But keep in mind that Chapek was in charge of the parks well before he became CEO.
That is true. And the sad part is we are all feeling the brunt of price hikes because the parks are what's financing the streaming segment.
Clean and repair the parks. I am sad as I look around and see dirt everywhere...
I think having DVC within the company is a great asset for Disney. It's true it's its own division, but they can make decisions that advantage the rest of the company. Like all the times DVC made a conversion at hotels with lower occupancy. Or build Riviera to part finance the Skyliner construction. A separate company owned by someone else might not accept everything Disney suggests.
Correct
“Now, it has been announced that the chairman of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, Kareem Daniel, will be stepping away from his position. Variety shared the news, including a statement from Iger which thanks Daniel for his “his many years of service to Disney.”
There were never layoffs coming to the parks.
Literally none of that has anything to do with Parks. This is a restructuring (and likely a dismantling) of the DMED segment.
I think the part that many people overlook in his choice of words (and NO ONE ever accused Bob Iger of poor communication) is his use of "rationalizes costs" instead of "reduces costs" or "eliminates costs".
This was in response to Iger overall and his bias for creatives. Have a - nice - day.
This may well be true, but I think one of the biggest Chapek failures was his lack of creative experience and the idea that given the right organization, fewer people can do a job just as well and more efficiently. That may work in a traditional work force, but in film and television production that's not the case. There's a reason television shows have writers rooms filled with writers who's ideas may only be used once every 3 or 4 episodes, rather than several writers churning out all of the material. It takes a deep pool of talent and story concepts from which to draw the best possible ideas. Dozens of ideas pitched, whittled down the the one or two very best possible. It's hard to do that when you're starting with only one or two. It's the same reason WDI has an army of people working on projects that may or may not ever see the light of day. The creative process relies upon many failures to create few successes. Lot's of "Hey, what if we..." and "Maybe we could...".
They're not proposing creating the same amount of content with fewer people, they're proposing creating less content. That said, (see below)...
...this is primarily an SG&A exercise. We're not talking about writers and creators, we're talking about accountants, finance people, HR people, marketing people, admin people, etc.
And I think you are grossly overestimating that portion of the Disney workforce and their overall impact on the corporate bottom line.
I am intimately familiar with that portion of the Disney workforce, if you catch my meaning.
And I am intimately familiar with the creative aspect of those divisions, if you get MY meaning (which is neither here nor there beyond knowing people actually impacted by this whole mess). The fact remains that you're not going to see any appreciable reduction in costs by laying off cubicle dwellers at any of the divisions. The cost of maintaining the creative talent dwarfs the admin side (at the cubicle level). The changes would need to be made further up the corporate food chain (and I agree 100% that it starts with DMED).
And perhaps more importantly, he's much better than Chapek at faking like he isn't. Iger was a political actor who nobody ever accused of playing politics, while Chapek was an apolitical person who was regularly accused of playing politics.
100% agree
Okay first of all, that was COVID. You can't take decisions made in the middle of the worst crisis to hit the company since World War II and say "aha, this is the strategy they wanted to implement all along!"
