Disney has lost nearly $4 billion in 3 days from their stock price collapse & cancelled subscriptions.

Question

Disney has lost nearly $4 billion in three days from combined stock price collapse and cancelled subscriptions.

Answer 1

It appears to be true that Disney's stock has taken a hit following the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show, but the phrasing of the claim is a bit misleading. It's important to note that a company doesn't lose money when its stock value changes. The investors who own it lose potential value if they sell now versus before (when the price was higher). Most people can simply hold onto their stocks and wait for the price to go back up. As for actual revenue loss, that's hard to know until Disney releases quarterly reports. Therefore to say that "Disney lost $4 billion due to..." suggests that the company has lost the money and that the value can't be recouped over time. 

Snopes' fact-check on the matter roughly aligns with the dollar amount and timeframe. They report that "by the end of the week on Sept. 19, with its stock price at $113.76, Disney's market capitalization had fallen by $4.2 billion, or 2.5%, to $204.7 billion." Al Jazeera reports that "Between September 17 (when Kimmel's show was announced to be canceled) and early on Tuesday, the value of The Walt Disney Company's stock fell by 2.39 percent – the equivalent of $4.99bn of its market value." This dollar amount is higher than the original claim, but this covers a span of 7 days, not 4.

As for subscription cancellations contributing to Disney's losses, we just can't be sure. While there have been plenty of anecdotal social media posts of people canceling their subscriptions, Yahoo Entertainment notes that "there's currently no official metric to show just how many people have dropped the streamer since the Jimmy Kimmel news was revealed."

Comments

You make a solid point about the difference between stock value and actual company losses—that’s an important distinction a lot of people miss. I like that you backed it up with multiple sources too. One thing though: the way the stock drop is phrased could be a little clearer, since it might sound like Disney literally lost $4 billion in cash. Maybe just tweak that part to show it’s about market value, not actual revenue. Also, a quick note on the timeframe explaining why that matters could help people better understand the numbers. Overall, really thoughtful breakdown!

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Good job separating changes in stock price from the company's actual revenue — that avoids the usual misconceptions. I also liked how you utilized a number of credible sources like Snopes and Al Jazeera to show consistency in the figures that were being reported. Your breakdown makes a very complex financial problem easy to understand and well-balanced.

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This is very informative and correct. I think it is very important to correct claims that may be true, but are exaggerated for attention. Your knowledge about stocks and economic value is displayed throughout your response. Your expansion on why Disney has lost billions of dollars is very explanatory and useful. I think this response would be even stronger with the inclusion of why your included sources possess reliability.

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I appreciate that you touched on both aspects of the claim, Disney's stock value, and whether people canceling memberships is affecting their revenue/stock. Your explanation of their stock value not directly affecting their revenue helped me understand the situation better and overall clarified the misunderstanding the claim presented. It's very clear to see that the claim is exaggerated after your deduction.

Answer 2

Think of this as your investigation log. Answer each question to explain what you discovered and how you got there.

Initially looking at the original post, it seems that the link is from a social media site so investigation into the validity of the claim definitely needs to be done because social media can't always be trusted. Because the original “site” was a post, I wanted to find two good articles to cross reference and check information with each other. I found two sites, an article from the NY Post and an article from Gizmodo.com, which I will be analyzing in this answer.  

While I did not find it myself, both articles included this tweet:

From this tweet, I learned that Jimmy Kimmel caused a lot of commotion and that Disney lost a large amount of money. While the headline is short, it summarizes the hit Disney took when cancelling Jimmy Kimmel.

My secondary sources were the two articles I found.

1. The article from the NY Post explained the number breakdown of what Disney lost and how the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel had an effect on their numbers. This article has a lot of good quantitative numbers and they back up their claim with numeral facts.

2. The Gizmodo article also leads with the fact that Disney lost “1.7 million paid streaming subscribers”, but they focus more on the social impact of the cancellation (Novak). They go on to explain the context of the situation, as well as criticize the network and President Trump. 

The NY Post article seems rather unbiased because they stick to the facts and numbers, but the Gizmodo article definitely has left leaning bias. By describing Trump as a “famously thinned-skinned” who had “a typical reaction among autocrats”, it's clear where their morals lie (Novak)

I believe that using multiple articles is evidence of fact checking. For example, in both the NY Post and Gizmodo articles they both claim that Disney lost “1.7 million” subscribers, showing that the numbers are consistent (Zilber&Novak). While they describe the context differently, the same story is consistent: Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for criticizing “conservative activist” Charlie Kirk (Zibler).

With the sources not having 100% credibility, this could undermine my fact checking. The sources did not come from a database nor do they contain a .gov or .org link that could provide them with more credibility.

While the articles are recent, there will most likely be no rely due to the articles being from bigger companies.

Answer 3

It does seem to be true that Disney has lost a significant amount of money in the span of less than a week. According to Newsweek, A comment was made by Mr. Fallon about prior events occurring including the death of Charlie Kirk. Fallon’s show was immediately suspended. This may have triggered viewers to cancel their subscriptions as a result of Disney censoring the freedom of speech given. The show later returned, but still left viewers very unsettled. Although subscriptions may have lost a wide amount, overall stock prices should not have drastically dropped.