News Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!

[el_super]

But when divisions, departments and individuals have to constantly justify their budget and existence in any largish company, it creates its own weird internal economy.

They are offering Disney+ free to parks cast members this year, so it seems they would have figured out how to handle the finances.

The simpler answer though is probably technical. How would you go about deploying it to a hotel TV system and then also handle having accounts with free/unlimited access that have to be reset for each guest (for parental controls). It's not necessarily impossible to figure out, but from a technical standpoint it would be expensive. It would require project funding to ensure deployment and additional CMs for training and maintenance going forward.

 

[Br0ckford]

In principle, I agree with everything you're saying.

But when divisions, departments and individuals have to constantly justify their budget and existence in any largish company, it creates its own weird internal economy.

There is a story about how Dave Foley was approached to do the voice work for Flik in California Adventure and was offered insultingly low pay for it so he tried to make them a deal that would cost the company very little while being of immense personal value to his kids but would have been considered an expense to P&R and they said no.

It wasn't until Lasiter heard the imitation voice actor in the park, questioned why it obviously wasn't Foley and then insisted they give him what he asked for that it happened.

In telling the story, Foley makes it sound simple and if you had no idea how much Disney normally charges for what he was asking for, it would seem simple but on their books, it clearly wasn't.

EDIT:

Found the two hour interview and the place in it where he tells the story if you're interested. Really, this is just an example to illustrate what it's like in a company of this size:

When Kevin Pollak said "it's astonishing to me the stupidity of these people " I said, same.

 

[MrPromey]

When Kevin Pollak said "it's astonishing to me the stupidity of these people " I said, same.

The thing about this example is, in this deal, he was actually doing work FOR Disneyland so it isn't like P&R was giving up something so the studios could benefit from it or anything but someone in some department that was going to have to pay for it, didn't see the benefit to them in saying yes.*

He was simply trying to horse trade with P&R to come to an agreement both could accept and they were like "nope!".


*To be fair though, in such close proximity to Hollywood, they probably get a lot of screwy asks that create logistic nightmares which I imagine inclines them to say no.

 

[JoeCamel]

The market is now closed in New York, going in to the holiday weekend.

Here's what this shocking news did to the stock price. It's that little blip up at the end.

Disney stock is still down 35% from a year ago. The Dow Jones is only down 4% in that same period. Burbank has a lot of work to do. I wonder how many executive's Christmas vacations were cancelled this week?

View attachment 680480

No where to go but up from here, you don't think all those options will be wasted? Those that have the options also control the company so probably going to shepherd the price higher as job one

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

Maybe. There was another plan.

But they couldn’t get the thawing machine to work. So they went with Iger.

 

[Patcheslee]

Does Chapek have any friends in this world?

 

[Rich Brownn]

I hear about avatarland all the time. The movies? I hear "I've never seen it" and "I don't remember much about it" for that matter.

At $2.9 billion someone, somewhere must have seen it

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

View attachment 680481

I nominate Bob Chapek for inclusion.

 

[flynnibus]

Free? Nothing is free in business, even when it is.

I'm sure P&R would be thrilled to take that agreement.

I'm sure D+ would not be or else it would have already happened.

Instead, we get D+ day which does cost everyone money.

I'd wager the quagmire is more lower level. Think about it.. P+R is paying for their IPTV system already today. That means equipment, services, support, backend, etc they are paying someone to provide and maintain. That probably has a contract along with it.

Then you have D+.. it doesn't have the functionality today to run on said IPTV network. Hotels probably don't have the existing internet pipe to support that much more public internet traffic. D+ would have to develop a solution that runs on the equipment in place and develop all the controls/UI to allow P+R to run it all, and give them the content channels they want/need as well. That's all work D+ team would have to spend time developing... which is weighed against other priorities they are doing. Then they probably would have to deploy some CDN infrastructure to help defuse the internet demands as well.

Then the multi-media production each resort uses today as well.

It's not just TV = you have D+ now...

From there it's all about negotiations of who pays for what. P&R would sell the idea as advertising advantage to D+. Even if D+ didn't pay them anything its probably still a savings over paying a IPTV provider. D+ would want to be compensated for all the work and opEx. So that's where the negotiation is. Maybe P+R would pay a reduced fee intended to help offset opEx.. and a fee that was substantially less vs their existing capEx+opEx budget for maintaining their IPTV system.

That's where all the magic happens and you learn how interested or not either side is to party.

