After its war with Florida and constant stream of woke, unwatched content, Disney isn’t in a particularly promising financial position. In fact, it is in such dire straights after massive movie losses, theme park problems, and Disney+ streaming woes that it might need to sell some of its famous TV channels, such as ESPN, ABC, National Geographic, and others.
Disney’s current CEO, Bob Iger, announced as much in a recent interview with CNBC, saying that some of the company’s channels might have to go as he tries to restructure the company and push it back towards financial success and away from the brink of disaster.
He began the interview by nothing that the company, when he returned from retirement, was in a bad way and facing a huge number of challenges and problems with its business model, saying, “I came back to the company at the request of the board as a company that I started working at in 1974, 49 years ago when it was ABC and we became part of Disney. And I obviously have deep passion for the company and in the business. I care a lot about the people. And after coming back, realize that the company was facing a number of challenges, some self-inflicted, some caused by changes in the business, large scale disruption of certain parts of the business.”
Continuing, Iger went on to tell the interviewer, CNBC’s David Faber that Disney is looking to get rid of some of its more famous TV channels, such as National Geographic and ABC. Faber was shocked and, after a bit of a back and forth with Iger about that, asked, “You’ve told me that you’re considering at least the idea of linear cable networks and ABC and the station’s perhaps not being a part of Disney in the longer term. You told me you’re thinking about looking for partners for ESPN, either joint venture or even some ownership. These are pretty significant decisions right there, Bob. So I mean, this is sort of where you’ve come in the last seven months of looking at the business or looking at it again from – with somewhat fresh eyes after having kind of stood aside for 11 months?”
Responding, Iger said, “Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also speaks to your question about what is the transformative work that you’re doing. This is the transformative work. It’s looking very objectively at all of your assets, determining which ones are going to be the growth businesses. I’ve said parks and resorts, the movie studios and streaming.”
Also when asked about selling those channels, particularly ABC and National Geographic, at a different part of the interview, Iger said, “They may not be core to Disney. Yeah, 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 is delivered great profits over the years is definitely broken. And we have to call it like it is and that’s part of the transformative work we’re doing.”
So, as Disney faces serious problems with its business, it’s looking to offload certain TV channels, even famous ones like ESPN, ABC, and National Geographic for which it is known.
