Disney Eats Its Own Seed Corn
Question: How does a company stay in business for a century?
Answer: By attracting a new generation of customers every time a new generation comes along.
Sure, you can make lots of noises about consistent standards of quality, and high customer satisfaction but at the end of the day, if you stop attracting new generations of customers, you will be joining the ranks of the Pullman Railroad Cars Company and Blockbuster Video.
This is unbelievably important. Now sometimes it can’t be helped. Pullman made American passenger train cars and the country stopped traveling by train. Blockbuster desperately flailed around trying to find a new market but ultimately couldn’t.
However, people are still having children, and those that have successfully reproduced occasionally need a break from the little blighters, so those kids will need to be provided with entertainment. Ideally, entertainment the parents can stomach.
The Walt Disney Company was very good about filling that niche for 95 of its 100-year existence. But in the last five years, there has been a seismic shift at Disney. Instead of trying to provide entertainment for traditional families, (you know, like the ones with a husband, wife, and kids) Disney has been reaching out to “new families.”
The kind with two incomes and no children. Epcot which used to be my favorite park now belongs to child-hating couples in rainbow Mickey Mouse ears and drunk-ass Boomers.
It’s not just one theme park. Around 2018, there was a sea change at Disney.
Bob Iger had for years been allegedly placing an emphasis on recruiting employees with strong ties to the Democratic party and hard-left politics in general. This was presumably in preparation for his run for the Presidency of the United States. He was rumored to be fancying himself as the Leftwing version of Donald Trump.
Iger’s father, whom he revered had been very active in left-wing politics. So much so that Arthur Iger decided it was worth losing his job to go march with Martin Luther King. So little information has been made available about Arthur Iger there are strong suspicions that if he wasn’t an outright Communist he was undoubtedly a socialist.
Leftwing politics have always been important to Bob Iger, he stated so repeatedly in his biography, and few things have mattered more to the Left than either the destruction or ideological capture of the Walt Disney Company.
By the end of 2019, that capture was complete, and employment at Disney was suddenly based on “inclusivity and equity” rather than merit. The checkbox came first.
It was also at this time that Disney made a major shift at the theme parks from the average American family to the TINK families (Two Incomes No Kids). As well as the Disney Adults; influencers and wanna-be influencers. You can easily spot them, the Wine Moms in Snow White dresses monopolizing popular photo shoot locations for what feels like hours at a time in the hot ass Florida sun.
The theory being that these families have money to burn.
This was a false premise as it turned out. The Average American Family that used to come to Disney spent a lot more money than the TINKs because for them it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, so they would turn their wallets upside down. The influencers likewise are only good for the price of an Annual Pass because they live in Orlando.
The bigger failure has of course been in children’s programming. Most famously, the Proud Family Louder and Prouder turned out to be the BLM version of Schoolhouse Rock! The cable kids’ shows are the exact same shows that are on Disney+. Consequently, the cable companies are in the process of locking out the various Disney channels, Charter is just the start, and the rest will be following suit as soon their contracts run out. This cuts out the primary feeder for Generations Alpha.
Disney’s theatrical releases are more concerned with the quest for the mythical “Modern Audience” than retaining the one that kept the company in business for the past century.
Disney is doing the same thing the comic book industry did in the 1990s. Rather than appeal to a new audience (who admittedly don’t have much money) they decided to bilk the adult market. Generation Alpha is the first American generation in 100 years that doesn’t give a crap about Disney or anything Disney related.
They ate their seed corn. And soon there will be nothing to harvest.
