Bob Iger steps down as Disney CEO

[James]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/disney- ... t-ceo.html

https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/bob-ch ... y-company/

I thought maybe he was doing it to run for President this year, but the article says he "remain executive chairman of Disney through the end of 2021".

[EricJ]

"Through the end of..." --Bob, you always freakin' DO this to us!

At this rate, Song of the South is never going to end up on disc!...Just leave already! Robert K. Iger, will you please go now??

[Daniel]

His middle name is Allen.

[EricJ]

His middle name is Allen.

(And he probably reads Dr. Seuss books politically quoted by Art Buchwald, too.)

[gaastra]

Bob is still going to be around just not the boss.

Says Iger will still direct the company’s creative endeavors until the end of 2021

[James]

More from a press conference with the two Bobs:
https://deadline.com/2020/02/disney-bob ... 202868321/

Interesting bit: "Chapek will be reporting to [Iger] for the next 18 months, with everyone else reporting to Chapek."

[Ben]

Yeah, it’s an elaborate way to disguise a basic handover. Bob I (and his wig...I’m more and more convinced!) wants to make sure Bob C doesn’t undo all his work, while the Disney board have clearly become frustrated at the lack of a succession plan and so voted Bob C in rather than keep leaving it to a deferring Bob I. It’s rather a shame that Dick Cook "had" to leave (there’s more to that story than meets the eye too), but Chapek has been there for a while and knows the company and what’s left of its spirit better than most.

[ShyViolet]

Even though I didn’t always agree with him, I hope it’s not because he’s ill or something like that.

(I know he’s staying for two more years as Exec Chairman, but the whole thing was just really sudden. Hopefully he’s alright.)

Anyway, here’s a profile of Chapek from the LA Times.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... k-bob-iger

[ShyViolet]

Interesting about him returning. Possibly he just doesn’t want to look like he suddenly abandoned the company when things got really tough. (Or, as the front page article suggested, that he had prior knowledge of this whole disaster.)

Or maybe he just wants to “go out on a high note” when he eventually does retire, for navigating the company through extremely troubled waters.

[Ben]

While no one has a crystal ball, Vi, anyone with half a brain saw this coming. We were warned a global pandemic was imminently due in 2018, but no one listened or did anything. Iger, seeing the virus spread early in China, clearly saw the way things might be headed. Heck, on the first day that it hit Italy I said to my wife, "here we go". It was so obvious that, without total immediate shutdown, this would be the result.

I think Iger had a succession plan, and stuck to it. Now that he sees all that hard work going down the pan, he’s come back to help a very new guy to the job to weather the storm. Sure, he may have seen this coming, but probably not on the scale it has ballooned to. But he’s done and us doing the right thing by assisting Chapek, although it could have been cool if Bob II could have firmly taken the reigns and really taken control in a strong, confident and authoritative way to lead them through this and prove he is - or was? - the right choice.

[ShyViolet]

I don’t know how true this is, but apparently there’s been rumors lately (well, some aren’t exactly “rumors” per se; Abigail Disney dropped some strong hints on Twitter) that the Walt Disney Company will soon be experiencing massive layoffs.

God, I hope this is not true. I mean, it is literally THE worst possible time for people to lose their jobs!



https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/07/ ... ing-block/

[ShyViolet]

Oh wow.

Even though I understand Chapek’s motivation to save money because of Covid/the tanking economy, I still don’t think this bodes very well:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... g-pandemic

I realize these are insane times, but honestly...I don’t think this guy would be managing things all that differently even without the Pandemic...


EDIT: You might need a subscription to read. Here’s the article’s bottom line:

TV channels, schools in China and ‘Frozen’ musical get the ax
The former home-video chief pushes hard into streaming TV

[Farerb]

It's in line with their decision not to release live action catalog in 4K anymore.

[Randall]

It all makes sense. TV channels aren't needed when you have a popular streaming service ready to provide the content. And Broadway won't be back for a while. As for 4K live action catalog, Disney had never really shown any interest in that anyhow. They still have loads of live action films that never made it to Blu-ray, either.

[Ben]

Disney will basically become "family Netflix" and just focus on that now. Theme Parks will become "additional revenue streams" used to promote new content on D+. Physical media will die off, as will Movie Club and the Insider thing that they clearly have no intention of doing anything with. How long will even D23 last?

Unfortunately, the company y is throwing everything under the bus just to become the must-have streamer...but with less than a quarter of the content.

They really need to up their game. Blending D+ with Movie Club and a proper Insiders, and making all the 20th Century content available in a much broader-encompassing online service is the way to go, but they’re just locked into this Netflix thinking at the moment, not realising that they’re curbing themselves so much as opposed to becoming this truly behemoth presence.

Walt always said that he wasn’t "Disney" anymore...that it had become a thing totally senator him. That was true, but it still held his spirit, due to the people there more than anything. It started to erode after the Miller period, but you had custodians that saw exactly what The Walt Disney Company could become. Oh, how I’d like to see what Eisner's team would do with all this nowadays.

Iger did good in expanding, but just going the D+ route is in danger of undoing all that expansion. And Chapek has been the invisible heir apparent who hasn’t been anywhere as visible as a Disney head needs to be. I fear he'll be too much under Iger's shadow for years to come.

Who knew that the next victim to Covid-19 would be the once best entertainment company in the world...?