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Hollywood Torrent: Disney+ soars. Netflix thrives. Quibi...

Hollywood Torrent
Bloomberg

Good afternoon from Los Angeles, wherever you may be. I'm forgoing the normal opening this week because we've got a special edition coming mid-week.

In its place, I wanted to share a handful of stories published over the last week that merit a little extra love. Your weekly dose of entertainment and tech news below. -- Lucas Shaw

To all the restaurants I've loved before

"I feel I'm preemptively mourning the loss of a way of life," food writer Jamie Feldmar writes on the restaurant industry.

The coronavirus crisis has been great for Instacart. For its workers, it's a different story

As demand for food delivery skyrockets, the workers handling the surge are struggling, reports Johana Bhuiyan.

Zuckerberg's jealousy held back Instagram and drove off founders

An except from Sarah Frier's upcoming book on Instagram reveals the story of how Mark Zuckerberg drove away the photo-sharing app's founders.

Dua Lipa's unplanned, uncertain, unprecedented album launch

Caryn Ganz explores what it means to release one of the year's biggest pop albums in the middle of a global health crisis.

Zoom goes from conferencing app to the pandemic's social network

Zoom is suddenly critical infrastructure. No one is more surprised than Zoom.

I have the coronavirus and hope you'll act like you have it too

The L.A. Times' Julia Wick writes about her experience coping with the virus.

Disney+, Netflix thrive. Quibi? Ehhhhh.

Tiger King

Source: Netflix

Disney+ announced this week that it eclipsed 50 million subscribers worldwide in just 5 months.

This number comes with plenty of caveats. Some of those subscribers came from Hotstar, a preexisting streaming service in India. Some came courtesy of a partnership with Verizon that makes Disney+ free for millions of customers (including me).

Even so, that is the most successful rollout of a subscription video service in my lifetime. And Disney did it despite having just one hit show, "The Mandalorian." 

It goes to show that you don't need 10,000 shows to launch a service. (I'm looking at you, Quibi.) 

The success of Disney+ doesn't seem to be a huge problem for Netflix. "Tiger King" is the most popular Netflix original since "Stranger Things" in the U.S.  while another Netflix original, "La Casa de Papel," is the most in-demand streaming show in the world, according to Parrot Analytics.

But it does set a very high bar for the rest of the competition. Quibi got off to a relatively slow start, while HBO Max and Peacock seem to be mounting smaller marketing campaigns.

The Disney+ barrage began at least three months ahead of launch. Peacock is about to debut, and I have yet to see an ad. HBO Max is launching in a month or so, and its campaign hasn't begun in earnest.

The week that was

Photographer: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

Photographer: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

  1. YouTube is grappling with a flood of so-called doctors offering solutions to the coronavirus.
  2. Netflix introduced new parental controls that give parents more flexibility in monitoring what their kids watch.

  3. The U.F.C. canceled plans to stage a fight later this month after the state of California and Disney intervened.

  4. The editor of the Hollywood Reporter left after being pressured by his owners to tone down the trade's coverage.

  5. Video game addiction is multiplying during the coronavirus, experts worry.

Weekly playlist

Listen to John Prine's "Souvenirs." A 2000 album offering fresh takes on his biggest hits. ("Angel from Montgomery" is my person favorite.)

Watch the new season of "Insecure." It debuts tonight on HBO.

 

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.

 

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