TLDR - There might be technology gates holding all this back, not just accounting.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Does Chapek have any friends in this world? Sad!

 

[Cliff]

Yeah, they tell us *something*.

Why do you have to take it to such a extreme as to make it meaningless?

I'm not saying that subscribers numberd dont mean much to "Disney". I'm saying advertizers dont actually care about subscribers. They care about Disney being able to provide eyeballs to the adds. They need to CONFIRM that their adds are being "seen" by a certain number of people they pay for. Add agencies want metrics to justify the rates they pay Disney. "Subscribers" as a number alone doesnt cut it. McDonalds might want 300k 16-25 year olds and Mercedes might want 500k 40-55 year olds. Proctor and Gamble might want women 18-38 year olds....and want CONFIRMATION their adda were targeted accurately.

Thats what Im talking about

 

[Chip Chipperson]

They are offering Disney+ free to parks cast members this year, so it seems they would have figured out how to handle the finances.

The simpler answer though is probably technical. How would you go about deploying it to a hotel TV system and then also handle having accounts with free/unlimited access that have to be reset for each guest (for parental controls). It's not necessarily impossible to figure out, but from a technical standpoint it would be expensive. It would require project funding to ensure deployment and additional CMs for training and maintenance going forward.

That's probably why they settled on the D+ preview channel with a scheduled rotation of shows, instead. It gives the guests a small amount of access while also acting as a form of advertising for the service.

 

[sedati]

Ironically, I never hear or see anyone in public ever talk about this franchise. Lol

It's like how I've yet to encounter someone who was underwhelmed by Galaxy's Edge outside of this board.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

When Kevin Pollak said "it's astonishing to me the stupidity of these people " I said, same.

I’m watching an FTX documentary while reading this and it seems stupidity is more common than we care to admit.

They keep showing videos of the kids running this company and not one of them seems competent enough to run a family store let alone manage billions in funds.

Greed creates a lot of opportunities for stupid decisions to happen.

 

[flynnibus]

I’m watching an FTX documentary while watching this and it seems stupidity is more common than we care to admit.

They keep showing videos of the kids running this company and not one of them seems competent enough to run a family store let alone manage billions in funds.

Greed creates a lot of opportunities for stupid decisions to happen.

Remember tho.. Schemes like FTX are about math and software. Those kinds of banking schemes to make money by moving and converting stuff is all huge math problems. You gravitate to nerds to solve those kinds of problems and present convincing numbers.. not the suave sales guy.

We all see a bunch of geeks... they were coming to money men with MIT and Stanford degrees saying "we know how you can make a lot more money if you give us X...".

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

The one thing I get a kick out of - is Chapek signed a non-disparagement.

So he can’t even talk. Well he could talk. But it wouldn’t be what he wants to say.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Remember tho.. Schemes like FTX are about math and software. Those kinds of banking schemes to make money by moving and converting stuff is all huge math problems. You gravitate to nerds to solve those kinds of problems and present convincing numbers.. not the suave sales guy.

We all see a bunch of geeks... they were coming to money men with MIT and Stanford degrees saying "we know how you can make a lot more money if you give us X...".

They swindled some of the biggest hedge funds, pensions, etc… some of the biggest and brightest… $50 billion lost.

It’s shocking how much capital an unregulated company in an unregulated industry was able to raise solely on the promise of a big return, all with no proof of anything because it was unregulated and they didn’t have to show the books to anyone.

 

[Disstevefan1]

The one thing I get a kick out of - is Chapek signed a non-disparagement.

So he can’t even talk. Well he could talk. But it wouldn’t be what he wants to say.

Chapek can "not talk" all the way to the bank. Let's hope he is smart enough to realize that this too shall pass.

Bob Iger apparently has not figured this out yet.

And the real losers are all the Disney fans.

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

Remember tho.. Schemes like FTX are about math and software. Those kinds of banking schemes to make money by moving and converting stuff is all huge math problems. You gravitate to nerds to solve those kinds of problems and present convincing numbers.. not the suave sales guy.

We all see a bunch of geeks... they were coming to money men with MIT and Stanford degrees saying "we know how you can make a lot more money if you give us X...".

Like most things. Those that got in early. And understood it. Made bank. And got out when they felt it had run it’s course.

Those who lagged - and believed in the rainbows and unicorns - got stuck holding the bag.

 

[mf1972]

Wait so if Iger came back from the dead, does that mean Darth Vader is actually Chapek here?