In an article published on Dec. 20, Todd Spangler of entertainment industry “trade paper” Daily Variety does a run-down on The Walt Disney Company’s “10 Biggest Moments Of 2023” which, while it hews to discredited party line fables like the idea that Iger ever really left the company or that his chosen successor, Bob Chapek, ever really had much control over the results, OR the idea that Disney’s fight with the state of Florida over their now-revealed-as-corrupt relationship with their Disney World government, RCID, is somehow a personal fight with the state’s openly conservative Republican governor, the article is of interest for this reason:
When your detractors and political/social opponents expose your flaws, that’s to be expected, but when an in-house industry journal like Variety (which started as a New York theater publication and has been around covering the entire industry since 1905 when it was “Weekly Variety” and primarily covered vaudeville) starts calling you on your goofs, however sympathetically and with bias, you are in big, big trouble.
Here’s the link to the article: Variety Dings Disney
I commend you to read through it in detail, but I’m going to go over each of Variety’s 10 “moments” of Disney 2023 and see what they portend for Disney 2024 and beyond.
1. The layoffs of 8000-plus employees: There’s much more to this than meets the eye (many subdivisions that were handled by in-house “cast members” have been farmed out to ex-cast-member-owned private companies, largely thus not only reducing official payroll and benefit costs to Disney but resulting in less overall unemployment than this “sad but necessary” “sacrifice” might suggest. Iger had to come in and do SOMEthing dramatic to show he was aware of the company’s financial problems of course, but the fact that attendance at their parks and hotels due to their woke content meant less need for cast member numbers was a factor, too.
2. “A brutal year at the boxoffice”: The article lists the flops and notes the historic confluence of them all, but not only implies that the blame should fall on Chapek (whose first personally-greenlit project has yet to OPEN on screens and will do so next year) and not Iger, it totally ignores that it was really bad storytelling and really woke content that turned audiences off. Citing the numbers without providing the diagnosis as to why they are so bad is less than candid to say the least.
3. Iger’s tone-deaf critique of the WGA and, by extension, SAG/AFTRA during the strike negotiations: This certainly prolonged the strikes AND stiffened, rightly or wrongly, the two guilds’ resistance to a settlement, not something the biggest studio honcho should do but something Iger’s own ego and lack of self-discipline in statements made into a huge self-inflicted wound (similar indiscretions on earnings call put a spotlight on the company’s illegal connections to their Reedy Creek governance board in Florida.)
4. The Trian-Peltz Proxy Fight: The article tries to present the narrative that this is a personal, spiteful attack on Iger by Peltz and former Marvel boss Perlmutter rather than a real expression of stockholder dissatisfaction in the company’s performance financially. It cannot avoid even while miscontexting this battle presenting the numbers that make Trian’s case, and those numbers, once again, are all of Bob Iger and his handpicked puppet board’s doing.
5. The Hulu Acquisition: Conveniently the article only mentions “Comcast” without the “Universal” addition to their reality, thus ignoring the fact that the many hundreds of zillions Disney will pay to own all of Hulu will only be going to compete with them in theme parks in Florida and elsewhere, an obligation they are under due to their acquisition of the Fox movie and tv businesses and IP’s of which Disney has made little use and the price for which was driven UP by the selfsame Comcast competing but then backing down from that battle, making Disney spend much more than was prudent and obligating them to the Hulu deal as well.
6. Pulling shows off Dplus and taking a $2.58 Billion write down: Of course, what this article fails to mention is that this was necessary to raise the cash Disney didn’t have or get from their flopped movies to pay for the Hulu deal. But hey, that’s a minor detail, right Variety?
7. The Disney-DeSantis Fight: Of course Variety portrays this as an all-personal spat, similar to the way they covered Peltz-Disney. It isn’t. They perpetuate the totally incorrect “Don’t Say Gay Bill” nomenclature, and claim the “fight” has hurt DeSantis with voters, even while he went from a very small margin of victory in his first election to a huge one in his second as more and more Floridians, even those who live and work around WDW, found his policies favorable and the actual voter registration rolls in Florida shifted the state from Blue to Red by hundreds of thousands. But VARIETY’s industry readers and sponsors are of course Democrats by and large, so, well, another “homer” characterization from the industry’s paper of record.
8. ESPN’s spin-off to direct to consumer and Iger’s putting linear nets on the block…or not: Iger’s been all over the map on these issues, but it cannot be denied that part of ESPN’s spin off is because lots and lots of people upset with Disney’s social attitudes, which even the company expressed as “risks” in their SEC filings, only recently really understood how much of their cable bundle money was going direct to the Mouse via ESPN, the most expensive component of all those bundles. The evolution of ESPN to being a pricey-for-sports-fans but avoidable by non-sports viewers who don’t like Disney is necessary, but again might never have been so urgent without Disney’s social and political veer to the far Left in everything they did and still do under Iger.
9. The Sexism Charge In The 9,000 Female Employee Pay Discrimination Class Action: Yeah, you read that right—the king of wokeness and DEI, Bob Iger, is being sued by his female “cast members” for unfair pay based on sex. A judge has said the suit should continue meaning that judge at least sees potential merit and thus a potential loss for the Mouse in it. ‘nuff said.
10. Elon Musk “Raging” and “Fuming” at Iger: Of course once again the CONTENT of what Musk objected to is basically ignored, JUST as with Peltz, Permutter, DeSantis, and of course Chapek (who, being under a non-disclosure agreement, cannot fight back) and it is all framed as a childish personal spat.
SO…isn’t it interesting that beyond the spin in Variety’s coverage of these issues they felt it necessary to do the article at all? Sure is. And of course the HUGE Dumbo in the room they ignored is the entire RCID/CFTOD battle and the audit that revealed potentially illegal and even criminal behavior by Disney that’s gone on for decades and certainly most recently under Iger’s management. How this “moment” in 2023 could be ignored tells you a lot about Variety, about how the industry, rivals though they may be, will defend and cover for Iger, and how much the rep of trade “journalists” at Variety, the major networks and websites will only further deteriorate the more they shade and ignore and run defense for Big Bob.
MY prediction? When this is all over, the legal proceedings continue re. RCID, the proxy fight goes on, the layoffs continue, and the rest of Iger’s house of The Queen Of Hearts’ card soldiers collapses, it won’t be just the Disney CEO but also so many in the “journalism” community who will be in need of long, hot, and seriously cleansing showers.
