Solid Glitchy Mouse-Stream

Last night, after the latest episode of WATCHMEN (finally caught up; waited until K finished her first read of the original comic before we went beyond the first two episodes), our first, historically appropriate – and programmatically contrasting – foray into Disney+ with STEAMBOAT WILLIE – still wonderful.

Impressions after seven minutes: a solid platform – glitchy launch notwithstanding – with the makings of an excellent one; not a Netflix killer, but a great channel, more than worth the seven bucks a month (more on that below). Not without its issues, though, at least for now: on the XBox One app, it seems to forget that I've added things to my watchlist; it'd be nice to have the ability to group shorts based on character – as an amateur historian of pop culture, I'd love to watch all of the Mickey Mouse shorts in order; and the whole "this won't be available until 2021, add it to your watchlist now" is a bit of... um... charitable padding?

Off-topic streaming relief: since HBO Max will cost $14.99 a month, I can simply cancel my Amazon channel HBO and switch to Max. (In theory, anyhow - and things might change).

Back to Disney+, The Economist on why Disney is charging so little for platform access:

"For all of Disney’s success over the past century, it has never had a direct relationship with most of its individual consumers, let alone known which specific content and characters they like, and to what extent. Through Disney+ this will change...Generating another $50 per year in SVOD is trivial compared with the ability to sell more $5,000 Disney family cruise vacations and $1,100 annual park passes.”

Never underestimate the need to build better amusement parks.