Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Thursday, November 13th, 2025:
ANOTHER MONTH, ANOTHER MOVE TOWARDS LESS TRANSPARENCY IN THE STREAMING WORLD
Disney has announced its quarterly results and what's most notable is what we don't know about its streaming business. This is the last quarter the company will reveal its subscriber numbers, following a trend started several quarters ago by Netflix. I've regularly complained about this, because while I agree that raw subscriber numbers are not always an accurate metric for success in the streaming business, they are least *some* measurable metric.
Without subscriber numbers, the only thing we can use to measure success or failure is profitability (or lack thereof). And that doesn't tell us which parts of an increasingly global business are growing and at what rate. We can only estimate churn rates using outside estimates (which have their own transparency issues), and we have no way of knowing other important data points, including customer acquisition costs. Including how much the streamer is making from the increasing number of bundling offers.
Which brings me back to the Disney earnings numbers, which includes the final subscriber numbers from Disney+ and Hulu.
Disney closed out its 2025 fiscal year by reporting a combined 195.7 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions as of September 27th, an increase of 12.4 million for the three-month period, which topped Wall Street estimates by 2.1 million. Disney+ subscribers increased by 3.8 million in the quarter to hit 131.6 million, including a net gain of 1.5 million in the U.S. and Canada (for a total of 59.3 million).
Hulu also added 8.6 million new subscribers, and I am already seeing headlines touting the impressive-sounding increase. Which is a good thing for Disney as it heads into its "no more sub numbers" reporting future.
But the 8.6 million new subscribers figure is essentially meaningless. Much of the increase seems to be the result of distribution deals with Charter, DirecTV and others which provide all of their subscribers with a free ad-supported version of Disney+ and Hulu. While Disney notes that its subscriber tallies include users who “receive an entitlement to a service through wholesale arrangements,” we have no idea how much of the reported subscriber increases in either service are driven by those "arrangements." How much does Disney make per subscriber from those deals? No clue. Do we know whether or not subscribers actually watch anything? No idea.
While it might be slightly unfair to describe those reported subscriber increases as crap accounting tricks, I’d argue that’s a reasonable framing of the situation. We have no idea how much potential revenue or costs are associated with those wholesale arrangements, and the situation is similarly problematic with Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount+ and Peacock, all of which are also increasingly offering wholesale arrangements that offer free subscriptions of their ad-supported tiersto subscribers of DirecTV, Comcast, Philo and others.
While we can't force these streamers to be more financially transparent, reporters can at least highlight these three-card monte tricks being played with the few pieces of data they do report.
SPEAKING OF DATA...
One of the best sources for streaming industry coverage outside the U.S. comes from Frederic's newsletter Netflix & Chiffres. While some of it is free, paid subscribers get some great bonuses, including a recent US Streaming Viewership Data Report covering 580 films released on streaming in the US since 2019.
It is a fascinating and informative read and it's worth subscribing just to receive the entire report. Here is a sample of what to expect, which shows the least-watched films from the period. Extra bonus points if you remember any of them:
HOW REALISTIC ARE TV'S FAKE PODCASTS
This is one of those ideas I wish I had thought of doing. Julie Barton at Continuous Wave took a look at some of the fake podcasts that appear as part of various TV shows and judged how close the TV podcasts were to ones you'd see in real life. And the results are pretty funny:
The Morning Show (Apple TV)
Podcast assessment: Who are we kidding?
You’re Bro Hartman, a bro whose podcast emanates, starting in Season 4, from a network skyscraper in New York City. Due to your proximity to the dying embers of daytime broadcast TV — which apparently features endless meltdowns, on-camera defections, sudden resignations, and near plane-crashes — your podcast must also match the high-pressure, live environment. Therefore, it is in fact what we used to call in the business “a broadcast.” Your engineer only pops his head out of the control room during ad breaks to shout stuff like “twenty seconds!” — just like real TV directors do. Unlike TV anchors, however, Bro don’t need a teleprompter or any notes, because he is a podcaster. You and your sidekick effortlessly fill the hours with spontaneous “banter” that your audience considers appointment viewing for mysterious reasons. When you are off the air, you do not prepare for the next day’s show, but rather sit around loudly sipping juice boxes and making sexy eyes at female network bosses. Great work if you can get it, which no one can, because this job does not exist.
