Disney says Ahsoka is very popular
Depending on who you ask, Ahsoka is either doing very good or very, very good
Aux News Ahsoka
Disney+’s latest Star Wars spin-off show, Ahsoka, just premiered last week, and the streaming service has proudly announced that the show is its number one title worldwide and that it was the most-watched title on Disney+ in the past week. Disney says that the first episode of Ahsoka got 14 million views, with a “view” being defined as “total stream time divided by runtime available” (according to a press release)—which means if you watch the whole thing that’s one view, but if you watch half and another person watches half, that also counts as one view.
In a statement, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy said that “it’s wonderful to see [Ahsoka Tano] continue to resonate with viewers in her very own headlining series,” and she highlighted the “fantastic work” done by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau (architects of the live-action Star Wars TV universe) and series star Rosario Dawson.
Interestingly, Deadline says that the researchers at Samba TV determined that the first episode of Ahsoka was viewed in “1.2 million households,” which is quite a bit less than the 14 million that Disney is offering—though that could be explained in any number of ways, including Samba’s sample size/algorithm, the potential of people rewatching the show, or maybe tons of people watching only a bit of the show so it adds up to a certain number of views without necessarily increasing the number of “households.”
But beyond all of that, it is—as always—worth noting with stuff like this that none of it means anything. The 14 million comes from Disney itself, and it’s in the studio’s best interest to make that number as big as possible, so without being corroborated by a third party, there’s no reason to put too much stock in that number alone. What matters is the messaging more than anything, which is that Disney wants everyone to know that Ahsoka is a big hit (regardless of how specifically big it is).
The reason that matters is that everything these big Hollywood studios do during the strikes is worth reading into, especially when both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are demanding to get more transparency about viewership numbers from these streaming companies. Disney is perfectly happy and willing to share that information when it means bragging about how well Ahsoka is doing, but not when it comes to paying the writers and actors who make things like Ahsoka happen.
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“The 14 million comes from Disney itself, and it’s in the studio’s best interest to make that number as big as possible”I think the people negotiating with SAG-AFTRA and WGA would disagree with that statement. All it does is add fuel to labor’s fire about not getting paid properly for streaming.
Yeah the studios are best off making the actors and writers look as useless as possible.
I’m convinced that this is for little more than to assure shareholders Bob Iger’s Disney+ experiment is an ongoing success. Look how popular their new show is! Those pesky writers and actors might be on strike, but D+ subscribers are still tuning in to watch their shiny new show.And meanwhile they can turn around to anyone asking for royalties and say, “I mean, yeah, our subscribers really like Ahsoka. But it looks like the amount of people who subscribed just to watch it is offset by the number of subscribers we lost last month. And really when you add in the COVID costs, carry the three, take amortization into account… huh. It’s a total loss. Sorry, chaps. Work harder!”
The obvious counter to that is “just think how many MORE subscribers you would have lost if you didn’t have quality shows like ‘Ahsoka’ to keep them from leaving. Pay me.”
D+ isn’t Iger’s experiment though. He was brought back to rein in the massive spending on Marvel and Star Wars D+ series in particular and the first thing he said is there’s going to be a lot less of it. As far as Ahsoka, though Samba and Disney’s metrics are wildly different, even Samba is saying the premire was a huge success. I mean, their VP said (in the linked article): “Disney+ continues to find success with live-action Star Wars series, with Ahsoka serving as the latest show to draw in more than 1 million households across its first six days. Rosario Dawson’s portrayal of the Jedi shows that not only are fans eager for more adventures in the Star Wars universe, but that they’ll gladly watch shows led by female characters. With women serving as five of the six main characters, this opens a new chapter in the Star Wars saga.” Which this article left out, and made it sound like Samba was contradicting Disney. That said, I expect a fairly large dropoff as the series goes forward.
