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That's too much “Great Man of History” analysis. I think Disney was boned no matter what.
I doubt the DeSantis thing or the board room drama doesn't really mean a damn thing, versus the economic and cultural flow that's adjusting to a giant surplus of entertainment that's available everywhere all the time whenever you want it. Post-scarcity entertainment killed the music industry long ago, and now it's time that everything else gets shanked too.
That article seems to be trying to retrospectively put the blame for Disney's current woes on Chapek. Well, Iger is back so tough luck, he gets to carry the can (the same way the president in office, whoever he may be, gets the blame for the economy going wrong/the credit for the economy going right even if that is down to what his predecessor did).
And it doesn't seem like Iger was that hands-off even during his 'retirement', so the current slump in the stock prices (and unhappy shareholders) is on his plate and he has to deal with it. Whatever the truth is, part of the problem seems to be a struggle with Kathleen Kennedy over Star Wars and how that entire franchise is flailing around. Parks are losing money due to lack of visitors, for whatever reason (probably because when money is tight, expensive holidays to theme parks that will cost $$$$ is something that gets cut out of family budgets). Movies are tanking, and I'd say part of that is simply down to audience fatigue - they just milked the MCU cow until it dried up. Same with streaming, which is another household expense that is likely to be cut in budget pinches. And they shot themselves in the foot pulling ESPN from the cable network who are putting the blame squarely on Disney for wanting too high a price. As several Youtube channels have pointed out, over the holiday weekend a lot of people sat down to watch the game or the tennis on their cable subscription, couldn't get it, and when they rang up to complain, were told Disney wanted to charge too much.
CNBC is owned, ultimately, by Comcast which has a two-thirds stake in Hulu with Disney holding the remaining third. They agreed that Disney would buy all the stakes in Hulu, so right now there's a lot of horse trading going on about getting Disney to pay what Comcast evaluates their stake is worth. I imagine this news story is part of all that - sure, Disney may be in trouble right now but that's not Iger's fault, so could you please not tank the stock price so we can get our money out of them before they go belly-up?
I don't think Disney is going to go belly-up, but I think there's going to be a lot of retrenchment before the books get balanced, and a lot of shows and movies given the green light or in consideration may be pulled.
I also think getting into the fight with DeSantis was just plain stupid; all the crowing online over how Disney was so big and so rich with such great lawyers that they'd force DeathSantis to crumble, because they were fighting on the right side of history for LGBTQ+ rights, was nonsense. Disney is in financial stormy waters right now, and posting photos online of guys in drag selling princess dresses to little girls is going to help convince a lot of people "Maybe we'll go to Universal Studios and Mario Land instead".
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Record labels have 10x’d their valuations from the nadir over a decade ago thanks to Spotify, and Taylor Swift’s next tour will gross $3.5bn in North America alone. The music industry is probably more profitable than ever, but the money shifted in part to touring and live stuff.
That actually has similarities to Disney. Disney owns the parks, which are the entertainment equivalent of a Taylor Swift tour (expensive and an experience participants save for and look forward to), and which are fantastically profitable.
The problem was (as others have said) that Iger spent tens of billions on TV and movie content at the exact time that was becoming less profitable and the ESPN cash cow was drying up.
How do record labels make money when every song I can think of is available from youtube for free? I don't understand why Spotify has revenue. Just download songs and put them on your phone? How hard is that?
I pay for spotify and when I find tracks I like I buy the flacs from the artists. I'm mostly paying Spotify for convenience (playing music I don't listen to for other people/events) and for access to the algorithm, which has found a lot of incredibly nice artists that fit my incredibly niche tastes.
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Nearly all of those songs are on YouTube channels that send their ad revenue to the record companies.
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I used to do this, and then I got a trial Spotify subscription and never went back - what they really sell is convenience. The value to me of my time and attention is greater than their fee.
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Isn’t YouTube lower quality? Also for $10 a month the library that follows you everywhere, can be streamed or downloaded anywhere and has pretty much every song in the standard version directly available is pretty convenient.
Maybe so, especially if it's one of those youtube videos that was uploaded 13 years ago by the Peruvian fans of a Finnish band with some random anime stitched onto it... but that's part of the charm IMO! https://youtube.com/watch?v=_HAuXWVLyW4
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for many people "download songs and put them on your phone" is a hard challenge to overcome.
many people prefer to listed to some prepared playlist rather than hand-curate and build music library
for many people Spotify is cheap enough to round it to "free" - or at least considered cheaper than investing time into (1) and (2)
"when every song I can think of is available from youtube for free" - well, not every (the same goes for Spotify)
(Spotify is doomed to have no real profits, but that is a separate problem)
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Shockingly most people browse without an adblocker. They couldn't figure out how to download a video if you put a gun to their head. Spotify, sells convenience and a clean conscience that you're not stealing from your favorite artist.
