Mass Media & Technology

Disney+ UK Launch Date Confirmed

TT
TellyTime
Plektrum posted:
TellyTime posted:
In some ways I'm surprised that they haven't used the well known '20th' brand as the new sixth tile as it's instantly recognisable and all their inherited content from 20th Century Studios (films and TV) could have been brought together there, rather than launching a pretty much unknown new brand to most consumers in the UK. I guess it gives them more flexibility as a place to shove any other random stuff by calling it 'Star'.


Remember it won’t just be 20th Century - it’ll be Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Buena Vista Releasing, FX and Hulu Original as well as 20th Century, 20th Century Fox and Searchlight... also a lot of 20th Century content has been subsumed in the Disney Plus catalogue so ‘Star’ is as you indicate does work as an overall catch-all for general entertainment content outside of the other brands.


The problem is brand association, for both marketing and navigation. The five existing brands work well.

"I want to watch an Avengers film, that will be in Marvel"

"I want to watch a classic Disney film, animation or a live action remake, that will be in Disney"

"I want to watch The Mandalorian, that will be in Star Wars"

They all work. But who is going to think "I want to watch Kingsman / Family Guy / Planet of the Apes / Alien / Die Hard / Home Alone / Atlanta... that will be in Star"?
PL
Plektrum Central (East) East Midlands Today
TellyTime posted:
Plektrum posted:
TellyTime posted:
In some ways I'm surprised that they haven't used the well known '20th' brand as the new sixth tile as it's instantly recognisable and all their inherited content from 20th Century Studios (films and TV) could have been brought together there, rather than launching a pretty much unknown new brand to most consumers in the UK. I guess it gives them more flexibility as a place to shove any other random stuff by calling it 'Star'.


Remember it won’t just be 20th Century - it’ll be Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Buena Vista Releasing, FX and Hulu Original as well as 20th Century, 20th Century Fox and Searchlight... also a lot of 20th Century content has been subsumed in the Disney Plus catalogue so ‘Star’ is as you indicate does work as an overall catch-all for general entertainment content outside of the other brands.


The problem is brand association, for both marketing and navigation. The five existing brands work well.

"I want to watch an Avengers film, that will be in Marvel"

"I want to watch a classic Disney film, animation or a live action remake, that will be in Disney"

"I want to watch The Mandalorian, that will be in Star Wars"

They all work. But who is going to think "I want to watch Kingsman / Family Guy / Planet of the Apes / Alien / Die Hard / Home Alone / Atlanta... that will be in Star"?


I think they will have the same issue calling it ‘20th Century’ - given that mature Star content will only unlock after a one-time opt in and password entry, that should bring most of the above content to the Home Screen as shown on the presentation so that should trigger some association but ultimately depends on what content we get in the U.K. at launch and how it works in operation... I don’t think it’ll be a major issue to be honest.
TT
TellyTime
Plektrum posted:
TellyTime posted:
Plektrum posted:

Remember it won’t just be 20th Century - it’ll be Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Buena Vista Releasing, FX and Hulu Original as well as 20th Century, 20th Century Fox and Searchlight... also a lot of 20th Century content has been subsumed in the Disney Plus catalogue so ‘Star’ is as you indicate does work as an overall catch-all for general entertainment content outside of the other brands.


The problem is brand association, for both marketing and navigation. The five existing brands work well.

"I want to watch an Avengers film, that will be in Marvel"

"I want to watch a classic Disney film, animation or a live action remake, that will be in Disney"

"I want to watch The Mandalorian, that will be in Star Wars"

They all work. But who is going to think "I want to watch Kingsman / Family Guy / Planet of the Apes / Alien / Die Hard / Home Alone / Atlanta... that will be in Star"?


I think they will have the same issue calling it ‘20th Century’ - given that mature Star content will only unlock after a one-time opt in and password entry, that should bring most of the above content to the Home Screen as shown on the presentation so that should trigger some association but ultimately depends on what content we get in the U.K. at launch and how it works in operation... I don’t think it’ll be a major issue to be honest.


Given that 20th is an iconic Hollywood brand that's been around since 1935, it's logo and fanfare are widely recognised, Star on the other hand is meaningless.
RD
rdd Founding member
To the extent that it has any public association, it is with content from India (already caused one source of confusion as mentioned in the Sport thread).

It seems they needed a brand which they fully owned internationally and didn’t have any issues with in any market and Star was it. It might have been Hulu but for the small matter that Comcast owns one-third of it.

One thing that annoys me about Disney+ and it’s “five brand” (soon to be six)strategy is that The Simpsons (which is probably worth the price of admission alone for many) doesn’t really sit and belong in any of the five existing brands - it has no onscreen association with Walt Disney and certainly isn’t part of the Marvel or Star Wars franchises and has nothing do with Pixar or National Geographic. At least the sixth brand gives it somewhere to live.
TT
TellyTime
rdd posted:
To the extent that it has any public association, it is with content from India (already caused one source of confusion as mentioned in the Sport thread).

It seems they needed a brand which they fully owned internationally and didn’t have any issues with in any market and Star was it. It might have been Hulu but for the small matter that Comcast owns one-third of it.

