
Bob Iger Thought He Was Leaving on Top. Now, He’s Fighting for Disney’s Life - spking
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/business/media/disney-ceo-coronavirus.html
======
bleah1000
Weird article. It kind of feels like a puff piece to rehabilitate Bob Iger's
image. He's now being touted as the savior of Disney, not the person who
nearly killed Disney then walked away (or maybe was forced to walk away).

In reality, Iger overextended Disney and really shot it in the foot. He made
it into this extremely brittle company that was probably banking on the Disney
parks and Marvel movies to pull it through. They spent way too much money to
buy Fox, which is what is probably putting them in a very weak financial
position now.

Regardless of what you think of the Star Wars sequels, they are not the big
draw they once were and the brand is not doing well. If they are lucky the
Mandalorian can help to build the brand up if they don't force the focus to be
on baby yoda. The parks even focused on the new trilogy rather than the
original trilogy which is what most people like the best. Even the parks have
shown signs of problems before the virus, they kept cranking the prices up,
and it felt like they had cranked them too high and might be suffering
attendance problems. There were lots of deals going on right before the virus
lock downs, which is not the norm.

It kind of feels like what's really happening is that Disney realized that
even though Iger put them in this position, Chapek doesn't have the skill to
lead them out when the lock down ends. So the board would rather go with the
devil they know, then go with an unknown in Chapek.

~~~
Traster
I'm sorry but I can't take a critique of a CEO seriously when you're talking
about whether some series should focus on Baby Yoda, that is so far away from
the level of importance to analyze Bob Iger's career. If you look at any of
the key performance indicators for Disney they've performmed phenomenally
under Iger.

If you look at what Disney does though - theme parks, Sports coverage, News,
And Movies. Let's run through that list: Theme Parks - completely closed due
to Coronavirus, unlikely to open for months. Sports Coverage (ESPN and the
like) same story. News Coverage - under considerable stress because
advertising has fallen through the floor. Movies - Cinemas are closed and
production on everything has stopped.

Disney is a Carnival Cruises level of exposure to Coronavirus. And you can try
and claim Disney was failing before this, but their financials disagree- their
revenue from Parks, Experiences and Products was up 6% in their latest
financial report (and operating income up 11%). I would really encourage you
to look at Iger's based on the performance of the company rather than your gut
feeling about Disney's content.

------
djohnston
On mobile, can I get an outline link?

~~~
spking
[https://archive.is/nZfJz](https://archive.is/nZfJz)

