News The Walt Disney Company Board of Directors Extends Robert A. Iger’s Contract as CEO Through 2026

[Chip Chipperson]

My money is that Disney+, Hulu, Max, and Netflix will be the big players. Other players like Apple TV+ and Prime will stick around. Paramount+ and Peacock will close down or morph into something else.

I’m a subscriber to all of them although I’ve been getting Paramount+ for free because their laughable system doesn’t realize I canceled a year ago.

I have to think that Paramount+ is just barely hanging on even after merging with Showtime. At least when Warner Bros. and Discocery merged, WBD rolled Discovery+ into HBO Max. Paramount decided to kill Showtime's streaming app and force users to subscribe to Paramount+ - even if you have Showtime as part of your cable deal. And then they screwed that up, too, by not even notifying their customers (like me, who one day noticed that the Showtime app was removed from Roku and had to Google it to find out why). No way in hell am I paying for Paramount+ after that, even if it didn't suck. I pretty much only have Showtime because Verizon bundled it with HBO and it would actually cost me more to get rid of it. I can't recall watching anything on Showtime since the Dexter revival ended.

 

[MisterPenguin]

'Secret Invasion' was a flaming hot pile of garbage. Worst Marvel series I've watched (but I haven't watched Ms. Marvel, so maybe that could supplant it as the worst). Mando's most recent season was ok but it's slipping. Haven't watched Loki season 2 (yet) or Ahsoka.

I'll let the board know your feelings on those shows.

 

[MisterPenguin]

No Disneys margins are to low.

They are going to have to increase prices further.

What’s the endgame here?

At some point most consumers will have to choose a streaming service and forgo the others.

My money is that choice won’t be D+.

The average cost of cable is $80. Cord cutters can easily afford 3 to 4 premium streamers. Or, 5-6 at the ad tier.

People then complain "but I'm paying as much as I did for cable!"

Yes. No one promised that streaming would be cheaper.

But, it does free you from "linear content" in which you had to watch at 8 PM on Thursday night to follow your favorite show. You have an on-demand massive library of content. You can sub and unsub monthly to save money. You have the option to pay extra to skip ads.

It's why cord cutting has been recently accelerating. Iger and Netflix were darned near visionaries to recognize their very existence depended on drastic measures, and they took those measures a step or two ahead of everyone else (and got a little carried away in the massive spends on new content).

Linear TV was a huge portion of Disney's profits. And linear TV will be mostly dead in two years from now. And D+/Hulu/ESPN+ will be ready. While making profit in the theater is nice, nicer still is keeping one's much bigger TV revenue.

 

[Stripes]

I picture at some point these services moving towards a yearly subscription.

Disney+ launched with a monthly subscription and an annual subscription. The latter no longer exists.

I don’t think that getting rid of monthly subscriptions would be a wise move for any of the players.

Clearly Disney has the $$$ to be in the game but in my personal opinion is lacking content to justify a higher price point.

They have arguably the best library of content in the industry and the most popular original series. They should increase the price, particularly on the non-ad supported plan. I think keeping the price lower on the ad supported tier would be wise.

Apple and Amazon have the money to make a massive move however at this point neither has.

Apple has relatively little content but what is there is pretty high quality, in my opinion. Despite the lack of content, I’ve probably watched more series on Apple TV+ than Netflix.

Prime has very little I find interesting despite a much larger library than Apple. If it was just Prime video, I would have canceled, but Prime has other benefits.

To me the future of streaming is so unclear it’s hard for me to look at D+ and just assume it will be in the top two.

If you consider Disney’s eventual streaming offering as a bundled Disney+, Hulu, and full ESPN offering, I really don’t know how someone looks at that and thinks it’s outside of the top 2 streaming offerings. As for me, it’s clearly number one.

 

[MisterPenguin]

I was asking how the rankings were calculated.

Two ways: total minutes watched; or number of times a movie or episode was watched.

Nielsen uses total minutes. This, tho, unfairly advantages series with hour-long episodes v. series with half-hour-long episodes. If both series had the same number of people following the series, the hour-long series will have twice as much 'minutes watched.'

Other companies compensate for this by taking the total of minutes watched and dividing by the length of the show to get at a metric of 'how many times watched.'

So, you can wind up with different types of 'top ten' lists.