ODDS AND SODS
* FX has canceled English Teacher after two seasons.
* Beginning Thursday, January 1st, One Day at a Time and Sanford and Son join the schedule of diginet Antenna TV.
* Michelle Monaghan will star in a new untitled hockey eight-episode series for Netflix, which is set in the fictional town of South Dorothy, Minnesota. And it will apparently be shot in Canada, so boo. FWIW, here is the official logline of the project: "The series takes place in the small working-class town of South Dorothy, Minnesota, where the high school hockey team has been churning out state championships and NHL stars for decades with their legendary Coach “Sully” Sullivan at the helm. When a bus crash claims the lives of several players and Sully himself, the town looks to Harper Sullivan — Coach Sully’s widow — to coach a new team of battered and broken young men. What unfolds is the hopeful and unforgettable story of an underdog team who comes together to galvanize their town, reclaim their way of life, and turn their shared grief into an unstoppable superpower."
* Season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will premiere Friday, February 27th on Apple TV (formerly +).
* Disney+ announced it has renewed Korean crime series Made In Korea for a second season, with season one debuting December 24th. The streamer has also the Korean rom-com Merry Berry Love (working title), which will also premiere in 2026. The romantic comedy follows a down-on-luck Korean spatial designer Lee Yubin (played by Ji Changwook) and a strawberry farmer Karin Shirahama (played by Mio Imada), who find love on a remote Japanese island.
* Also from Disney+ comes Travis Japan Summer Vacation!! in the USA, a travel series from J-pop group Travis Japan, which was filmed across 10 days immediately after their most recent world tour.
* Netflix has ordered a second season of its Turkish drama Old Money.
* The three-act animated special The Elephant will premiere Friday, December 19th on Adult Swim.
* While YouTube TV is still in the midst of a carriage battle with Disney which has kept ESPN off its service for now, it is adding the newly revived NBC Sports Channel to the service. The linear channel will include a significant amount of sports programming from Peacock, including its newly acquired NBA package.
TWEET OF THE DAY
WHAT'S COMING TODAY AND TOMORROW
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH:
* Angela Diniz: Murdered And Convicted (HBO Max)
* Blue Lights Season Three Premiere (BritBox)
* Delhi Crime Season Premiere (Netflix)
50 Seconds: The Fernando Báez Sosa Case (Netflix)
Friend Zone (ALLBLK)
Grey's Anatomy Fall Finale (ABC)
Had I Not Seen The Sun Series Premiere (Netflix)
Last Samurai Stranding Season Premiere (Netflix)
My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story (Paramount+)
9-1-1 Fall Finale (ABC)
9-1-1: Nashville Fall Finale (ABC)
Reasonable Doubt Season Three Finale (Hulu)
Strangest Things (NatGeo)
Tee Yai: Born To Be Bad (Netflix)
The Beast In Me Series Premiere (Netflix)
The Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives Season Three Premiere (Hulu)
Tiffany Hadish Goes Off Series Premiere (Peacock)
Unicorn Academy: Winter Solstice (Netflix)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH:
A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (Disney+)
A Young Father's Nightmare (LMN)
Belen (Prime Video)
Come See Me In The Good Light (Apple TV)
I Feel Like It Series Premiere (Netflix)
In Your Dreams (Netflix)
Lefter: The Story Of The Ordinarius (Netflix)
LEGO Marvel Avengers: Strange Tails (Disney+)
Malice Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Nouvelle Vague (Netflix)
The Creep Tapes Season Two Premiere (Shudder)
The Crystal Cuckoo Series Premiere (Netflix)
The Last Woodsman Season Premiere (Discovery)
The Seduction Series Premiere (HBO Max)
SEE YOU EARLY FRIDAY MORNING!