Star Wars: Ahsoka has forced Disney+’s hand on changing their release schedule. Since the platform’s inception, we’ve had the shows come out at Midnight PT on either Wednesday or Friday. Now, the upcoming series will premiere on Tuesday, August 22nd at 6:00 PM PT/9:00 PM ET. Previously, any show would debut later in the night. Now, instead of waking up with spoilers blasted all over Twitter and other social media platforms, people, in the US at least, have a better shot of watching the shows live as they premiere.
Hopefully, Disney+ has readied their servers for the influx of traffic when the shows release. I remember when WandaVision was airing, and Disney+ crashed on multiple occasions with people trying to catch the show right when it airs.
“Thank you to all the fans who celebrated with us at our Ahsoka fan events around the world last night!” the official Ahsoka account shared on Twitter. “We’re excited to announce that new episodes of Ahsoka will now launch Tuesdays at 6 p.m. PT, starting with our two-episode premiere on August 22nd, only on Disney+.”
Most other streaming services still go by the old release schedule of putting them up at Midnight. Hopefully this means a change in how they do it. It’s definitely more of a system like old style cable premieres, which just goes to show, cable worked for so long, might want to copy some of the things it did well.
For international markets, this change is worse, and puts them in the same spot as US audiences were previously. If Ahsoka is a hit in viewership because of this, it could signify a permanent change from Disney. With the strikes from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA still going on, Disney has had to get creative with some of their programming on ABC. They’ve started airing episodes of their Marvel Disney+ series like Ms. Marvel in the spot of new content.
Star Wars: Ahsoka premieres on Disney+ on August 22nd, at 6:00PM PT/9:00PM ET.
For more on Star Wars, make sure to check back to That Hashtag Show.
