Posted on 07/13/2023 1:05:20 PM PDT by Red Badger
CEO Bob Iger says Disney is open to selling a portion of its equity in ESPN.
Iger, who recently signed an extension through 2026, says Disney would also consider selling or spinning off its linear television networks ABC, FX, National Geographic, and Freeform.
“Transformative work is dealing with businesses that are no growth businesses and what to do about them, and particularly the linear business, which we are expansive in our thinking about,” Iger told CNBC Thursday. “[Disney’s television properties] may not be core to the company.”
“And we’re going to look expansively about opportunities there because clearly, it’s a business that is going to continue to struggle.”
The belief around Wall Street is that Disney’s ownership of linear television networks hinders its market cap. Financial experts consider television properties dead weight, the explanation to why Netflix holds a larger cap than Disney despite the latter’s diverse business.
And networks like ABC, ESPN, and National Geographic are unlikely to rebound as households continue to cut the cord.
The value of said properties is not increasing.
“The challenges are greater than I had anticipated,” Iger explains. “The disruption of the traditional TV business is most notable. If anything, the disruption of that business has happened to a greater extent than even I was aware.”
Iger adds that Disney has conversations with potential partners that could improve ESPN’s streaming business.
ESPN is in the process of launching a direct-to-consumer product called “Flagship” that’d offer the linear ESPN channel as a standalone streaming service.
Flagship would differ from ESPN+, which offers separate content from the cable channel.
The idea is to offset lost cable subscribers by charging a subscriber a higher fee.
ESPN receives some $9.42 per month of the average cable TV bill, collecting fees from providers for each customer that has access to its network. Thereby Disney would likely charge more than double that for Flagship — selling the idea that if you only subscribe to cable for ESPN, $30 for Flagship is cheaper than a full cable package.
Disney currently owns 80% of ESPN, with Hearst Communications owning the other 20%.
Sadly, there will be collateral damage — loss of jobs. However, this should be a turning point for Disney.
OK, so they get $9.42 per subscriber AND has advertising?!
I miss the early days when they charged the cable companies ZERO and carried Australian Rules Football.
He’s a fool, of course.
Sports, as a form of entertainment, is evergreen - the stories write themselves.
All you have to do is broadcast that story unbiased to the eagerly awaiting audience.
(And do what you can to keep the spots leagues from going woke...)
The BEST thing cable companies could do is to go to an a la carte model.
Make it $5/ mo as a base charge and then 25 cents/ea and/or up for each channel or packs of channels the customer wants.
I bid $100
If Congress outlawed bundling, almost all channels would be gone tomorrow, which is why I have NO Pay TV service of any kind
Screw ESPN a 1,000 times, woke mofo aholes.
Ditto.
ESPN sucks.
I didn’t know they owned Natl Geo. No wonder it sucks and peddles liberal lies.
NBC owns the History Channel and it skews everything left.
They're now mostly Entertainment/Current Events rather than Sports. Occasionally, they show a sporting event on the channel like a football game.
Try AMF
I get the Fios sports pack in the fall so I can watch college football on the extra channels, but rarely watch ESPN the rest of the year. The NFL Red Zone is included, so I don’t have to shell out the ridiculous fee the NFL charges to watch any game.
ESPN is a dead product that mirrors the dead products other Propaganda Media channels already have.
$30/month to watch womans sports that will soon become underachieving men who pretend to be women, while the woke announcers despise the audience because they know the difference between men and women, and are all racists even though the athletes are mostly black.
No thanks
From the man’s coarse dissertation it would appear he has never taken a course in the English language. Either that, or the guy’s a moron.
I’m out. that’s 99.99 more than I thought it was work.
So they sell the TV channels and concentrate on movies and parks.
Unfortunately their political and moral world view does not allow them to create movies that appeal to a significant fraction of the public.
Their preaching has gone from anti racism that almost everyone could accept to homosexuality acceptance that a majority of Americans seem to be willing to accept and finally to an insistence on pretending we believe men can be women that most Americans seem to reject.
Since they actually believe they hold the moral high ground they will have difficulty abandoning their position.
This will lead to continued movie studio loses.
Additionally the lack of popular movie tie ins will eliminate the premium people have been willing to pay to attend the Disney parks.
They’re doomed.
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