Bob Iger Says Calling TV Businesses Not Core Was a 'Mistake' (original) (raw)

Bob Iger has long been one of the more measured and eloquent speakers in Hollywood. Well, he was measured up until last summer. In a wide-ranging interview at the Sun Valley conference last summer, he lost a bit of goodwill when he said the demands of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were “not realistic.”

And then he lost some more — this time internally. Iger also said he thought Disney‘s TV businesses, including ABC, its local TV stations, and other cable channels, “may not be core” to Disney’s bread-and-butter business.

In a new interview with Kelly Ripa on her podcast, Iger said those comments were a “mistake” — or at least a mistake to say them in front of a camera.

“I wasn’t wrong about my observation, but it wasn’t necessary for me to utter those words publicly, because it created an incredible amount of anxiety,” he said on “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa.” “I should have been more sensitive to how those words would be not just interpreted, but how they would be felt by people who are really important to me, who are even Disney Legends.”

Iger’s intention back then was to signal to Wall Street that everything was on the table. He noted to Ripa that he never actually said they were intent on selling ABC. Ripa, who hosts “Live with Kelly and Mark” aside her husband Mark Consuelos, said she wasn’t actually panicked about Disney selling the broadcast network — but she’s not blind to the trends.

“Lo and behold, nobody wants us,” Ripa joked. “What do you have against linear television? What have we ever done?”

Iger admitted that his message to an intended target had collateral damage.

“I wanted them to know, this is after I came back to Disney, that my head was not in the sand, I was not in denial about the changes that had occurred in our business that were making it tougher to do business. So I just wanted to show that I’ve not got my head in the sand, I’m a realist about it, and everything is on the table,” Iger said. “That was a mistake, it turns out.”

Elsewhere in the Ripa interview, Iger discussed his succession plans. Iger said he’s “obsessed” with finding his replacement, and that he’s eager to actually retire again. He also addressed rumors that he was mulling a run for President of the United States; a prominent Democratic figure told Iger that he should run for the office because he “looked the part,” Iger said.

“I said, ‘Give me a break. That’s not enough,’” he explained, without revealing the politician’s identity. (He went only as far as to say it was not Bill Clinton.)

Check out Iger’s full podcast interview here.