It’s tough times for the House of Mouse. Disney CEO Bob Iger signed a two-year contract extension on Wednesday and made some concerning remarks about the future of the company. Disney investor Wells Fargo predicted back in 2022 that Disney would eventually sell off ESPN and ABC, and while many thought that preposterous, Iger’s recent comments appear to line up with that prediction.
The media giant is looking to sell off ABC altogether and offload ESPN through investors as they try to cut costs and streamline their business model. Disney has taken massive hits in profitability, largely in part to the outdated nature of network programming and the infiltration of woke themes and personalities both in their programming and amongst their media personalities. In short, no one trusts Disney anymore.
Iger, who was an outspoken critic of Florida’s Parental Rights Bill, which wokesters wrongly termed “Don’t Say Gay,” expressed no desire to tangle with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in any more culture wars. Shedding the two most woke networks in the portfolio would go a long way to fulfilling that goal.
When speaking about ABC and ESPN and the challenges the networks face, Iger saidthis:“After coming back, I realized the company is facing a lot of challenges, some of them self inflicted. They may not be core to Disney. There’s clearly creativity and content that they created at its core to Disney, but the distribution model, the business model that forms the underpinning of that business and that has delivered great profits over the years, is definitely broken.”\
The golden age of network television is clearly over. Woke news, stale, predictable programming that favors forced diversity and woke themes over quality of content, and myriad other streaming options has limited the appeal and profitability of the major broadcast networks.
Bob Iger has done all he can to course-correct the flailing media giant. He has laid off 7,000 employees, including some of ESPN’s biggest, and not coincidentally most woke personalities, and has trimmed $5.5 billion from the books.
However, part of Disney’s biggest issue is the flagging attendance at their flagship theme parks. Years of subtely, and sometimes overtly pushing sexualized themes as well LGBTQ themed stories has turned off many parents, with some vowing to never go to the House of Mouse again. The number prove it despite Iger’s attempt to spin it otherwise.
Igerclaimed:“Florida opened up early during COVID, and it created huge demand. It didn’t have competition because there were a number of other places — states — that were not open yet.”Even if that were to partially explain why attendance numbers appeared down since 2020, it doesn’t explain why the Fourth of July weekend, historically one of the busiest, saw it’s lowest attendance numbers in a decade. It’s clear people are staying away.
This all equates to bad news for Disney, ABC, and ESPN. The “ladies” of The View might have to find new jobs if the network is unloaded to another buyer that seeks to bring it back to profitability. What better way to earn new viewers than to flip the narrative and actually start offering fair and balance news, and programming that doesn’t have a political narrative baked in?
It’s a desperate play from a company that has dug it’s own hole. Disney brought all of this on itself with woke programming, inappropriate content, and LGBTQ themes in their park and their shows. People are done, and now the network must bail furiously to survive. The adage once again holds true: Go woke, go broke.
