What Are the Pros and Cons of Disney’s Potential CEOs?
During Disney’s recent shareholder squabble, CEO Bob Iger took a risk.
As Iger spoke with the various investors who support Disney on Wall Street, he learned of their most pressing concerns.
Overall, the feedback Iger received about Disney was decidedly positive, which is why Nelson Peltz lost badly.
However, Wall Street did hold Iger accountable for his previous sin: succession.
Nobody is gonna forget Bob Chapek anytime soon, and that’s Iger’s burden to bear.
As an act of atonement, Disney “leaked” the list of names most likely to replace Iger, and it’s all the people I’ve been saying.
Now that we know for sure that one of them will be named Iger’s successor we should take a closer look at each one.
What are the pros and cons of Disney’s potential CEOs?
Alan Bergman
Among the four candidates Disney insiders hinted would replace Iger, Bergman is perhaps the most enigmatic.
On the one hand, Bergman has worked in essential roles in Disney’s film division for nearly 25 years.
Despite this fact, Bergman is probably the least discussed candidate even though he’s Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment.
We’re talking about quite possibly the most prestigious title in Hollywood, and he’s earned that job due to sustained excellence.
Pro: Wildly Successful
Do you know who Philo Farnsworth is? He invented the television set. Like, it didn’t exist before him.
The inventor earned roughly 300 patents yet was so obscure that he once appeared on a game show called I’ve Got a Secret.
None of the guests could identify him or guess his secret: that he had created the electronic television.
History includes billions of people who demonstrate sustained excellence yet are largely anonymous when they die.
Alan Bergman falls into that camp, as his work with Disney is the stuff of myth and legend.
After working as the CFO of the film division, Bergman became President and later Co-Chairman.
And the fact that I constantly must explain who he is speaks volumes.
People know Kevin Feige and James Cameron and George Lucas.
You could sit on a plane next to Alan Bergman and have no idea who he is.
Despite this fact, I’m not exaggerating when I say that he holds a claim as the most successful studio boss of the past 40 years.
Look at all the Disney animated titles and Pixar films that have come out since 2005. Bergman gets credit for all of them.
Similarly, every Marvel movie under Disney happened with Bergman as President/Co-Chairman.
Con: 2023
There’s an adage in baseball that momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher.
The idea is that you should never get too excited about a victory or depressed after a loss because tomorrow’s another day.
That lesson applies in Hollywood, where last year’s slate of films doesn’t matter if your next five titles are all gonna suck.
Conversely, an entire decade of excellence can vanish in an instant if something untoward happens.
An incredibly competent studio boss named Amy Pascal proved this in the aftermath of the Sony hack. She took the fall for a ridiculous series of events.
The same thing could have happened to Bergman in the aftermath of Disney’s frustrating 2023 film campaign.
Ultimately, all the movie division’s struggles occurred under Bergman’s watch.
Notably, Sean Bailey took the fall instead, but the fact that anyone needed to do so is telling.
Bergman is coming off arguably the worst year of his Disney career. That’s not conducive to a promotion to CEO.
Jimmy Pitaro
The Chairman of ESPN has held this position since March 5th, 2018.
In reviewing my writing, I realize I’ve been a bit hard on Pitaro – or at least dismissive of him – because of events beyond his control.
John Skipper, an ESPN icon, suddenly left the company due to personal reasons.
After a short search, Disney promoted Pitaro as the head of ESPN despite the fact that he’d only been with the company for two years.
That was more than six years ago, and Pitaro has comported himself brilliantly in the face of cataclysmic change in the industry.
Pro: ESPN Is Doing the Impossible
Everyone on Wall Street obsesses on the death of Linear Networks, something that has been happening slowly for a decade now.
The whole thing is like watching a rookie in a professional sport and saying, “Their career will be over one day.”
People are worrying about something that misses the whole point, and it’s Bob Iger himself making that point.
Live sports is the end-all, be-all of media consumption today.
We just had a Super Bowl that earned the most viewers since the Moon Landing in 1969.
The format people use to watch live sports is irrelevant. It’s the demand for the products that matters.
Demand for live sports is quite possibly the highest it’s ever been, as demonstrated by Caitlin Clark’s recent ratings triumphs.
At a time when Linear Television viewing has hit historic lows, ESPN ratings are increasing!
As the head of ESPN, Pitaro deserves all the credit for that, just as Bergman did for Disney’s two decades of film dominance.
Con: ESPN Is Fine without Pitaro
The debate with Pitaro is the one I’ve mentioned with my previous writing, though.
How much does ESPN need Jimmy Pitaro to succeed? It’s the same question that applies to Bergman with Disney films.
You’re gonna watch live sports no matter who is running ESPN, just as you’ll watch Disney movies independent of who the Co-Chairman is.
