Disney Takes Big Hit After Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension — The Numbers Are In Showing Just How Big

When Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show was briefly suspended, calls to boycott Disney+ and its subsidiary Hulu trended across social media. Newly released data shows those digital boycott threats do appear to have had a significant impact.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was “indefinitely suspended” by ABC after comments the comedian made about Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

President Donald Trump and other Republicans lauded the suspension while Kimmel’s supporters denounced it as censorship, since it came in the aftermath of vociferous criticism from the president and comments from his Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr that his agency “can do this the easy way or the hard way” if companies don’t “find ways to change conduct and take action.”

In late September, Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be returning to the air, after “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” about comments that “were ill-timed and thus insensitive.” Nexstar and Sinclair initially announced they would not be airing Kimmel’s show on the dozens of local ABC affiliates that they own, but soon reversed that decision.

During the days Kimmel was off the air, his supporters posted calls to boycott ABC’s parent company Disney, along with its subsidiary streaming services Disney+ and Hulu.

According to a report by Business Insider’s James Faris, new subscription data complied by research firm Antenna indicates that a significant number of subscribers did in fact boycott and cancelled their subscriptions last month:

The data firm said 8% of Disney+ subscribers and 10% of Hulu customers in the US canceled in September. The services usually lose 4% to 5% of their customers a month, in line with the industry average, the data firm said.

Those subscription churn rates appear to be the highest since at least April 2023, based on Antenna’s past monthly reports.

Disney+ was dropped by 3 million US subscribers in September, while 4.1 million cancelled Hulu, Antenna told Business Insider. Those cancellation figures are more than double the averages of 1.2 million and 1.9 million, respectively, in the last three months.

Faris noted that it was “unclear” how many cancelled subscriptions could be directly attributable to the Kimmel suspension, how many came back after the show was back on the air, or on the flip side, how many subscribers who supported the suspension may have cancelled after it ended.

Disney+ also recently announced a price hike effective in October, along with others in the industry, but, as Faris reported, Disney+’s competitors “saw their cancellation rates tick up in September — including Apple TV, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Starz — none rose as drastically.”