The cancellation rate for subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S. doubled after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late night TV show under pressure from the Trump regime, according to new figures released by the research firm Antenna. An estimated 3 million people cancelled Disney+ and 4.1 million cancelled Hulu in September.
Last month, the cancellation rate for Disney+ was 8%, according to Antenna, up from an average of 4% in the two months prior. The cancellation rate for Hulu was 10%, up from 5% for July and August.
Despite the huge uptick in cancellations, there was a modest increase in new sign-ups on both Disney+ and Hulu. Disney+ saw about 2.2 million new subscriptions in September, up from roughly 2 million new subscriptions in August and 1.6 million in July. Hulu saw 2.1 million new subscriptions in September, up from 2 million in August and 1.7 million in July.
Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live was taken off the air in mid-September after the late night host referred to the death of Charlie Kirk, a MAGA influencer who was shot and killed while speaking at a Utah university on Sept. 10. Kimmel’s comments weren’t shocking or indecent by any normal person’s standard, but right-wing influencers like Benny Johnson pretended that what Kimmel had said was beyond the pale.
Johnson had Brendan Carr on his podcast not long after Kimmel’s comments, where the Trump-aligned FCC chairman made threats that his agency would put pressure on TV stations to remove the comedian. Sinclair and Nexstar, companies that own ABC affiliates across the country, pulled Kimmel’s show in several markets and ABC did the same across the country for an entire week until it was reinstated.
Kimmel explained himself in a heartfelt monologue his first night back, without explicitly apologizing for what he had said. And Kimmel went right back to making fun of Trump, the true target of his jokes, and the man who thinks he can dictate what kind of content Americans see on TV. Trump has said TV networks who criticize him should lose their licenses.
Antenna’s cancellation data doesn’t explain why users who cancelled Disney+ and Hulu did so, but calls for a boycott of the services was trending on social media sites like Bluesky and X. And it appears that the boycott worked, at least in this particular instance. There were also calls to boycott CBS after Trump exerted enough pressure to have late night host Stephen Colbert get pushed out. Colbert’s contract wasn’t renewed and he’s scheduled to be formally off the air in May 2026. Until then, the late night host is likely to keep doing what he’s doing—ridiculing Trump and the rise of fascism in the U.S, as ridiculous as it is.
