There's no question that Bob Iger enjoys
being the CEO of Disney. Bob Iger has a stellar track record
as CEO at least up until recently, or about 15 years in
his first run as Disney CEO from 2005 to 2020. Disney shares rose
about 425% That far outpaced the S&P 500. In many ways, he is the
standard the the pinnacle of American CEO he has really
struggled with the issue of succession did finally stepped
down as CEO in 2020. And he handed the reins over to Bob
Chapek, and that did not go well. Bob Chapek was Bob Iger's
hand picked successor. And when Bob Iger initially picked
Chapek, these two men had worked together for more than 20 years,
and had never had a disagreement. I was told. So on
paper, it kind of seemed like this would work. Bob Iger would
be the Chairman. Bob Chapek and would be the CEO and these two
men would work hand in hand. Then, just weeks after the
announcement, the pandemic hits the United States. The Disney
parks are shut down. And there is an April New York Times
article where without telling Bob Chapek, Bob Iger emails the
reporter and says, Look, given the nature of this crisis, you
could only imagine that I would come back into a more hands on
operational role and run this company given the fact I've been
running it for the last 15 years fairly well. That really
irritates Bob Chapek and I think that's catches Bob Iger off
guard, Bob Chapek at calls Bob Iger and kind of lays into him,
you know, Iger feels like he's kind of never been spoken to
this way, at least in a corporate environment before the
relationship doesn't really heal from that point on. So Bob Iger
has told people privately that the damage done from the Bob
Chapek regime is been the main thing that he has tried to undo
for the last nine months or so that he's been on the job. In
Iger's mind, Bob Chapek did enormous damage to the Disney
culture, the Disney brand, Disney as an investment, various
decisions such as reorganizing the company, and his stance with
the 'Don't say gay' legislation in Florida. The Bob Chapek
defense would argue that he had a mission. And his mission was
to transition Disney into a modern media company. You
reorganize the company around streaming, around Disney+,
around Hulu. At this point, I would say that strategy is very
much in doubt. Disney is struggling right now. And I
don't think all of that can be blamed on Bob Chapek. And in
fact, even in the nine months as Bob Iger has returned, I can't
really point to any particular one of those areas where I could
say, oh, yeah, Disney is stronger today than it was even
a year ago back I would argue that this is probably weaker
today. There are weaknesses throughout Disney's media
businesses, whether you look at the linear TV business,
Unknown: we're talking I guess ABC the network, the stations,
but then the cable networks as well. Yes, your FX Nat Geo. Is
it possible you would look to sell them?
We're going to be expansive. I think if you can you can
interpret what that word means. You know, we're just getting at
that work. But we have to be open minded and objective about
the future those businesses
meaning that they're not core to Disney,
but they may not be core to Disney. Yeah. Now there's
clearly creativity and content that they create that is core to
Disney. But the distribution model, the business model that
forms the underpinning of that business and that has delivered
great profits over the years is definitely broken.
alex sherman: On the movie side, it just has not had the same
level of hits from Star Wars when the last big Star Wars
movie was a few years ago now. Pixar used to be just this
dominant giant, even Marvel which had been this juggernaut
it has been much more stale in recent years than what it was a
few years ago. But one asset that has long been a crown jewel
for Disney is ESPN. And that too, falls back into the bucket
of linear TV networks losing subscribers as more and more
Americans cancelled cable TV every year. Now Iger has talked
publicly about finding strategic partners for ESPN. I'm told the
full spin off of ESPN is still on the table, if they can't find
any partners
If they come to the table with value that enables
ESPN to make a transition to its direct to consumer offering.
Then we're gonna be very we're gonna be very open minded about
One by one and all these media assets. There's
trouble brewing, and Iger is gonna have to figure out a way
out.