News Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!

[Sirwalterraleigh]

The country basically over-malled itself and the closures were the market correction.

And then the ones that remain have anchor stores that are hanging on by a thread and open-air lifestyle centers take their place (and those will hit oversatuation at some point, if not close already).

You do have some online companies moving toward psychical locations - like Warby Parker for example - that at least give those places some new tenants as they discover that there’s a limit to online buyers as well.

As an aside, as someone in the Deep South, I hate open-air malls. Give me my air conditioning!

Retail has always built on outdated data…an example is that circuit city built stores from 1995-2005 based on marketing studies from the late 80’s.

Buy the time they opened, they were obselete.

 

[SteamboatJoe]

It’s not just that too many were built. How malls were designed changed and they became actively hostile towards their visitors. That’s part of what successful lifestyles centers have corrected. People like well designed, human-oriented spaces, they flock to them and even pay top dollar to experience them, especially in a place like the US where they are not common.

Us Americans are so bizarre. We will pay through the nose to go visit some cute, charming resort town with human-scaled buildings close to narrow streets and limited parking, but try to build that near where people live their day-to-day lives and the pitchforks come out. So many want that authentic small town feel but refuse to allow the built form that is necessary to foster it.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I'm quite possibly missing something here, but why were Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures a big loss to the company? They didn't seem to struggle to produce content or have box office hits without them.

They in no way were a mistake…

It allowed them to grow their influence in Hollywood and provide future opportunities that a cartoon studio with one premium kid content station would never have had the legitimacy to get.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Us Americans are so bizarre. We will pay through the nose to go visit some cute, charming resort town with human-scaled buildings close to narrow streets and limited parking, but try to build that near where live their day to day lives and the pitchforks come out. So many want that authentic small town feel but refuse to allow the built form that is necessary to foster it.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Or, D+ is priced at half its value.

There’s is zero precedent or business evidence to make that assertion.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

I believe 2 of Disney's greatest pieces of art The Hunchback of Notre Dame and IllumiNations: Reflections Of Earth were created during the "Bad" years.

It's hard to say whether you can give much credit to the "bad years" having too much of an effect on the latter half of the 90s content. The thing is that animated hand drawn movies take a LONG time to make. From what I gather, Hunchback's production began before the death of Wells and and before Katzenberg left and took a bunch of the animation department with him. So you could argue there was some remnant spillover from the good years there.

I feel that the "renaissance" lasted full-on until 1999's Tarzan, and even had some scraps left over with Atlantis and Treasure Planet (hell arguably Brother Bear for its animation quality at least). And for Treasure Planet in particular, that had been an on-and-off concept being tossed around as early as the mid-late 80s. So as flawed as it was, some degree of quality that it contains might still be traceable back to the "good era".

It was Home on the Range and Chicken Little that REALLY started to show the stench of the latter Eisner era. Also, most of the direct to video sequel movies.

This probably won't be a popular opinion, but I vastly prefer the original 1988 version of Illuminations to Reflections of Earth (though RoF is obviously vastly better than Harmonious). I liked the traditional classical music and how the countries got their own "segments" in the show.

 

[SteamboatJoe]

Below are responses to a tweet from the site that shall not be named (which is why I didn't paste it in a cleaner format). The content of the tweet being responded to was the going rate for Genie+ today. I imagine Eddie is not an insider but still interesting. He responded to a few others, noting that Universal has executed their system much better and use it as an incentive to stay on their property.

Eddie Sotto
@boss_angeles

"The App-iest place on Earth?" I believe @RobertIger will address the "class system" that is eroding the equality of the shared Disney experience. Every standby guest leaves feeling "less than". Bad long term. Less "have nots", more "having fun".


Replying to
@boss_angeles
The trick will be to include Apps into hotel stays and more upfront with admission to maintain the revenue, but not nickel and dime the guest as it is now. It needs a global review.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Thats awesome. Assuming you no longer work for them? Retired? Moved to better pastures? Did you ever get to deal w Eisner directly?

I left young to go to the “real world”. I just wasn’t meant to be in what amount to sales, logistics and/Or mass labor allocation for a long time. That’s what Disney ultimately is in Orlando. Didn’t have the inclination or patience.

I met/mixed with cast member Michael and cast member Bob a few times - briefly. The action was in LA and Manhattan.

Also that evil gremlin from the netherworld Paul pressler. I did have some direct loose contact on occasion with a certain former CEO

…been laughing about that for 48 hours.

 

[fgmnt]

I'm sorry, but Eisner had run out of time to make corrections. And, honestly, when he did at the time it was things like tacking on A Bug's Land and a lesser clone of ToT on to DCA. If there was a come to Jesus moment for him, we never saw evidence of it publicly.

Even if he would have started to run the parks better than he had been, he didn't seem very good at running the rest of the company, particularly adapting to changing trends and technology or managing relationships.

I think rolling out a value-engineered version of the best attraction WDI had built to date to the two struggling Disney-held parks, while also billing OLC for it, is an example of pretty deft management of capital commitments to the parks division as the global economy had the company lurching from one external crisis (dot com bust) to another (9/11). Tomayto-Tomahto.

 

[JohnD]

Yeah, I went there:

What do you call men with no arms and no legs, one is fired by Disney, and another is re-hired by Disney, floating in the ocean?

Bob

 

[BobPar]

I left young to go to the “real world”. I just wasn’t meant to be in what amount to sales, logistics and/Or mass labor allocation for a long time. That’s what Disney ultimately is in Orlando. Didn’t have the inclination or patience.

