Disney Plus isn't just hot--it's cool

Kelly Evans's afternoon commentary & top market stories

VIEW IN BROWSER | SUBSCRIBE WED, NOV 20, 2019 YOUR AFTERNOON NEWS UPDATE AND MARKET ACTION FROM CNBC AS OF WED, NOV 20, 2019 • 11:56 ET DJIA 27849.00 -0.30% -85.02 S&P 500 3115.21 -0.16% -4.97 NASDAQ 8562.85 -0.09% -7.81 EDITOR'S NOTE The funniest thing happened the other night when my neighbors came over to visit the new baby.    The kids--a twelve-year-old boy and sixteen-year-old girl--couldn't stop talking about how badly they wanted...Disney Plus.    I was shocked! These are teenage and preteen kids cooler than I could have ever hoped to be, and they said Disney Plus "is all people are talking about at school." Uh...what?!    The line about Disney's new streaming service, which just launched last week, has been that it's perfect for families, especially those with little kids. The service launched with over ten million users on day one, sending the stock up 7% last Wednesday--thanks in part to a free one-year offer from Verizon. Netflix shrugged it off, saying their core audiences won't necessarily overlap.    Well, our visit the other night makes me wonder about that. Disney Plus is cool at high schools?! We all know how difficult a feat that is! But these teens aren't watching animated movies, obviously. It's the Disney TV shows from years past they couldn't wait to catch back up on.    Disney Plus isn't that expensive, launching at $6.99 a month, but parents understandably have streaming fatigue. Who wants to pay to sign up for yet another streaming service? My neighbors were understandably reluctant--and frustrated that, as existing Verizon FiOS customers, they didn't qualify for the free trial that new FiOS customers are now offered.    Ah, but yours truly is a Verizon Wireless unlimited customer (this was all very tricky to sort out, by the way). And that means I get free Disney Plus access for a year. And since I have zero plans to use it, being the big-hearted lawbreaker that I am, I activated the account so our teenage friends could use it.    I doubt Disney would even mind. After all, that's another subscriber to their service now that wouldn't have otherwise existed--and that's probably worth a lot more to them in market cap right now.    And the kids were thrilled. I felt like Santa. The real test for Disney Plus will come next year when Verizon's free trial offer expires. In the meantime, this could be a tougher test for Netflix than people might have expected.    Have a great day!   Kelly     Kelly Evans @KellyCNBC KEY STORIES  Trump ordered Ukraine 'quid pro quo' through Giuliani, key witness Sondland testifies "Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president," Sondland says. 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