Convenience is an interesting factor here. People my (our?) generation had a vague sense of anxiety, that our kids are going to run circles around us with regards to technology the same way we did around our parents, only for it to turn out that growing up with "streamlined" software made them effectively technologically illiterate.
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The parks are an important way to generate revenue, but they only work if new generations get the same buzz from high giving Mickey or walking through Radiator Springs. There are far less expensive alternatives and far better thrill rides at other parks.
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I think Iger knew this and resigned at a strategically optimal time to avoid it being on his record. Most of Disney's problems start with decisions made in Iger's tenure. Lots of people dont understand how amazing,yet bonkers, the ESPN/Disney cable model was (still is). They made most of their money from non-customers. ESPN was $10-15 a month in carriage fees, and was included in most standard packages (Disney would through its weight around to ensure it was, and made it so cable companies that didn't play ball got squished). Now, ESPN is a hugely popular channel, for cable, but even so, most cable subscribers dont watch ESPN, or if they do, only do for a few games a year. Those people were paying $12/month to ESPN for years! They tried to double down on that by buying RSNs, which they thought they could do the same with, but Comcast, et al, had caught on and didn't let Disney force them to include $10 a month channels like NESN and YES be bought by every subscriber in Boston/NY respectively. And thus that move blew up in their face (while Rupert Murdoch laughed while swimming in his money pit).
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Going to Disney world is still a very different experience compared to pretty much any entertainment platform.
They are better positioned compared to most entertainment platforms.
Which would be fine if that were all they did, but they have an entire media empire to feed. The theme parks make money, but not enough to subsidize the rest of the business.
Not only that, but the theme parks are tied to IP. And they’re screwing up the IPs appeal to the kinds of people who would choose Disney themed vacations. Soccer moms are the ones who want to take the kids to Disney or book a Disney cruise. But, this is no longer a guaranteed family friendly brand. They might not let their kids watch Disney, they’d be turned off by gay days at the park (which are pretty well known), and are not family friendly especially if you’re from a conservative part of the country or are religious,
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They should spin out sports. Not a core business.
They should be content creators; not distributors. Hulu was a mistake. Disney+ was a big mistake.
Focus on what makes you different. For them, it is classic IP entangled with some of the most unique family fun vacation spots. Focus on that (distributing the IP in movies and toys; use that IP to get people to vastly overpriced theme parks).
Disney had to make an app. The nightmare scenario was Netflix eating the world, and using their audience control as leverage to take all the profits on any given production after it left theaters. Every studio needed an app as a backup play, so they all made them.
The big mistake was the streaming wars. For a decade, every media exec lost their minds and decided the only way to win was to bury their enemies in piles of content. But, as it turns out, there's just not that many competent people in Hollywood. No amount of money will call forth a writer into existence. If in a given year there's 10 good movies and 10 mediocre ones, then an executive mandate to produce 100 movies will... produce 10 good movies and 90 mediocre ones. Disney+ was full to the top with shitty exclusives and interminable Marvel miniseries that went nowhere and meant nothing.
That's fine, they said. We'll just keep going. Eventually our enemies will run out of money and give up. The stock market will always give us infinite amounts of money and interest rates will always be zero. (The Uber/Lyft playbook, or the explosion in scooter rental apps)
But what if the winner of the streaming wars is... nobody? Disney and Netflix are in trouble. Paramount physically cannot stop making Star Trek junk. Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video are side plays run by notoriously ruthless CEOs who will cut anchor the minute they stop being profitable. The studios have picked a moronic fight with both the unions and started a strike that has dragged on for more than a hundred days. What if they all go bankrupt, and Hollywood has to reboot from nothing?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is actually pretty good. Picard Season 3 wasn’t awful.
I do wonder if Disney would’ve been better off doing Disney+ and just opening up the vault. They already had a lot of great content. They didn’t need to produce new content.
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It has been their corest business aside from maybe parks since ESPN/ABC was acquired. Cable and broadcast is still the company's largest operating profit segment, today. It's financing their streaming losses.
They need to replace that profit as it declines or shrink dramatically. It also boosts returns on their content development, and provides a ton of marketing for their parks and resorts.
One can still make money on content by licensing it to streamers.
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Spending $64 billion to buy a whole lot of additional linear commercial TV in 2019 can be attributed pretty directly to Iger.
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