I met/mixed with cast member Michael and cast member Bob a few times - briefly. The action was in LA and Manhattan.

Also that evil gremlin from the netherworld Paul pressler. I did have some direct loose contact on occasion with a certain former CEO

…been laughing about that for 48 hours.

Well if you are ever in NYC dinner & drinks on me. Would love to hear some stories. Off the record of course. Sounds like you have great insight of one of worlds most famous corporations

 

[MrPromey]

Us Americans are so bizarre. We will pay through the nose to go visit some cute, charming resort town with human-scaled buildings close to narrow streets and limited parking, but try to build that near where people live their day-to-day lives and the pitchforks come out. So many want that authentic small town feel but refuse to allow the built form that is necessary to foster it.

Because the mindset is "it's a nice place to visit but..."

 

[MrPromey]

There’s is zero precedent or business evidence to make that assertion.

Maybe not but think how much nicer it would be on there if they were able to use pricing to thin out the crowds.

 

[hopemax]

I think…and we have been talking about this for going on 30 years…is that 95-05 period is symbolic to a lot of fans…

It was kinda the end of the “innocence”. Eisner is really the figurehead for the transformation of the “family” company into the corporate…

And that is what happened. It’s a psychological transition that many never wanted.

The problem is it was going to happen. The reason Disney is the behemoth it is now…and not bought up like Warner or universal…is because they did make the transition then.

Even if they had to step on some land mines to do it.

Iger didn’t really do anything that wasn’t set up before. He gets far less shade. You build a house from the ground up…but the ground is never the “pretty part”

I’m sure we can go back to Eisner critique another time…not that anybody really wants to.

Speaking for myself, becoming a large media company in itself isn't the problem. As you say, size provides protection. However, if you are going to build a behemoth you need trustworthy and capable handlers to deal with all the unwieldy bits. For P&R we got Pressler, Rasulo and Staggs. The example we have of strong advocacy for the parks was Staggs recognizing the silliness of color with Princesses. We know there are Studio execs who have gone on to successful things. What we got a trio of CEOs who seemed to be terrified of usurpers to the throne. Speaking of which, what role did Chapek's firing of Peter Rice play into this most recent investor freakout?

In an alternate universe, Steve Burke would have been #2 of the WDC before bolting to Comcast. Where would either company be in that scenario, who knows? But it's an element that makes watching the last 25 years unfold so unsatisfying.

 

[Quinnmac000]

I don't think that's true of Disney+ (or Peacock, ironically).

Netflix - Draw people in with Stranger Things and whatever binge drama or true crime documentary goes viral, but nothing to keep them around.

HBO - Draw people in with Game of Thrones, but nothing to keep them around.

Amazon - Draw people in with free 2-Day shipping, keep them around with free 2-Day shipping, doesn't matter what anyone watches.

Hulu - Attempt to be consistently good with FX content (The Bear, Reservation Dogs, Under the Banner of Heaven, Dopesick), but no major draw outside of The Handmaid's Tale, which has a super niche audience

Paramount+ - Pray that Taylor Sheridan can keep cranking out bangers

Peacock - Nothing to draw people in, but if they get some hits people will stick around to watch The Office and Parks & Rec for the thousandth time

Disney+ - Come for Mando, stay for the Library

Disney+ and Peacock don't need to spend on "sustainment" content, because they already have it. They need to spend on must-see blockbuster content that continues to bring people into the service. Once they're in, they're in. Churn should be much lower than most of these other services.

When your gender skew is primarily male who are the main ones posting online which then causing a churn of more people joining, its not a surprise but the gender skew is a major factor in perception of value per streaming service...

Peacock has decided to focus on Bravo shows and true crime which attracts a lot of women compared to Disney which focuses on fandom things which brings in a lot more males.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Speaking for myself, becoming a large media company in itself isn't the problem. As you say, size provides protection. However, if you are going to build a behemoth you need trustworthy and capable handlers to deal with all the unwieldy bits. For P&R we got Pressler, Rasulo and Staggs. The example we have of strong advocacy for the parks was Staggs recognizing the silliness of color with Princesses. We know there are Studio execs who have gone on to successful things. What we got a trio of CEOs who seemed to be terrified of usurpers to the throne. Speaking of which, what role did Chapek's firing of Peter Rice play into this most recent investor freakout?

In an alternate universe, Steve Burke would have been #2 of the WDC before bolting to Comcast. Where would either company be in that scenario, who knows? But it's an element that makes watching the last 25 years unfold so unsatisfying.

I’m not gonna argue with any of that…

Management void was a huge problem then…

But look what happened this week? They fired/are firing a batch that won’t be missed or lamented for a second. That isn’t evil Mikey’s fault - for sure.

Maybe it was more than just one guy back then to?

Though he’d run through the China shop in broad daylight…wasn’t sneaky like Bob.

 

[Vacationeer]

Over the last 48 hours this thread has averaged one comment every 1.5 minutes

 

[BobPar]

Over the last 48 hours this thread has averaged one comment every 1.5 minutes

Impressive

 

[donaldtoo]

Over the last 48 hours this thread has averaged one comment every 1.5 minutes

That’s it…?!?!?!
We’re slackers…!!!!!!

 

[SteamboatJoe]

Over the last 48 hours this thread has averaged one comment every 1.5 minutes

And look at all we have accomplished!