 

[el_super]

They have arguably the best library of content in the industry and the most popular original series. They should increase the price, particularly on the non-ad supported plan. I think keeping the price lower on the ad supported tier would be wise.

I wanted to add to this to say that Disney also has, one of the biggest content production pipelines in Hollywood. People tend to forget that Disney isn't just the movie studio (or really studios with Disney, Pixar, Fox, Marvel and Lucas) but they are also producing TV content for ABC and their other linear networks still (for now) and original content for streaming.

Disney certainly doesn't have a lack of content. They just need to figure out how to make the most of the content they have.

 

[_caleb]

The average cost of cable is $80. Cord cutters can easily afford 3 to 4 premium streamers. Or, 5-6 at the ad tier.

People then complain "but I'm paying as much as I did for cable!"

Yes. No one promised that streaming would be cheaper.

But, it does free you from "linear content" in which you had to watch at 8 PM on Thursday night to follow your favorite show. You have an on-demand massive library of content. You can sub and unsub monthly to save money. You have the option to pay extra to skip ads.

It's why cord cutting has been recently accelerating. Iger and Netflix were darned near visionaries to recognize their very existence depended on drastic measures, and they took those measures a step or two ahead of everyone else (and got a little carried away in the massive spends on new content).

Linear TV was a huge portion of Disney's profits. And linear TV will be mostly dead in two years from now. And D+/Hulu/ESPN+ will be ready. While making profit in the theater is nice, nicer still is keeping one's much bigger TV revenue.

Thanks for putting it so clearly. I'm not sure why it's so difficult for some here to understand how much the entire industry has changed and is changing. Disney is actually positioned much better than its rivals to navigate–and possibly shape–the disruption. And while many here might be able to imagine some theoretical CEO who'd be better than Iger, he had the vision and wherewithal to go all in on streaming. We'll see how/if it ultimately pays off, but at least Direct-to-Consumer seems like a viable strategy as compared to stay-the-course or head-in-the-sand.

 

[JD80]

The average cost of cable is $80. Cord cutters can easily afford 3 to 4 premium streamers. Or, 5-6 at the ad tier.

People then complain "but I'm paying as much as I did for cable!"

Yes. No one promised that streaming would be cheaper.

But, it does free you from "linear content" in which you had to watch at 8 PM on Thursday night to follow your favorite show. You have an on-demand massive library of content. You can sub and unsub monthly to save money. You have the option to pay extra to skip ads.

It's why cord cutting has been recently accelerating. Iger and Netflix were darned near visionaries to recognize their very existence depended on drastic measures, and they took those measures a step or two ahead of everyone else (and got a little carried away in the massive spends on new content).

Linear TV was a huge portion of Disney's profits. And linear TV will be mostly dead in two years from now. And D+/Hulu/ESPN+ will be ready. While making profit in the theater is nice, nicer still is keeping one's much bigger TV revenue.

Remember way back when when everyone everywhere ridiculed the Netflix CEO at the time when he decided to split the company and spin off the "DVD to home delivery service" and focus on the "streaming" service? Everyone laughed at streaming then.

 

[Tha Realest]

It's why cord cutting has been recently accelerating. Iger and Netflix were darned near visionaries to recognize their very existence depended on drastic measures, and they took those measures a step or two ahead of everyone else (and got a little carried away in the massive spends on new content).

Disney mulled buying Netflix in 2017, but instead of making that acquisition Iger paid the same amount for 20th Century Fox.

Netflix now has a market cap far higher than Disney’s.

One of those two assessed the landscape accurately.

 

[Stripes]

I have to think that Paramount+ is just barely hanging on even after merging with Showtime. At least when Warner Bros. and Discocery merged, WBD rolled Discovery+ into HBO Max. Paramount decided to kill Showtime's streaming app and force users to subscribe to Paramount+ - even if you have Showtime as part of your cable deal. And then they screwed that up, too, by not even notifying their customers (like me, who one day noticed that the Showtime app was removed from Roku and had to Google it to find out why). No way in hell am I paying for Paramount+ after that, even if it didn't suck. I pretty much only have Showtime because Verizon bundled it with HBO and it would actually cost me more to get rid of it. I can't recall watching anything on Showtime since the Dexter revival ended.

