Bob Iger’s Year One: Highs, Lows, and Marvel Woes

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss one year of Bob Iger 2.0 and his latest comments surrounding the company's fourth quarter earnings report, including more aggressive cost-cutting measures, quantity vs. quality criticism of the film and TV division, and their promising streaming subscriber gains. Matt finishes the show with a prediction on the fate of Warner Bros. Discovery’s unreleased movie, ‘Coyote vs. Acme.’ For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw Producer: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	For all your fantasy football needs, check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show with me, Danny
0:05.2	Kelly, along with Danny Hyfitz and Craig Horlebeck.
0:07.9	That's the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.
0:14.5	It is Monday, November 13th.
0:17.4	It's earnings season in Hollywood, and no company is watched more closely these days than the Walt Disney company.
0:23.5	Bob Eiger, the old slash new CEO, is celebrating his first year back at Disney happening next weekend.
0:29.9	Though it hasn't really been a celebration.
0:31.7	They announced their latest financials last week, and it was a mixed bag.
0:35.0	Iger revealed that his aggressive cost-cutting measures have been even
0:38.1	more aggressive than we thought, raising the number of costs from $5.5 billion to $7.5 billion,
0:45.4	including billions in content cuts. It means fewer shows and movies. Wall Street loves any kind of
0:51.3	cost-cutting in media these days, so the stock shut up,
0:56.3	though it's still way down from when Iger came back.
0:58.9	Ad revenue at the company dropped again.
1:03.8	That's a problem across the industry, as the economy corrects a bit and TV bundle wanes.
1:06.9	But the streaming division narrowed its losses of Disney.
1:08.7	That's a key goal from investors.
1:14.0	And Disney Plus added 7 million subscribers, thanks to movies on the service like Guardians 3, Star Wars show, Asoca, others.
1:17.5	The theme parks are doing great.
1:19.0	Selling a churro for $6 will never not be a good business.
1:22.8	But Iger specifically called out his film division.
1:25.8	He said, quote, we lost some focus, end quote,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Ringer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Ringer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.