But New Disney is looking for a fresh play. Now that young households are cutting the cord, it wants to own both content and distribution. Netflix once famously said that it wanted to be HBO before HBO could be Netflix; that is, to become a great content company before HBO could become a technology company. With this week’s announcement, Disney is declaring that it wants to rival Netflix, as a streaming competitor, before Netflix can rival Disney, as a prodigious content-owner and rights-holder.

This move may be necessary, but it’s awfully risky. Disney is the envy of the entertainment industry by virtue of its catalogue, which includes Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and a legendary animated-films portfolio. Its ability to re-merchandize its most popular content, with amusement parks, toys, and sequels, is unparalleled. But it is not a technology company. There aren't many great examples of legacy media empires successfully transitioning to the digital age without a few disasters along the way, or at least a long period of readjustment. Just look at American newspapers, or the music labels at the beginning of the 2000s.

This announcement is only days old, but it’s not too early to anticipate the furthest-reaching implications of “Disneyflix” on the future of media and technology.

Disney’s streaming products will debut in a crowded marketplace. Netflix has 50 million domestic subscribers. Hulu has 12 million. Tens of millions more subscribe to Amazon Video, as part of their Prime subscriptions. Disneyflix will start from way behind, and it will have to offer something compelling—on price, quality, or convenience—to get millions of people to pay for yet another TV thing. What might its pitch include?

One seemingly banal prediction would be commercial-free access to its incredible catalogue of films. Or, at least, very few commercials for non-sports content. (Sports rights are expensive, and live sports often has so many breaks that it would be weird if there's weren't commercial interstitials. ) This seems like a pretty modest offering. After all, Netflix and Amazon already offer an ad-free experience.

But play this out: Imagine that the Disney bundle is seen as a modest success, as is possible given the strength of its current catalogue. Other media companies might follow suit, and, before long, there might be an NBCUniversal bundle, a 21st Century Fox bundle, and a Time Warner bundle. All of these streaming services would be jostling for America’s limited entertainment budget and limited TV-viewing time. They would all feel the pressure to lure subscribers with the promise of fewer ads, or a commercial-free experience.

Where would this leave U.S. TV advertising, which companies spend $40 billion a year on? Very endangered. After all, each ad-free streaming product is yet another reason to dump the ad-rich cable bundle.