Meet the Pretenders to Iger’s Throne
The court is assembling from all across the land for a king is dying.
Various factions are now presenting pretenders to the throne while the old king insists that he’s still good for years.
But it is becoming clear that Iger has lost the support that matters. The last earnings call was a nothing but smoke and mirrors. Too much of it was obviously staged. When it was clear that no one who mattered would be allowed to ask awkward questions. Too much went wrong last year to make the people who matter swallow it with just a spoonful of sugar.
Wall Street was fooled but since Wall Street operates on the “Greater Fool Theory” this is hardly a surprise. However, it is becoming clear that the people who really matter have lost faith in Iger and want a change.
Two different factions have publicly presented their prince-candidates to the Golden Mouse Throne.
The first whose faction is represented but absolutely not led by Fortune magazine has declared for Kevin Mayer who is already familiar to the Darklings.”
“Kevin Mayer was Disney’s tech guy. Got his bachelors from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and got a tech master’s from San Diego. He started at Disney in 1993, and followed a more Generation X career path, whenever he wanted a promotion he had to get a job at another company.
He left Disney in 2000 to be CEO of Playboy.com. Mayer correctly assessed the future of softcore, gave Playboy a nostalgia bait glow-up, and quickly jumped ship to…
… Clear Channel???
So yeah, from there he was lured back to Disney by Tom Staggs to be the tech guy on the Pixar merger. They worked together off and on for the next few years at Disney. Mayer oversaw the initial success of Disney+. He made ESPN+ a winner and also ran Hulu when Disney got the majority of the company in the Fox buyout. He was viewed as a potential successor to Iger.
However, Iger didn’t see it that way. He thought that Budget Cut Bob Chapek would prove to be a more loyal in-name-only-CEO.
Getting clipped out by the Boomer Network is a very Generation X thing indeed.
Since he was now a failed prince-candidate for the number one job at Disney he bailed again.
He became CEO of Tik Tok and made that company what it is now. Then he and Tom Staggs got together and formed Candle Media. Candle owns some very strong brands, the biggest is Moonbug (meaning Coco Melon). Given how much capital buying that took, it means they are getting outside money but from who…?
The Wall Street Journal on the other hand announced their support of Nelson Peltz choice of Jay Rasulo.
“When people call me about the company and what’s going on, I say, ‘Don’t ask me! It’s breaking my heart!’” Rasulo said in an interview. “When Nelson called me, I decided I couldn’t sit on the sidelines.”
Rasulo, once considered a potential successor to Iger, said he knows how to work with the veteran Disney CEO and that shareholders deserve “objective, passionate, owner-focused representatives” to hold the company’s management accountable. Peltz has said he wants Disney to target higher profit margins in the streaming business and have the board review the movie studio’s strategy.
A Disney spokesman said Rasulo left more than eight years ago and “in our view, his analog perspective is not relevant to the challenges of today’s digital media landscape.” The spokesman said Rasulo hasn’t shown a record of success at radio and podcast company iHeartMedia, where he joined the board in 2019 and is lead independent director.“
Meaning Bob Iger has no intention of trying to work with the man who is truthfully viewed as preferable to Iger by most of the lower level Disney employees.
Disney’s statement could be just an attempt to repel a boarder, OR it could be coded support for Kevin Mayer. Mayer had the better relationship with Iger and only left the company when Bob Chapek was chosen by Bob Iger as his successor.
When Michael Eisner was hired he was grilled by every member of the board of the directors individually. When Bob Iger was hired he too got raked over the coals by every member of the board individually.
Bob Chapek had no interview at all, he was simply told by Christine McCarthy, ‘there will be no interview, you’re it.’ Iger just told the board who to pick and they did. Then Iger told them to fire him and they did. The big question after Chapek;s public execution is, has Kevin Mayer been able to convince Bob Iger of his unflagging loyalty? Or has State Street, Black Rock and Vanguard decided that Mayer will be preserving the Woke in a way that Jay Rasulo absolutely won’t?
The last question is, can Iger somehow keep his hold on Disney in the face of consistent failure?
Developing.
