Bloomberg (scroll down) reports Disney CEO Bob Iger has put much of the company up for sale.
Iger put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week, declaring Disney’s linear TV assets noncore. That includes TV networks ABC, FX and Freeform. He also said Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN — though he’s not willing to sell the whole thing — and the company is already looking to sell or restructure its TV and streaming business in India.
Before the pandemic, 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.
Yet the accelerating decline of cable TV has limited Iger’s options. He thought he’d solved this problem with Disney+ and Hulu, his two mass-market streaming services. But his streaming business is expected to register a loss of about $800 million in the company’s just-ended third quarter.
How the mighty have fallen. Disney went woke and this looks a lot like scrambling not to go broke. Going woke is only one factor, the changing viewing habits of households (i.e., streaming) seems to be a bigger issue. Cable is said to be dying.