I subscribed to Paramount+ via Apple TV Channels. But I linked my Apple-managed subscription to a Paramount+ account so that I could also use the Paramount+ app. After about 5 months, I canceled my subscription. Now, I’m not paying a dime for it but the Paramount+ app and website still thinks I’m subscribed. I’ve had it for free for over a year.

That’s what a joke Paramount+ is. I hope they don’t see this though LOL! But, honestly, it wouldn’t be a big loss.

 

[_caleb]

Disney mulled buying Netflix in 2017, but instead of making that acquisition Iger paid the same amount for 20th Century Fox.

Netflix now has a market cap far higher than Disney’s.

One of those two assessed the landscape accurately.

Which ended up being a very wise decision. Spinning up a streaming platform is relatively cheap and easy compared to producing quality content people want to watch. Have you ever noticed how many cheap Disney/Pixar knockoffs there are on Netflix?

In the streaming wars, both quality and quantity matter. I know there's been some debate about the quality of Disney's recent efforts, but nobody is subscribing to Netflix for The Little Cars 8: Making a Mess. I don't think I'm alone in finding it increasingly difficult to find something good/interesting to watch on Netflix.

 

[el_super]

Disney mulled buying Netflix in 2017, but instead of making that acquisition Iger paid the same amount for 20th Century Fox.

... with money he was getting from Netflix for content licensing.

Netflix was a success, in part, because of Disney's content.

 

[Trauma]

Which ended up being a very wise decision. Spinning up a streaming platform is relatively cheap and easy compared to producing quality content people want to watch. Have you ever noticed how many cheap Disney/Pixar knockoffs there are on Netflix?

View attachment 761812

In the streaming wars, both quality and quantity matter. I know there's been some debate about the quality of Disney's recent efforts, but nobody is subscribing to Netflix for The Little Cars 8: Making a Mess. I don't think I'm alone in finding it increasingly difficult to find something good/interesting to watch on Netflix.

I guess if you watch cartoons for little kids all day.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Disney mulled buying Netflix in 2017, but instead of making that acquisition Iger paid the same amount for 20th Century Fox.

Netflix now has a market cap far higher than Disney’s.

One of those two assessed the landscape accurately.

ZOMG, NO!

If you put Cocomelon and Bluey together in the same service, all other content providers would go broke!!

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Disney+ launched with a monthly subscription and an annual subscription. The latter no longer exists.

Annual subscription still exists - cheaper than monthly.

And while many here might be able to imagine some theoretical CEO who'd be better than Iger, he had the vision and wherewithal to go all in on streaming.

Kinda, I think he would have been better off making a deal with Netflix or Apple for the exclusive content.

 

[Stripes]

Annual subscription still exists - cheaper than monthly.

I stand corrected. Thank you. Although I will say they don’t do much to advertise the annual option.

 

[Disney Analyst]

I stand corrected. Thank you. Although I will say they don’t do much to advertise the annual option.

Yeah, we’ve always done annual up here!

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Yeah, we’ve always done annual up here!

I let it go this year, was thinking they’d do some kind of new years deal to get me back but they didn’t so I bought masterclass for 40% off instead. I’ll probably get Disney+ again at some point but I don’t really miss it too much.

I was pretty annoyed they took so many shows off that I really liked - Jeff Goldblum, Prop Culture, Earth to Ned…

 

[pdude81]

Remember way back when when everyone everywhere ridiculed the Netflix CEO at the time when he decided to split the company and spin off the "DVD to home delivery service" and focus on the "streaming" service? Everyone laughed at streaming then.

He wanted to split the company in two and require multiple subscriptions, websites, and watch lists for the same company. I think it was dumb and he almost tanked the company doing it.

Anyone who bought in at that low had a great ride though.

 

[Robbiem]

Disney mulled buying Netflix in 2017, but instead of making that acquisition Iger paid the same amount for 20th Century Fox.

Netflix now has a market cap far higher than Disney’s.

One of those two assessed the landscape accurately.

Iger was never diverse. For all his supposed success he basically bought a bunch of movie studios to add IP (I know marvel is comic books etc but it was bought for the MCU). He never really diversified into new areas in the ways Eisner did. A diversified Disney should have had something like Netflix, a gaming studio, hospitality outside the parks, retail etc