Wait a minute, Disney+ is absolutely Bob Iger’s experiment, even if the Marvel and Star Wars D+ shows specifically are not.I don’t question that Ahsoka is a huge success. I absolutely believe plenty of people watched it. However, I believe that streaming subscriptions inherently devalue each individual title, because you are paying for an entire library, not any particular show. That, in my opinion, makes it very easy for the bean counters to obscure the benefit that any individual title adds to the overall service. After all, if a show premieres and ten million subscribers watch it, that doesn’t inherently mean that the show brought in more revenue than a show that premiered and was only watched by a thousand subscribers. Even if most people agree that a largely-watched show probably means that people either specifically signed up to watch it, or would have cancelled their subscription if that show hadn’t premiered when it did, most people don’t watch one thing for the entire month. My point being, regardless of what viewership metric you use (i.e. minutes watched, percentage completed, etc.), there is no direct connection between viewership and revenue.So it’s no surprise that by the time creatives’ royalty checks roll in, all they see is a few bucks and some change for working on a hit show. Everyone’s fifteen bucks or however much it is is getting chopped up dozens of ways before the people that actually create the shows see a dime. Iger just doesn’t care about them; he’s worried about Wall Street.
Complete aggravated aside: this website is such non-functional trash now that when I just tried to reply to you through notifications it would bring me to a version of the article where comments wouldn’t even load, let alone the one I was trying to reply to. Refreshing didn’t help so I had to go back to the homepage, search this article, hope comments loaded and scroll through comments trying to find the one I’m trying to reply to from yesterday. Website is falling apart.Sorry, it’s just so annoying. To your point, I’m pretty much entirely agree when it comes to figuring streaming residuals. I have a long comment on this article expressing my surprise that SAG wants Parrot Analytics as the company that defines the metrics for residuals, according to the Deadline article, rather than just pure viewership numbers (which already have to happen in contracts in the EU.) I’m not going to rewrite that whole thing but you can find it below. My point being, regardless of what viewership metric you use (i.e. minutes watched, percentage completed, etc.), there is no direct connection between viewership and revenue.That’s not entirely true, it’s possible, and being done in the EU. Not great contracts but they’re closer to linear TV where residuals are based on how many times a show is aired which would the be equivalent of watched in streaming terms.
Agreed about Kinja’s trash status. Here’s my aside: a tiny (and continually shrinking) percentage of the content posted on all of these sites is interesting, exclusive, or reported here first. I can get the same news and reworded press releases from other websites faster or better-written (sometimes both). I keep returning for exactly two reasons: habit, and to talk to the other commenters here. If management can’t keep Kinja from breaking, watch my habit break real fast. They’ve already driven tons of funny or insightful commenters away, and the only people rushing to take their place are openly racist and transphobic. So, good job, management!I read your other comment, and while I can’t offer an informed opinion on the EU residual system, at first blush it sounds really meager. I also don’t think a pay structure tied to viewership makes sense for streaming. It makes sense for linear TV because there is a direct revenue stream tied to how many people watch a program, and how many times it’s re-aired. The more people that watch a show, the more money the network makes from advertising. Same with a movie ticket: the more tickets sold, the more revenue earned. Ad-free streaming subscriptions do not generate more revenue the more people watch a title, unless they are new subscribers, and infinite growth is impossible. So tying residual compensation to viewership just does not make sense to me. It seems like any streaming residual plan is doomed to pay out cents unless you work on a hit show, because there’s a very high limit to many minutes a subscriber can watch in a month, and the services will never agree to a plan that has the potential to pay out more in residuals than the revenue a unique subscriber generates.
disney+ was absolutely iger’s whole thing. he initially greenlit the massive spending before he left.
**cough**cough**https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/investors-sue-disney-streaming-losses-1235577249/
I really dislike Iger but holy shit, Chapek was a disaster.
I mean, sure, maybe, but brand new Star Wars show gets views wouldn’t be surprising anyway. But considering the number of people complaining about how they couldn’t follow the story or were just bored by it, let’s see if those numbers hold up over the next 7 weeks.And no, Terminally Online Angry Star Wars Dorks, I’m not one of those people. I want anything Rosario Dawson’s in to succeed, though I did think the show desperately needed a better editor.
It needs a better writer too. Those first two episodes were far, far too dependent on knowing the lore of the cartoon series to produce any character stakes at all. I’m fairly familiar with them but I still found it quite flat. I can’t even imagine what it would be like for a viewer coming in cold. It was basically, opening scrawl says map is important, hero gets map quickly, another hero acts like an idiot and quickly loses the map, other heroes say it’s not surprising she was an idiot due to character conflicts we have never seen and have no clue about.
