Friday, September 11, 2015

Disney Corporate Discusses Cash Flow and Profits

Bigwigs of the Walt Disney Company talk about the theme parks, talk about movie franchises, and the changing universe of content delivery systems at the 2015 Bank of America and Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference .,.

... A decade ago when Bob Iger took over as CEO he laid out a really clear and concise strategy that had three pillars. The first of which was around high quality branded content; the second is geographic expansion; and the third was really leveraging technology across the business and that was a strategy that has served us well and continues to do so. ...

We talked about this Disney Ecosystem, the unbelievably rich library of content we have but also the pipeline of new content for us means that there is endless opportunity for us to keep things fresh to monetize and leverage franchises around the whole company. ...

[Frozen] was a new franchise [two years ago] and now it is something that’s throughout the company. And so again we know that the strength of our creative organization allows us to over time add those franchises to the library. ... We’ve got more going on with Frozen in terms of the parks, it’s already in the parks around the world, but we got an attraction opening in 2017 with Frozen.

-- Tom Staggs, Chief Operating Officer

Here and there, old Disney hands complain to me that "Disney isn't DISNEY anymore."

Well, yeah.

And Warner Bros. isn't Warner Bros. anymore. Because Jack, Harry, Sam and the rest of the Warner siblings are long dead. Just like Walt is no longer with us. And time marches on.

What is the Disney Company now? In 2015? It's a wide-ranging collection of brands, similar to how Berkshire-Hathaway (Warren Buffett's company) is a collection of brands.

"Walt Disney Productions" started changing in the late seventies and early eighties, and now the change is on steroids. I don't look at it as good or bad, but just the way American corporations evolve in the 21st century: If they survive and grow, their original characters inevitably morph into something else.

We are a loong way from the days of good old, sleepy old, Walt Disney Productions.

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