an existing catalogue are as negotiable as the rate for a new commission.
Korean operators face the same integration problem internally. What Disney has spent three years doing is consolidating services scattered across different stacks and moving viewing history across service boundaries. Korean broadcasters and platforms commonly run their own OTT service, VOD, FAST channels and YouTube accounts on separate data. Whether the long-running Tving-Wavve merger discussions have included a design for combining the two services' user data is the same question. Before layering generative AI onto recommendation and ad targeting, the prior step is confirming that viewing history lands in one place.
Sport and live programming as the anchor against churn also transfers directly. Disney's decision to keep ESPN in-house and bid for rights in Latin America and Australia rests on the same logic as Coupang Play using the Premier League and Formula One, or Tving using the KBO, to pull users in. In Korea, however, rights fees are already exceeding revenue per user in some windows, which makes building a recovery path through derivative content and clip distribution around a broadcast more practical than chasing the rights themselves.
Nor is there reason to close off the licensing option entirely. Wells Fargo's proposal was not adopted at Disney, but the calculation between keeping a library locked inside a self-operated platform and selling it across multiple windows tilts toward the latter as scale falls. An operator whose own streaming service sits below the threshold should be periodically re-running the comparison between the cost of holding distribution and the revenue the library could have produced elsewhere. The same arithmetic applies to what Korean terrestrial and general-programming broadcasters have earned by pushing library content onto FAST channels and YouTube versus the subscribers they have retained by keeping it in-house.
Sources
1. Bloomberg, Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley, "Disney Overhauls Streaming Services to Jumpstart Subscriber Growth," July 30, 2026 — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-30/disney-ceo-d-amaro-wants-to-overhaul-disney-streaming-to-compete-with-netflix
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14. Business Insider, James Faris, "Disney org charts reveal the execs with power under CEO Josh D'Amaro in TV, tech, and more," July 2026 — https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-org-charts-josh-damaro-dana-walden-jimmy-pitaro-espn-2026-7
15. Business Wire, "Josh D'Amaro Named Next Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company," February 3, 2026 — https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260203045616/en/
16. Today Economic (Korea), "Tving retakes second place in OTT on KBO strength," July 3, 2026 (IGAWorks Mobile Index June data) — https://www.todayeconomic.com/news/article.html?no=31204
17. iNews24, "Netflix April MAU 14.8 million; Coupang Play and Tving follow," May 4, 2026 — https://www.inews24.com/view/1965500
18. iNews24, "Netflix leads Korean OTT users" (WiseApp Retail; Disney+ February MAU up 20%), March 7, 2026 — https://www.inews24.com/view/1946381
19. Viva100, "Coupang Play and Tving fight for second behind Netflix" (Disney+ and KeSPA partnership), April 7, 2026 — https://www.viva100.com/article/20260407500628
20. Frameless (Korea), "Disney+ unveils its 2026 Korean original lineup," January 23, 2026 — https://www.frame-less.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=2169
21. Trading Economics and Investing.com, USD/KRW (about 1,437-1,440 won at end-July 2026) — https://ko.tradingeconomics.com/south-korea/currency
22. Underlying data: Ampere Analysis (commissions), Nielsen (watch time and distributor share), Antenna (churn), Disney (segment results), IGAWorks Mobile Index and WiseApp Retail (Korean MAU)
Figures 1-7 are redrawn by K-EnterTech Hub from the underlying source data. Org chart tables are reconstructed from Business Insider reporting, with executive-assistant and support roles omitted. © K-EnterTech Hub · MediaGPT