Disgraced Disney CEO Bob Iger “put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week,” Bloomberg Business reports.
According to the report, the sale announcement was a subtle but unmistakable one. Iger made the announcement during his disastrous CNBC interview last week, where he was caught lying with the false claim that Disney is not sexualizing children.
By declaring its cable and broadcast TV assets “noncore,” the report says, Iger told the world ABC TV, the FX cable networks, National Geographic, and Freeform are all for sale. He’s also looking for a partner for the failing ESPN.
Bloomberg does the math. “Disney’s media networks generated 35%, or $24.8 billion, of company revenue and more than 50%, or $7.5 billion, of its operating income.” Yep, that’s a big sell-off.
The problem — and Disney knows it — is that cable/satellite TV is quickly dying off. People are moving to streaming, which is much cheaper and, in many cases (Pluto TV, FreeVee, Tubi, etc.), entirely free. The billions Disney (and other entertainment/media outlets) has made from cable TV have nothing to do with merit. For nearly 50 years, upwards of 100 million American homes have subscribed to cable TV and paid a fortune for channels they never watch. The reason your cable bill is so high is because corporations like Disney earn a substantial piece of that bill simply for providing a channel on your cable package. You don’t watch it but still pay for it (same with CNN, MSNBC, MTV, etc.). Cable/satellite TV is one of the most lucrative scams in the history of American business.
Streaming puts an end to that. Tens of millions have canceled their cable TV and moved to streaming. Streaming companies, like Disney+, have to survive on merit now, which is why Disney+ is losing billions every year.
Moreover, cable and broadcast networks like FX and ABC are fading assets that will soon be worthless. Before long, there will not be enough cable subscribers to keep these outlets profitable. Additionally, nowhere near enough people actually watch these outlets to allow them to survive on advertising.
Per Bloomberg, Disney can sell these networks today for about $8 billion. Whoever purchases them will know time is short to squeeze them dry, and squeeze them dry they will.
“Iger’s comments should spook his peers,” says Bloomberg. “If a diversified company like Disney is bailing on its cable networks, what does that mean for companies like Paramount Global and Warner Bros Discovery Inc.?”
The bottom line: Those companies “still make almost all of their profit from networks that are shrinking.”
I’ve been warning these companies about the imminent death of cable TV for over a decade. The writing was on the wall as soon as Netflix became a new phenom.
Ace of Spades adds this insight to Groomer Bob’s sale announcement [emphasis original]:
Note the properties he’s considering selling are, mostly, companies that were purchased by Disney before Iger. FX and FXX were acquired by Iger when he bought Fox’s entertainment divisions. But neither of those, I think, has ever been sold as standalone units and so do not have any valuations attached to them.
… Iger does not want to sell off the big properties he bought — LucasFilm, Marvel, Pixar, and even Fox, as a whole — because the selling price will be much, much lower than the purchase price. This would expose him as rube who consistently overpaid for other people’ successful studios to cover-up Disney’s own struggling creative output. And it would also confirm everyone’s strong suspicion that all of these properties are worth only 25-50% of what was paid for them, and therefore maybe all of Disney is similarly only worth 25-50% of the current market valuation.
Disney is in much more trouble than anyone in the corporate media or the elite business world wants to admit. On top of being creatively dead — so dead, meet your new Snow White — the company’s brand has been forever shattered by Disney’s blatantly evil grooming crusade.
Disney’s obsession with identity politics and its own sexual perversions has killed Star Wars, killed Indiana Jones, killed Pixar, and is killing Marvel. The left-wing affirmative action of cable TV is dying, theme park attendance is down, and the stock price has been cut in half and downgraded.
Rather than solve the problem, the board extended Groomer Bob’s contract into 2026.
Watching Disney crash and burn is one of the joys of living.
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