Raw bandwidth cost, yes, that would be the same. But if that other show brings on N new subscribers, then the actual bandwidth cost has to take into account the new revenue coming in. I’ll leave that math to people who are better than I am with numbers.
I’m not in that industry, but I am in tech, so this is mostly conjecture based on other, somewhat similar, experience.
My guess is it comes down to storage space, bandwidth costs, and licensing fees. Probably the latter more than anything.
When they own the IP, they probably don’t have much in licensing but there’s probably all sorts of agreements with other studios, royalties to consider, etc… not carrying these shows could free that up.
Bandwidth can be expensive. I’d imagine that Disney is hosting this on their own hardware to help mitigate costs, but having seen some AWS bills in the past for a moderately trafficked SaaS platform, it adds up. Extrapolate that to millions of users.
Storage, likewise, can also be expensive. Especially as the quality of these shows and movies increases. A 1 hour, 4k video can be multiple GB of storage so having whole seasons of shows can add up.
Then of course there’s the marketing side of this. I can imagine they have several, if not teams of several, data analysts who are able to pinpoint how much money a show/movie is bringing in. Then it’s purely a cost comparison. If it’s costing more than what they are bringing in, it’s a no brainer. If it’s similar or less, then there could be even further factors I’ve not considered.
Anyway, that’s my thoughts. It would be cool to know more from an industry perspective, but that’s an industry I likely won’t ever join.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring