No. of Recommendations: 3
“D’Amaro, who officially succeeded Bob Iger at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Wednesday, wants to accelerate Disney’s flywheel—the process by which franchises move between film, television, digital, consumer products and real-world experiences. Think “Lilo & Stitch” stuffed animals, “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and Marvel stage shows on cruise ships.
The worldwide popularity of franchises such as Star Wars is the biggest advantage Disney has over digitally native competitors such as YouTube and Netflix . Exploiting them across businesses more quickly is a way to press that advantage, particularly as pop culture trends move faster thanks to social media.“
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/new-ceo-josh-da...I’m still out for now, but I like DIS and I’m watching.
abromber
No. of Recommendations: 4
I’m still out for now, but I like DIS and I’m watching.
I’m out now as well, although I’ve been a stockholder two or three times over the past 30 years.
This (“accelerate the flywheel”) seems a reasonable strategy, but the first step is to make hits, not crank out junk and retreads for the sake of cranking out junk and retreads (looking at you, Chapek).
Disney is one of my favorite companies, I’d love to see them succeed (bigger than they already are, which is, uh, pretty big.) The trick is going to be surviving the demise of linear TV, which accounts for around 15% of revenues (30% if you include ESPN and sports.) But that paltry percent doesn’t speak to the ability to get new products and trends in front of people so easily (from coon-skin caps to Miley Cyrus to, well, everything.)
It was a wonderful synergy (hate that word) having a TV network (or program in the early days) to launch a brand, it’s harder without that rocket fuel to spread that over multiple media that’s a “receive” phenomenon rather than a “push” as linear TV is.
Accelerate the flywheel is good. Navigate the collapse of a core part of that flywheel is even more important.