One thing that annoys me about Disney+ and it’s “five brand” (soon to be six)strategy is that The Simpsons (which is probably worth the price of admission alone for many) doesn’t really sit and belong in any of the five existing brands - it has no onscreen association with Walt Disney and certainly isn’t part of the Marvel or Star Wars franchises and has nothing do with Pixar or National Geographic. At least the sixth brand gives it somewhere to live.


Absolutely, I only know the Star brand because of the Star channels in my EPG; Star Gold, Star Bharat and Star Plus.

I was surprised that when the inclusion of The Simpsons was confirmed for the launch of Disney+ that they didn't add a 20th brand tile then where it could sit alongside the other 20th content.

In the grand scheme of things it's not big deal at all, but I still think it's a missed opportunity for Disney not to make use of such a well known brand.
PL
Plektrum Central (East) East Midlands Today
As a slight aside, I’m legitimately curious how Disney are going to juggle the ‘Star’ brand on Disney Plus alongside the Star India portfolio; do they leave them be and hope they remain distinctive enough? Or do they perhaps rebrand the channels under the ‘Hotstar’ name here in the U.K? Or they go all in and eventually close the pay tv channels moving all resource to the Hotstar streaming service?
TT
TellyTime
Plektrum posted:
As a slight aside, I’m legitimately curious how Disney are going to juggle the ‘Star’ brand on Disney Plus alongside the Star India portfolio; do they leave them be and hope they remain distinctive enough? Or do they perhaps rebrand the channels under the ‘Hotstar’ name here in the U.K? Or they go all in and eventually close the pay tv channels moving all resource to the Hotstar streaming service?


Yes it'll be interesting to see how they handle it. The first clues may come from what they do with the current Star TV UK social media, to get things updated in time for the addition of Star on Disney+ in the UK.

They've got:
https://www.twitter.com/STARTVUK
https://www.facebook.com/STARTVUK/ (inactive)
https://www.facebook.com/STARPlusUnitedKingdom/
PL
Plektrum Central (East) East Midlands Today
TellyTime posted:
Plektrum posted:
As a slight aside, I’m legitimately curious how Disney are going to juggle the ‘Star’ brand on Disney Plus alongside the Star India portfolio; do they leave them be and hope they remain distinctive enough? Or do they perhaps rebrand the channels under the ‘Hotstar’ name here in the U.K? Or they go all in and eventually close the pay tv channels moving all resource to the Hotstar streaming service?


Yes it'll be interesting to see how they handle it. The first clues may come from what they do with the current Star TV UK social media, to get things updated in time for the addition of Star on Disney+ in the UK.

They've got:
https://www.twitter.com/STARTVUK
https://www.facebook.com/STARTVUK/ (inactive)
https://www.facebook.com/STARPlusUnitedKingdom/


Well I’m guessing this might be a hint as to what to expect...

https://whatsondisneyplus.com/disney-renaming-star-channels-in-the-netherlands/

According to Dutch television provider Ziggo, Disney will be rebranding its Hindi channels, Star Plus and Star Gold channels in the Netherlands to Utsav Plus and Utsav Gold. This rebranding will be taking effect from February 1st.
TT
TellyTime
So it seems likely that the three existing Star channels in the UK will be rebranded Utsav.

That article also mentions that all the Fox branded channels in Latin America will be rebranded as Star channels, so it might be that Fox in the UK is also rebranded Star?
PL
Plektrum Central (East) East Midlands Today
TellyTime posted:
So it seems likely that the three existing Star channels in the UK will be rebranded Utsav.

That article also mentions that all the Fox branded channels in Latin America will be rebranded as Star channels, so it might be that Fox in the UK is also rebranded Star?


Entirely plausible - if they’re repositioning Star outside of India as a general entertainment brand, makes sense to rebrand the Indian channels as they are doing in Holland.

Latin America however they are getting Star as a standalone service called ‘Star+‘ which aligns with the newly named Star Channel portfolio so there is a certain distinctiveness between the pay tv channels and platform.

Do they rebrand Fox here? I wonder whether they may want it to remain distinctive in some way from the streaming proposition? The brand is clearly on its way out so more a case of when it goes rather than if! I just wonder whether the actual channel itself, regardless of name still has a future or not... feels like a diminishing proposition.
JA
JAS84 Yorkshire Look North (E.Yorks & Lincs)
They have no choice, as they don't own the Fox brand. Either they rename it, or they close it down. The status quo can only continue for a short time.
PL
Plektrum Central (East) East Midlands Today
JAS84 posted:
They have no choice, as they don't own the Fox brand. Either they rename it, or they close it down. The status quo can only continue for a short time.


I don’t believe there was any issues with ownership of the brand - Disney & ‘New Fox’ were able to continue using the Fox brand for the parts of the business they acquired or retained from the deal - New Fox didn’t retain ownership of Fox International Networks so it’s unlikely they can do anything if Disney kept those channel names going.

https://deadline.com/2020/01/disney-rebrands-20th-century-studios-searchlight-pictures-removes-fox-1202833834/

Now, from what I understand, legally Disney can still use Fox if they want to in logos, however, the reason for dropping the big name is to avoid confusion with the consumer, especially as the Murdochs keep the Fox name in regards to their big broadcast network and cable and business news cable networks.

That being said I concur they will phase out the Fox brand - I just could not say if there will necessarily be any urgency behind it.

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