Kevin Meyer isn’t running Disney, and in his interview on The Grill on Wednesday, he declined to speculate what he would do if he were in CEO Bob Chapek’s shoes, but that might give him a reason to weigh in on Mouse House and was not stopped. There is debate over whether it can get by without its two big brands, ESPN and ABC.
TheWrap editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman asked Meyer on Wednesday whether Disney “could” do without both ESPN and ABC when he questioned whether the brand really fit into the company’s portfolio.
“I think they could. I’m not sure if they should or should, but they certainly can,” Mayer said.
Meyer — who is now co-CEO of Candle Media, the media company that owns Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Cocomelan company Moonbug Entertainment — was previously president of Disney’s direct-to-consumer and international division working with Bob Iger who helped launch Disney+. Prior to taking over as CEO of Chapek. And Meyer praised Chapek’s efforts at work, saying he has elevated Disney+ “the way I would have” even after dealing with “a very tough hand with Covid.”
But Meyer backed down on the idea that Disney’s real big brands are Marvel, “Star Wars,” Pixar, and Disney, with 20 Century Studios’ storytelling ability to push them further. Meyer explained that focusing even more on those aspects of the company could still be a “huge value driver” for him.
He was less optimistic about live, linear TV and that means Disney should still stay in the game and ABC. It’s a debate that’s picked up steam in recent months when active investor Daniel Loeb took a .4% stake in the company earlier this year and initially advised Disney to spin off ESPN as a standalone entity. Having said that it can help reduce the company’s debt. , though he eventually withdrew that recommendation, and Chapek himself has doubled down on his commitment to keeping ESPN.
“I think it’s hard to see a big future for Linear TV, Linear TV in entertainment,” Meyer said, explaining that when it comes to entertainment, there’s a need to air a show at a certain time of the evening. There is little reason, and entertainment should be distributed on the basis of what content is most needed.
“You can provide entertainment very easily now, and the whole lead-in, lead-out logic, audiences who watch one show to move to the next, is no better lead-in than a recommendation engine. Who really understands that person’s preferences vs. he’s watching ABC at 9 a.m., so let’s take him somewhere else at 9:30. It’s a very blunt force tool,” he said. For sports and other things, news, things that have to be seen in real time, totally different. But for entertainment, there is no real time requirement for that.”
Read more from Kevin Meyer’s talk at The Grill discussing the “state of the industry.”
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