Sure, the decisions those executives make are integral to your determining whether to watch something.
As an example, Pitaro quickly pivoted with the coverage of the WNBA Draft as an acknowledgment of Clark’s drawing power.
The executive deserves all the credit in the world for what he’s doing. But Caitlin Clark’s the one doing the heavy lifting, right?
Perhaps Pitaro’s greatest skill is that he’s had luck on his side throughout his ESPN career, save for that first year of the pandemic.
For this reason, I continue to underestimate him, which will make it that much funnier if Disney selects him as CFO.
Josh D’Amaro
He runs the parks. You know him. You love him. That’s doubly true if you’ve worked with him. What else is there to say?
Pro: The Parks Make the Most Money
I’ve discussed the final two candidates the most over the past six months.
So, I’ll be brief with them. But there’s a Disney Experiences stat you should know.
During the investor squabble, the math people got involved, and their data highlighted the excellence of Josh D’Amaro’s department.
In fiscal 2023, Disney’s Parks division aka Disney Experiences earned two-thirds of Disney’s overall operating income.
I realize your eyes go glazed when I discuss economics, but it’s a simple statement.
Two out of every three dollars Disney netted in 2023 came from the Parks division. It’s the breadwinner.
That fact alone provides D’Amaro with a rare level of job security.
If momentum is tomorrow’s pitcher, D’Amaro’s got Cy Young, Warren Spahn, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, and Justin Verlander lined up.
As long as there isn’t an unpredictable economic downturn, D’Amaro’s the one making the money for Disney.
Con: He’s the Parks Guy
Given the pro I just listed, this sounds like another pro…until you remember where Bob Chapek had been before his promotion.
Yes, Disney already promoted the person in charge of the Parks division. And it went awry so much that Wall Street holds a grudge.
If Disney announced that Iger’s next replacement is also in charge of the Parks, investors’ heads might explode Scanners-style.
Theme park fans like you and I want D’Amaro to win this job because he’s the closest to you and me in his love of Disney.
The money people don’t feel the same way, which would make his choice perhaps the most controversial other than Bergman.
Yes, that’s a strange fact, given the operating income stat.
Then again, Iger just faced a shareholder struggle while Disney was simultaneously the biggest gainer on Wall Street.
The quickest path to madness is to explain logic from investors.
Dana Walden
Walden is the other Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment. Effectively, Bergman runs films, while Walden runs television.
I don’t need to tell you which one of those has had more success over the past couple of years. And timing is everything.
Pro: The Respect of Her Peers
I could have listed 20 pros here and meant each of them.
Walden is arguably the most accomplished Disney executive of all.
There’s no harder gig in entertainment than the television industry, a place where you frequently crush the dreams of friends.
Many of the advocates of Walden as an executive can recount stories of Walden, a television executive, canceling their shows.
When you can take away something someone loves in a way that they not only respect you but later praise you, well, that’s remarkable.
As we speak, Walden’s fingerprints are all over the creative renaissance happening behind the scenes at Hulu.
If you love any of The Handmaid’s Tale, Only Murders in the Building, Shogun, or The Bear, you have Walden to thank.
In fact, Walden’s resume hearkens back to a young executive from the 1990s who leveraged his television performance to a better gig.
Yes, she’s the 2020s equivalent of Bob Iger. So…
Con: Not a Disney Person Per Se
How long does someone need to work at a place before that company is their career destination?
In the case of Dana Walden, she recently earned her five-year anniversary present at Disney.
We’re not talking about someone who has been there for five minutes.
Also, Walden experienced a trial by fire during the pandemic, and she survived Bob Chapek’s meddling with Disney Entertainment.
This person has faced her demons and stood them down. She’s a commendable executive whose performance is above approach.
Notably, Walden has accomplished this feat at two different companies, but what seems like a compliment is also a curse.
The most strident criticism of Bob Chapek was that he didn’t love Disney the way he loved making money.
Anybody running Disney should care about both, but if you’re not in it for the glory of Mickey Mouse, please get out.
Walden made her bones working for a company that didn’t even have a theme park division.
For this reason, we have reason to wonder how much of a priority the parks would be. Similarly, live sports aren’t her thing, either.
Of course, that’s the problem with all four potential candidates for CEO.
They lack the cross-training that Chapek, for all his shortcomings, had. He worked for Disney Entertainment but then transitioned to the parks.
Then again, that statement alone underscores how cross-training doesn’t always make for a better CEO candidate.
There’s so much nuance to this entire decision, but I’ve narrowed my thinking.
I expect Walden to win, but I’m hoping as a theme park fanatic that D’Amaro pulls off the upset. And right now, that would be an upset.
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