{"id":26500,"date":"2023-11-28T08:49:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T13:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=26500"},"modified":"2023-11-28T08:49:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T13:49:05","slug":"guest-contributor-tomd-28nov2023-disney-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/28\/guest-contributor-tomd-28nov2023-disney-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Contributor – TomD – 28NOV2023 – Disney Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom | Flickr<\/a><\/p>\n

TomD<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just read this in\u00a0PJ Media (link)<\/a><\/p>\n

Reports of Disney\u2019s Death Are (Not?) an Exaggeration
\nStephen Green\u00a0| 5:11 PM on November 27, 2023<\/p>\n

As Disney\u2019s two-time CEO Bob Iger prepares to host the company\u2019s annual town hall on Tuesday to provide \u201chints or guidance for what the next phase of \u2018building\u2019 will bring after the problem-solving phase,\u201d it\u2019s time to ask if Iger is able \u201cto \u2018quiet things down\u2019 after years of culture wars<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first quote comes from a\u00a0Hollywood Reporter<\/a>\u00a0item on Monday detailing the company\u2019s Wall Street woes. Traders and managers will be watching Iger on Tuesday for \u201cpossible color, body language or even outright updates on various topics<\/strong>,\u201d ranging from the company\u2019s ongoing series of box office flops to troubles at their fabled theme parks.
\nThe second quote is courtesy of Jonathan Turley. His Monday\u00a0column<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 almost in time for Adam Smith\u2019s 300th birthday \u2014 shows how Smith\u2019s \u201cinvisible hand\u201d has undone the company\u2019s woke agenda. Disney is now \u201cnegatively associated with activism by a significant number of consumers<\/strong>,\u201d Turley writes, and is \u201ceven reporting a decline in licensing revenue from products associated with Star Wars, Frozen, Toy Story and Mickey and Friends \u2014 iconic and once-unassailable corporate images<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWish\u201d is Disney\u2019s latest animated effort that isn\u2019t a sequel or reboot and it opened over the long Thanksgiving weekend to middling reviews and worse box office sales. Well, not entirely not a reboot \u2014 one of the characters is the glowy Star, as in Pinocchio\u2019s \u201cWhen You Wish Upon A Star.\u201d \u201cWish\u201d looks to be another big money-loser in a yearlong series of them, including \u201cIndiana Jones and the Whatever McGuffin,\u201d \u201cAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,\u201d the live-action Little Mermaid, and most recently, \u201cThe Marvels.\u201d
\nThe Disney+ streaming service is losing money and eyeballs. Impressions \u2014 the streaming measure of viewership \u2014 is down 14% from last year, the company says.
\nThe worst news is that Disney\u2019s intellectual properties \u2014 the company\u2019s seed corn for future growth \u2014 are in terrible shape.<\/p>\n

The good news is that $7.5 billion in cost-cutting measures have restored some sense to the company\u2019s balance sheet. The bad news is that the maintenance-heavy Disney World and Disney Land are reportedly looking a little worse for wear. Or as Wall Street\u2019s Jamie Lumley warned, \u201cAs the business looks to slash costs and make streaming profitable, there are sure to be concerns about cutting too deep and impacting the business going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the company can\u2019t cut its way to health. It needs to start selling tickets again to the kinds of movies and theme park experiences people expect when they see the Disney label.<\/p>\n

Walt Disney and his brother Roy were jealous guardians of the Disney name and reputation. Given so many more recent changes, this seems like much longer ago than 1983, but I\u2019m reminded of \u201cSomething Wicked This Way Comes.\u201d It was considered a Very Big Deal at the time when Disney produced a Ray Bradbury film with such a dark mood and storyline. At the time \u2014 Walt had died and Roy was no longer involved in day-to-day operations \u2014 Disney was looking to branch out from family fare like the Herbie movies and \u201cPete\u2019s Dragon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Results were mixed at best, and I\u2019m being overly generous.
\nIt took a 1984 hostile takeover attempt and a long-term recovery plan courtesy of incoming CEO Michael Eisner to restore Disney\u2019s luster. Eisner understood Disney\u2019s creative strength \u2014 and it wasn\u2019t in jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon with \u201cThe Black Hole,\u201d or another cheesy Love Bug movie.<\/p>\n

It was in getting back to classic animation with \u201cThe Little Mermaid,\u201d and in recognizing similar strength in the fledgling Pixar Animation Studios.<\/p>\n

Iger can cut costs but, in the end, what he needs to do is remember what the Disney brand means \u2014 and work as furiously to restore it as Eisner did, and as Walt and Roy used to work to protect it.<\/p>\n

Unless we see evidence of that in Tuesday\u2019s town hall, Disney shares might be up a bit on Wall Street\u2019s hopes but I ain\u2019t buying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom | Flickr TomD   Just read this in\u00a0PJ Media (link) Reports of Disney\u2019s Death Are (Not?) an Exaggeration Stephen Green\u00a0| 5:11 PM on November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1489,1730],"tags":[999,628,461,1731,4138],"class_list":["post-26500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-guest-contributors","category-guest-contributor-tomd","tag-disney","tag-disney-converged","tag-photography","tag-tomd","tag-woke-corporations"],"yoast_head":"\nGuest Contributor - TomD - 28NOV2023 - Disney Woes - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/28\/guest-contributor-tomd-28nov2023-disney-woes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guest Contributor - 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