Disney Headlines for March 11th, 2025

Most of the time, The Walt Disney Company makes perfect sense to me.

The company’s decisions, while oftentimes inscrutable, possess a reliable internal logic that makes them easily acceptable.

Then, we have weeks like the most recent one, which left me scratching my head and wondering what was going on.

In this week’s Disney Headlines, we’ll discuss the financially motivated layoffs and shutdowns…and someone’s giant raise.

The News Gets Thinner

My wife has worked for news organizations basically since I’ve known her.

So, our family is acutely aware of the constant industry-wide trend to get thinner whenever possible.

That’s one of those polite colloquialisms that really means “tons of layoffs.” It’s just a part of the business.

During the 20^th century, news organizations repeatedly proved themselves as a reliable pillar of society.

Newspapers, radio, and television coverage all garnered attention and, thereby, huge margins for media corporations.

Alas, the internet disrupted traditional news coverage more than just about any other business.

Suddenly, the advertising revenue dollars dried up. Even worse, people stopped watching network television.

Here’s a remarkable stat. The number ten show of 1994, Roseanne, earned more than 20 million viewers for the season.

In 2024, the number-one show managed about seven million viewers. The number ten show was…much less. 

Where did everybody go? The answers are YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and streaming services.

For companies like Disney, the problem is that they’re still paying their news divisions like it’s 1995. Something’s gotta give.

This past week, the dam finally burst as ABC News underwent significant layoffs.

Disney reported the news as six percent of its staff, which is frankly misleading.

About 200 people lost their jobs, which is a devastating hit to a news-gathering organization like ABC News.

538 Failed to Predict This

Simultaneously, Disney ended 538, the site it’d acquired from Nate Silver.

This publication gained some renown for accurately predicting a few elections, which wasn’t as hard as it sounds until 2016.

Disney acquired 538 in hopes of leveraging the staff to augment ESPN’s reporting on various sports stories.

The data analysts at 538 were terrific about finding stories that otherwise went unnoticed.

 

However, Silver became a bit of a headache, causing Disney to push him out. Once he left, 538 lost its identity.

So, the closure of 538 doesn’t merely make sense. It was inevitable.

For his part, Silver acted magnanimously about the closure, noting that Disney never interfered with content.

Whenever an independent sells to a large corporation, the fears are twofold. The first is that the new bosses will run editorial.

Basically, a new group of people will tell the staff what to write, a system that NEVER works.

The second fear, the one that kept me from being a millionaire, is that the corporation will casually close the site one day.

Warner Bros. Discovery has done this with several startups it purchased, infamously disappearing plenty of content.

Friends of mine have watched their life’s work evaporate overnight, and there was nothing they could do about it.

That’s what has come to pass at 538, as the site now redirects to ABC News. All 538 content is just gone.

So, Silver would have been totally within his rights to throw a tantrum. I would have.

Instead, the analyst expressed a modest disappointment that Disney never ran 538 as a business, effectively giving it too much leeway.

Lots of content creators would kill to have that sort of autonomy, yet it ironically killed 538 in the end.

All this would make perfect sense if not for…

Stephen A. Smith Gets Paid

The last time I saw Stephen A. Smith, he looked like this:

I’m not someone who enjoys the engagement trap of sports media, the endless cycle of “I hated that decision.”

But I was VERY early on the Stephen A. Smith bandwagon. When he’s not doing his shtick, he’s a brilliant, insightful person.

The problem is that people watch for his shtick, which makes him tons of money.

To wit, Disney just extended Smith’s contract into a five-year, $100 million deal. That’s $20 million a year.

That’s the kind of money in sports that typically requires an excellent jump shot or the ability to read a fire zone blitz and hit the open receiver.

Smith gets that for talking, and he should. I just mentioned how broadcast television ratings are in decline.

People love Smith’s shtick so much that he has remained viral and his numbers have held well over the years.

So, the outspoken broadcaster knows his worth and deserves his money.

What I don’t understand is how Disney could have possibly announced this deal during the same week as layoffs.

Like, the bodies weren’t even cold. And here’s a noteworthy fact.

If Disney paid the 200 people it just laid off an average of $100,000 annually, they’d collectively earn…$20 million a year.

To Disney, Stephen A. Smith is worth 200 staffers at ABC News and 538. And they’re not even wrong to think that.

This analyst makes the company an almost incomprehensible amount of money.

But the optics of the pay increase vs. the optics is…well, I was mortified.

This is the kind of mistake I’d expect under Bob Chapek, not Bob Iger.

Disney’s Hulu Mishap

Things are going great at Hulu. Paradise has become the latest hit for Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Dana Walden.

On the most recent Nielsen Streaming Chart, Hulu shows seven of the top ten most popular acquired programs.

That’s the new term for what we used to call reruns. People will turn on Hulu and leave a show running for hours.

As one of the oldest streaming services, Hulu has also hosted several live-streaming events over the years.

None of them rivaled The Academy Awards in scale, though, and that’s where the final Headline comes into play.

During Hulu’s livestream of the Oscars, the service cut. Twice.

When it happened the first time, Hulu suffered a glitch that caused accounts to go unrecognized.

Some viewers simply didn’t exist in the system for a while. Techs rushed to fix the problem, and that’s where it gets funny.

Their fix presumed that the Academy Awards would end at the three-hour mark.

Anyone who watches the Oscars knows that they NEVER end on time. And this doomed people watching on Hulu.

The livestream ended just before Mikey Madison won an Oscar for Best Actress.

Hulu viewers couldn’t watch Best Director or Best Picture, either.

Hey, quick question: what’s the most important award at the Oscars? So, yeah, it was a disaster.

Assessing the Damage

Here’s the fascinating part, though. I read a lot of analysis about the impact this debacle would have on Hulu.

To a person, media insiders agreed that it didn’t matter at all.

People who watch livestreams have such low expectations that they just assume a service will crash a few times.

So, this story is funny more than anything else, but isn’t this a strange thing for a business?

Everyone just assumes you’ll screw up. It’s like operating a streaming service is the same as running the New York Jets.

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Feature Photo; Disney