The advent of streaming was designed to change the game regarding how we consume media at home. There’s a lot to love about streaming in general, and the best streaming services have a lot to offer, but it seems that there’s also something to be said about the prescheduled, always-running TV channel. Several streaming platforms already offer such things, and a recent report indicates that Disney+ subscribers may be getting their own preprogrammed channels soon.
Honestly, I love this idea. Sometimes, you don’t know what you want to watch, but you know you want to watch something. Sometimes you might be sitting at your desk all day writing about movies and theme parks, and you just want to add some background noise from your favorite movies or shows. Just me?
Disney+ specifically has a lot of potential when it comes to the idea of offering always on channels. I might very well take advantage of such an option, as long as it had the sorts of Disney-focused channels I’d like to watch.
The Marvel Multiverse Channel
There are a couple of obvious Disney+ channels that we can expect will exist if these channels exist at all. One is Star Wars and the other is Marvel. While either is potentially entertaining, Marvel is a bit easier to pick up and put down than Star Wars. Most of the best Marvel movies stand alone, so you can sit down and watch any one of them without feeling a need to watch an entire trilogy. There’s also tons of animated content that you can sprinkle around the movies and shows.
The Disney Afternoon Channel
As a kid, my afternoon ritual involved coming home from school and doing my homework largely in front of the TV while watching afternoon cartoons. In the ‘80s, that meant watching He-Man and a lot of action cartoons, but in the ‘90s, we got the Disney Afternoon. This was a rotating block of Disney cartoons that included Ducktales, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers and more. The idea of finishing my day job and going to sit on the couch to watch Darkwing Duck and Gargoyles is very appealing. If we can't get a Disney Afternoon channel, then we just need a Disney cartoon channel that airs the Disney Afternoon series in the afternoon.
The Vault Disney Channel
If Disney+ adds channels, it could honestly be a death blow to the actual Disney Channel, which has been around for 40 years. We could even get Disney Channel as a Disney+ channel. I was a fan from way back, especially since the Disney Channel was the only way to watch classic Disney cartoons back in the day. Vault Disney was a block on Disney Channel in the late ‘90s that focused on the classic content, and a Disney+ channel that did that same thing, and perhaps digging up some classic animated short you didn’t realize was on Disney+ too, would be very welcome. This might also encourage Disney+ to put more classic Disney content on the service; an area that is still, unfortunately, severely lacking compared to what is possible.
The Disney Parks Channel
As the resident CinemaBlend theme park junkie, I have a particular love for any content on Disney+ that is specific to the parks The Imagineering Story is an absolutely not-to-miss documentary series, and Beyond the Attraction is an equally entertaining, if significantly lighter, take on various elements of the parks. A channel that, at sunrise every morning, included a scheduled entry in the Disney Parks Sunrise Series would be a joy. You could also include all the movies based on Disney rides here.
The Simpsons Channel
Fox has, at different times, turned over entire cable channels to The Simpsons, so why not just give them their own Disney+ channel? Give us all Simpsons all the time. With over 700 episodes, there’s plenty to watch so you’d rarely run into repeats more often than you want to. Sometimes you just want to watch The Simpsons, but you can’t decide which episode you want to watch. Now you don’t have to pick. Let Disney+ do it.
The DCOM Channel
I’ll be honest, there are 100 more Disney Channel Original Movies that I haven’t seen compared to the ones that I have seen. But that’s why I would love to see a channel dedicated to them. If I wanted to sit down and pick one, I would have no idea where to start, but if there’s one starting now on the Disney+ channel, I can just flip it on and start it. If it ends up being one of the bad ones, we just stop watching and move on with our lives. There are some Disney Channel Original Movies I have loved, and I am sure there are more out there I would enjoy just as much if I could find them. Of course, some Disney Channel movies are insane, but then, that can be fun in its own way.
The True Life Adventures Channel
While Disney is always known as the home for animation first, many of the Oscars won by Walt Disney during his life were for the studio’s True Life Adventures, i.e. wildlife documentaries that also told stories. Disney has continued to make these films under the Disneynature banner, and it would be nice to give them a place to shine, as many forget they exist. If more content is needed to make the channel viable, there’s plenty of Nat Geo that could easily fit in.
Assuming the Disney+ channels do happen, it will be interesting to see how they are utilized. If there’s one thing that the world of streaming has lost compared to TV previously, it’s the experience of everybody watching the same show at the same time. These Disney+ channels could bring that back. Imagine if at the moment a new episode of a Marvel or Star Wars Disney+ series was released, it aired on the corresponding Disney+ channel. We all really could watch TV together again.
