Dana Walden Talks Disney TV Post-Merger
Given the sheer number of IPs, studios, and staff, one could excuse any executive if they felt overwhelmed by the task of organizing post-merger Disney TV. In contrast, Dana Walden relished the job.
Walden, the chairman of Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment, said the daunting responsibility of restructuring was precisely why she stayed on.
And for Walden, direct-to-consumer — streaming — at scale is a big part of that future structure.
Streaming Will Be A Big Part Of Disney TV
Walden… said that one of the reasons she stayed on following the Disney-21st Century Fox merger was because she wanted to be part of a company with great storytellers but also a vision of what is to come. That company is Disney, who will have multiple streaming platforms under its umbrella in the not-too-distant future.
“It’s hard to imagine a media company surviving well into the future without a strategy that is direct to consumer,” Walden told Cynthia Littleton at the Variety TV Summit on Wednesday. “That’s just the reality of how an entire generation of consumers has been taught to consume television.”
For consumers, it remains hard to imagine what a Disney streaming service might look like when it debuts. But the immense volume of content now controlled by Disney makes for a formidable force.
And, to Walden’s thinking, Disney will benefit from being able to study how streaming has been done previously.
“Our company got the benefit of seeing the shortcomings of our various streaming competitors, and we are doing it at a scale that is undeniable,” she said to Variety, echoing her boss, Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is now arguably the biggest content company in the business with the second largest streaming platform in the business and an incredibly robust plan to launch Disney Plus.”
Horizontal Structure & Less Bureaucracy
Most Disney fans will be excited to hear “incredibly robust plan” for Disney+ et al. However, what does Walden think is the most essential components of the new studio structure?
Variety explained:
Walden credited working with Walt Disney Television chairman Peter Rice and his CFO Ravi Ahuja in figuring out the best way to structure the organization.
“[Ultimately] where we came out was the idea of having a horizontal structure, not trying to build one big super studio that has a lot of layers and a lot of processes,” she said.
“We feel like contracting those businesses would have given us fewer filters; fewer opportunities to have great relationships with our creators, and that we were building a bureaucratic organization,” she continued. “That is the opposite of what we want.”
“We’re manking sure we get the right shows to the right platforms…” Dana Walden
Check out the fascinating piece and watch the video above.
What are your thoughts about the switch to a streaming-centric structure? Will you subscribe to Disney+? Let us know in the comments.