Disney -- November 10, 2023

Locator: 46018DIS.

Disney really had a bad day considering that the DOW, S&P, and NASDAQ all surged.

Ticker:

From The WSJ today:

Disney is examining whether its future should include fewer television networks.

After Chief Executive Bob Iger said last summer that some of Disney’s TV networks, which include ABC, FX and National Geographic, might not be core to the company, executives set out to determine which channels have long-term value and which are expendable.

As part of the review, the company has explored potential sales and discussed putting some of its TV networks into A+E Networks, its joint venture with Hearst, according to people familiar with the matter.

Disney’s traditional TV networks were once cash cows but are suffering from viewership declines as streaming replaces the cable bundle. The company is exploring whether it can cut staff, programming and marketing costs enough to retain all of its TV networks.

Its stable of TV networks includes ABC—which airs hits such as “The Golden Bachelor”—and eight local television stations, the Disney Channel, Freeform, National Geographic and FX, home to the American Horror Story franchise.

So far, the executives’ work has identified ABC, Disney Channel and FX as the channels with the most value to Disney, people involved in the process said, because they all produce content that is popular on Disney’s streaming platforms Disney+ and Hulu. Other assets including cable networks Freeform and the National Geographic channel are less critical to Disney’s future, the review found.

Disney’s review of its traditional TV assets has identified opportunities to cut costs and improve the business, Iger said on CNBC Wednesday, suggesting it might not unload assets. 

By the way, on a completely different note, an analyst said yesterday, NFL TNF is doing extremely wwell since Amazon "took over" the franchise this year. The analyst said that the Amazon model is markedly superior to ESPN's model for airing NFL games. It had to do with the way the streaming contracts were structured.

I remember the pushback I received when I suggested that Amazon would be very, very successful with the NFL TNF franchise. 

The Amazon airing of TNF is quite amazing, quite unique: you can join the program / game in progress at any time and are give several choices:

• go directly to the live presentation (what all networks do and generally only do);
• resume the program where you last left off;
• start the game from the beginning and start all over; and, most interesting,
• elect for a quick review of the highlights and then begin the game in progress.

It is quite amazing.

Legacy networks cannot do that. And it takes a lot of "cloud" to be able to do that -- and Amazon has a lot of "cloud."

On another note, I've never, never "bought" movies from Amazon Prime -- until now. It's incredible. Highly recommend. 

I've only bought two movies so far and it is so worth it.

Asteroid City.

Last night I bought The Great Gatsby last night. The $14.99 price has/had been brought down to $7.49.