Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Friday, August 18th, 2023

Is it time to break up Disney?

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, August 18th, 2023. 

IS IT TIME TO BREAK UP DISNEY?
I have to admit that I find the industry near-worship of Bob Iger a bit perplexing. Until his recent ill-timed comments during an interview on CNBC, Iger generally had this reputation as a savvy businessman that also had an emotional connection to the creative side of the business. And if his return as head of Disney has highlighted anything, it's that his earlier reputation might be undeserved.

One of my favorite Substack's is

BIG by Matt Stoller

, which focuses on the way that monopolies have wound their way into every aspect of our lives. And with all of the talk about potential media mergers and acquisitions - many of them involving Disney - I wanted to highlight this piece of Stoller's from 2019 in which he argues Disney should be broken up. Obviously much has happened with the company since then, but much of it is still relevant to the discussions we're having today:

As I’ll show, the new Disney is more a private equity group than studio, collecting brands and using them to bargain aggressively with partners, suppliers and consumers. Imperial Disney is the result not of animation genius but mergers and acquisitions genius. It is not a corporation that pushes the bounds of artistic and technological possibility but a corporation that pushes the bounds of legal possibility under the radical pro-consolidation framework that has existed since the 1990s, as well as the Clinton-era ‘engagement’ framework that encouraged deep integration of American multi-nationals into China.

He also writes about the then-new streaming service Disney+ and while I think that part of the business hasn't taken the direction Steller feared, reading the piece is a good reminder that the strategies analysts mock when discussing Disney+ originated with Iger, not his much-criticized successor Bob Chapek:

Iger goes on to note something even more remarkable, saying about the company’s new streaming service that “it would take some time before success would be measured in profits.” It would instead, he wrote, “be measured in subscribers.” Consider what’s he really saying, which is that Disney isn’t trying to make a profit. That’s crazy. No one can compete with an entertainment powerhouse that sells half the movie tickets in the country, that has overly strong copyright protections, as well unlimited loss-making capacity. Iger goes on:

We wanted the service to be accessible to as many people as possible around the world, and we had settled on a price that we estimated would bring in somewhere between sixty and ninety million subscribers in the first five years. When Kevin announced we would be selling it for $6.99 a month, there was an audible gasp in the room.

The response from Wall Street went far beyond anything we anticipated. In 2015, our stock dropped like a stone when I talked about disruption. Now it was soaring. The day after our investors conference it jumped 11 percent, to a record high. By the end of the month, it was up nearly 30 percent.

This criticism will resonate with anyone who is following the issues diving the Hollywood union negotiations with the studios.

A subscription service based on monopoly power breaks this entire process. Netflix, for instance, pretends to have fancy algorithms to determine quality, but it’s not clear that they have figured out a good quality filter superior to the price system. Central planning in movies and TV shows doesn’t deliver as much as decentralized production and distribution, for the simple reason that a centralized system is less likely to let as much weird stuff through. Disney is likely to lose its filmmaking edge; indeed, it is already so large and has so many brands that the bad remake of films like The Lion King do suggest a loss of creativity. Such a loss will not matter to Disney the corporation, because to will have distributive power to compensate, but it will matter to all of us who love movies, and those who make them, and to the societies all over the world who use film and art to make sense of the world.

So maybe the question we should be asking is whether it makes financial sense to break up several of the big media companies into smaller, most focused entities. Disney seems like a good candidate and you can make a pretty good argument Comcast easily falls into this territory as well.

What do you think? Does it makes sense to break up Disney or Comcast? What would those new companies look like? Email me at rick@allyourscreens.com

TWEET OF THE DAY

THE IMPACT OF THE WGA/SAG-AFTRA STRIKES COMES TO STREAMING
Anytime there is a prolonged production disruption, some shows that would otherwise survive find themselves being cancelled. It happened after the 2008 WGA strike, when some shows were cancelled or not picked up for another season due to abbreviated broadcast TV schedules. It happened again in the wake of the COVID shutdowns, when some shows didn't return because steamers decided that the pandemic production delays would have led to a multiple-year gap between seasons.

And now we're starting to see that happen in the streaming world this year, as Amazon announced the cancellation of two shows today that had been previously renewed by the streamer.

The season two pickup of The Peripheral has now been cancelled. The series followed "Flynn (Kick-Ass‘ Chloë Grace Moretz), a smart young woman stuck in a dead-end town until she gets a taste of a new path courtesy of a virtual reality-esque headset. But that supposedly fictional reality turns out to be more real than ever, as she’s pulled into a strange world of knife-wielding robot chauffeurs, disappearing cars and ear-shattering explosions."

This decision is a disappointment. The Peripheral was uneven at times, but it was an entertaining, sometime mind-blowing series and I was looking forward to seeing where it was headed in season two.

Amazon has also decided against moving forward with the four-episode season two of A League Of Their Own. The show was given a shortened final season order in April, following a fervent campaign by fans of the show. This was likely a pretty easy call for Amazon. Season one was only a modest hit and it would be hard to get the season completed in the post-strike crunch of production orders. Especially with a large cast that will have conflicting schedules.

ODDS AND SODS
* If you wonder why I took on the daunting task of running my own media business instead of simply being a freelancer, this piece argues that being a freelance journalist has been essentially turned into a hobby.

* The Ezra Miller movie The Flash will premiere Friday, August 25th on Max.

* Fledgling cable news channel NewsNation has become the home of UFO coverage. It's brought them big ratings —and some embarrassing errors.

WHAT'S NEW TODAY AND TOMORROW:

FRIDAY, AUGUST 18TH:
Bad Things (Shudder)
Chris Fleming: Hell (Peacock)
Claim To Fame Season Finale (ABC)
Guns & Gulaabs (Netflix)
Harlan Coben's Shelter Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Honest Renovations Series Premiere (The Roku Channel)
LEGO Disney Princess: The Castle Quest (Disney+)
Love, Sex & 30 Candles (Netflix)
MarkKim+Chef Series Premiere (Max)
Mask Girl (Netflix)
New Bandits (Cangaço Novo) (Prime Video)
Puppy Love (Freevee)
Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie (Apple TV+)
10 Days Of A Bad Man (Netflix)
The Monkey King (Netflix)
The More Love Grows (Hallmark Movies And Mysteries)
The Winter King Series Premiere (MGM+)
Time Of Essence (OWN)
When Frank Met Carlitos (Disney+)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19TH, 2023:
Never Too Late To Celebrate (Hallmark)
Stand Up To Cancer (ABC/CBS/Fox/NBC)

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20TH, 2023:
Disappeared Season Premiere (Investigation Discovery)
Picture Her Dead (Lifetime)
San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time (MGM+)
761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers (History)
Sister Wives Season Premiere (TLC)
The Winter King Series Premiere (MGM+)
TMZ Presents: Gilgo Beach Serial Murders: Missed Warning Signs (Fox)

MONDAY, AUGUST 21ST, 2023:
Secrets Of Prince Andrew (A&E)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU MONDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.