Dave Filoni is a mediocre writer, to be honest. Also, he’s one of the worst live-action directors Star Wars has and every dialogue scene he directs is abyssmally slow and plodding just to stretch out his thinly-written scripts. I was worried he would carry over this lack of skill into Ahsoka and he’s definitely proven the case that he can’t handle the job. Luckily, he’s only directing two episodes and the rest of the roster is RIDICULOUSLY good (Famuyiwa and Ramsey, the two best Mando directors among them) to carry his dead weight.He gets a lot of credit for “building” the Clone Wars universe, but he only wrote 13 episodes of Clone Wars (most in that first season that everyone hated I believe), a half dozen episodes of Rebels, and one episode of the Bad Batch.
Henry Gilroy wrote most of Clone Wars and Rebels but just got his Nemo show canceled. Drew Greenberg wrote twice as many episodes of Clone Wars as Filoni then went on to produce 100 episodes of Agents of SHIELD and write 20 of them but hasn’t worked since. Scott Murphy wrote more episodes of Clone Wars than Filoni but disappeared off the planet when that show ended. [Edit: Same with Kate Lucas as well — Clone Wars died and she disappeared from big name work after being a series writer.]Filoni got in as the heir apparent to Lucas and has carved out that PR niche as the guy solely responsible for keeping Star Wars alive and the guy a generation of long tail Star Wars fans who grew up on the retconned prequels are used to, but most of the work was done by other people who can’t get their stuff greenlit and can’t find work in the industry anymore despite performing better than him in every way.Which isn’t to say I dislike Filoni as a person or dislike his vision. He just isn’t a very good storyteller, he doesn’t understand the rhythm of dialogue or how to break a story. He’s just a guy with big ideas who vaguely knows how to weave them together and keeps track of all of the relationships really well. He really needs to take a step back to executive producer or supervising producer and go to work on some smaller projects because he doesn’t understand the basics yet.
That Filoni even got handed being a director is really an affront to the directors on the various Star Wars D+ episodes that actually have directed multiple projects prior. Famuyiwa and Ramsey are great, but Filoni still wrote this entire series, so we’re still stuck with his awful dialogue, and story tempo, and inability to make the plot find any emotional throughway that elevates the characters in regards to the story. The dialogue and the characterizations in those first two episodes was so bad. The actors were doing the best they could but they just did not have much to work with and you can literally see them struggling to find any emotional beat they could hold onto as an actor. Now, a better director can certainly get find ways to get actors in a space where they elevate some bad dialogue, but that’s generally a monumental task and relies on the director having control of the production throughout, so I don’t have high hopes. We’re still stuck with Filoni’s dialogue and his insistence that everything has to be tied to everything else as opposed to anything original.
Allow me to refute everything you just said about Filoni with one word: Andor.
I’m not going to defend Filoni, since I think he’s wildly overrated and the stunning mediocrity of Ahsoka (to say nothing of his middling contributions to the middling Mandalorian) bear that out. But he was also the actual show runner of Clone Wars and so he was responsible for the entire overall direction of the series, even if he isn’t credited on all that many episodes.Everything passed through him and showrunners routinely do modest to massive rewrites of their show’s scripts without taking credit.
That’s a fair criticism. I tried the cartoons. They weren’t for me, especially the Rebels one. Even without all the backstory I was still able to more or less follow along with this, but I completely understand those who had a hard time. I figured maybe they would elaborate further in later episodes and the more vague references/relationships would become clear. Maybe not.To be honest, with the exceptions of Rogue One and Andor (because Tony Gilroy’s involvement), it’s been many, many years since there was Stars Wars I genuinely enjoyed and had expectations of. Mandalorian was alright right up until Luke Skywalker showed up. Was mostly disappointed in both Obi Wan and Boba Fett. The sequel movies were just straight trash except for Ridley. So I was just watching this for Rosario and then was pleasantly surprised to see both Ray Stevenson and Clancy Brown. I take the small wins where I can get them with Star Wars now.
and Boyega
The Ahsoka/Sabine conflict didn’t exist in the previous shows either. That’s all new. If Ahsoka was a random, never before seen jedi from the universe, the show wouldn’t have to change one word of dialog. People who can’t follow this story are either not paying attention or desperately need things to be spoonfed to them.
