It was a busy week in the entertainment industry. Disney finally named its next CEO: Josh D’Amaro, the head of its Experiences division. He’ll take over from Bob Iger next month.
The announcement came on the heels of Disney’s Q4 earnings report. Disney beat expectations and reported record revenues in its Experiences division. Streaming had a strong quarter too, with profits surging more than 70%. But the stock still dropped as much as 7% on concerns about softening international tourism, ballooning sports rights costs, and continued weakness in traditional entertainment.
Meanwhile, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery executives were on Capitol Hill defending their planned merger. What started as an antitrust hearing quickly devolved into a political circus. Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Netflix of producing “the wokest content in the history of the world.”
Every Disney earnings call follows the same playbook. Parks? Unbelievable business with an incredible moat. Film studio? Doing well, creating IP that feeds into the parks. Disney streaming? Getting leverage with singular positioning around family. All of it’s great.
Then they have to apologize for their linear platform, which declined 12% last year.
The moment they shed the linear TV business and focus entirely on parks, experiences, cruises, streaming, and the studio, this company will go up substantially in value. Right now, the overhang of these linear networks creates confusion around the business strategy.
The antitrust hearing was completely ridiculous.
These Republican senators default to talking about “wokeness” because they don’t know where to land on the antitrust argument.
The hearing was supposed to address what happens when an extremely large entertainment company buys another one, creating legitimate monopoly concerns.But that’s boring. They don’t understand it. They’d rather talk about LGBTQ actors in children’s shows because that’s what gets their supporters riled up.
Will any of this affect the transaction or change monopolization in America? No. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all for the clips, the drama, and the show.