Correspondent in Washington, D.C.
71-year-old Bob Iger agrees to take over the position of head of Disney for two years. The man who has been in charge of the world’s first communications group for 15 years is urgently called into custody, much to the surprise of many.
Disney’s poor financial performance, a doubling of losses at its video-on-demand subsidiary Disney+ in recent days that will determine the future of the group’s product distribution, has alarmed the giant’s shareholders in Burbank, California, including several activist funds. Disney shares are down 41% year-to-date, while Wall Street is down roughly 16%.
Disney management’s direct confrontation with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the Republican Party, may also have contributed to the ouster of Bob Chapek, effective February 2020. In the state where more than half of the group’s employees work, Ron DeSantis has campaigned for months against the “woke culture” he accuses Disney of representing.
“The board concluded that Disney is entering a more complex period of transformation in the (communications) industry. Bob Iger is uniquely positioned to lead the company during this critical timeexplains Susan Arnold, who chairs the board. He blames his old friend “put Disney on a new growth pathand work with the board to identify his successor.
“It is with an incredible sense of gratitude and humility, and I admit, a little surprise, that I am writing to you this evening with the news of my return to the Walt Disney Company as Chief Executive Officer.– explains Bob Iger in a letter to the company’s employees.
The girls have to prove that their strategy is correct
The return is a huge challenge for the highly respected executive in Hollywood, both in the production world and among creators and actors. He must prove that the strategy he devised before he left can succeed. He was the one who launched Disney in 2018, making a radical transition to the Internet. A revolution that was duplicated a few quarters later by rival groups like WarnerMedia and Comcast.
The approach is based on the observation of an irreversible decline in the audience of traditional TV channels, while cinema attendance is also declining. US summer 2022 box office receipts are thus 21% lower than before the pandemic. Faced with the popularity of streaming, which is still largely dominated by Netflix in 2018, Bob Iger decided that the group should quickly focus on the Internet to distribute its productions. In November 2019, three months before his departure, he launched Disney +, the group’s streaming platform, which today has 164 million subscribers.
Despite the positive effects of the reopening of Disney’s theme parks, the group’s performance is currently weighed down by Disney+ spending due to the end of the pandemic. A slump in the advertising market and a worsening global economy in recent months have complicated the strategic shift in Mickey’s empire as they weigh on ABC, the group’s television arm.
Disney+’s first profit promise for fiscal year 2024, which Bob Chapek just updated, has become questionable. The streaming space is so crowded that even Netflix has had to launch a discounted, ad-supported service in response to its growth plateau.
Source: Le Figaro
I’m Liza Grey, an experienced news writer and author at the Buna Times. I specialize in writing about economic issues, with a focus on uncovering stories that have a positive impact on society. With over seven years of experience in the news industry, I am highly knowledgeable about current events and the ways in which they affect our daily lives.