I know that’s it new, and that makes it worse. It’s ridiculously facile and plodding with no emotional investment at all. Whenever anyone defends a criticism as to be wanting to be “spoonfed,” it’s a direct correlation to that person never having watched a good film or show where those stakes are immediately established in the first 10 minutes. Good filmmaking.
I didn’t say the writing was good. This show is certainly no Andor. All I said is that the important details and backstory are all there if you actually just pay attention to the show. I think people just know that a deeper backstory exists for Ahsoka, and so they immediately write off any new stories about her as confusing or unfollowable even if that backstory is explained, revealed, or shown in some way or another that isn’t just an info dump.
“It’s so popular we’re actually going to allow it be aired, at least the first five episodes, before canceling and deleting it for tax writeoffs!”
Reading the Deadline article, I’m a little surprised that SAG wants Parrot Analytics to be the firm to figure out streaming residuals. They seem as shady as the studios and claim to be able evaluate the “monetary worth” of a show or movie using all sorts of metrics. The more direct path would simply to be to give residuals based on views, which streamers already have to do in some European countries by law. Netflix came to an agreement in Germany, to be in compliance with the EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market back in 2020. The agreement provides extra compensation, plus a portion of Netflix’s revenues, that are then distributed among all eligible parties, when 10 million households have watched 90% of a series. The same payout is made at every further 10 million household increment. The agreement only lasts for a set period of time after the premier though, which seems to be undisclosed, as is exactly how big the payouts are. From the limited reporting I can find it’s not huge, not to mention, 10 million households to even start getting residuals is fairly ridiculous. I bring it up as an example, not of a good deal, but that streamers will share real, in-house viewing metrics if forced to, and that’s what the unions should be getting residuals based on. Not how the studio “values” the show/movie, how much it blows up social media, but how many people are actually watching it. It has to be something closer to the linear syndication model.
Samba is domestic only (and doesn’t include all smart TVs or any mobile viewing). Disney’s figures are global. Even that doesn’t really explain the discrepancy. Is Ahsoka really so much more popular overseas than at home?
It’s the head tentacles
Lol it was a snoozefest. A family member put it on in the background and it was so cliched and boring. Disney has killed Star Wars for me.
“Depending on who you ask, Ahsoka is either doing very good or very, very good”I’m so glad you’re a writer who doesn’t have a grasp of basic English grammar. That should be “very well” not “very good.” Good is an adjective and well is an adverb.
Calling Sam a writer is a massive stretch.
Gee, Disney, a highly-anticipated show with a built-in audience did well in its premiere? (Insert Nic Cage “you don’t say!” .gif)Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet. You’ve set yourself up for embarrassment if only half those numbers tune in for chapter 3 (not that you’d share those numbers).I’m also intrigued by this strategy making new eps available in prime-time. Didn’t anticipation for the release of WandaVision episodes cause some D+ feeds to crap out? And that was at three in the morning Eastern time! I guess the tech people added a lot of capacity in the last few years if they’re going with a 9 p.m. release time.
Until we have the Nielsen ratings in a few weeks it will be difficult to compare with other shows and even then, the numbers are very unclear. The Samba TV numbers are not very good (much less than the Mandalorian), and from what I hear, only people who watched Rebels (and Clone Wars) seem to enjoy this show – and that’s not a lot of people.
‘with a “view” being defined as “total stream time divided by runtime available” (according to a press release)—which means if you watch the whole thing that’s one view, but if you watch half and another person watches half, that also counts as one view.’
does that mean if 45 people watch one minute by accident that counts as one view?
You guys realize there will be a scene where Ahsoka commutes with force ghost Hayden Christiansen right? There’s no way prequel fans don’t break the internet after that episode.
This is post ROTJ so Haydens force ghost will be the first time we’ve ever seen post-redemption Vader. Juuuust saying. That’s cool. I don’t think they can fuck that up.