← Channels with Peter Kafka
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- [00:00]
Julia Alexander
Chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox Onobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment prescription.
- [00:18]
Peter Kafka
Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to
- [00:22]
Julia Alexander
weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms.
- [00:24]
Peter Kafka
Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injecting are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck
- [00:35]
Julia Alexander
and injection site pain, fatigue and headache.
- [00:37]
Peter Kafka
Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
- [00:54]
Julia Alexander
Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. When you think of someone with ADHD, who comes to mind? Is it a woman in her 30s? Just this constant feeling of being too much, you know, too kinetic, too loud, all of the too anything and just really feeling like people got some kind of social rulebook that I never got. The Changing Face of adhd. That's this week on Explain It To Me New episodes Sundays. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:31]
Peter Kafka
AI can fix Healthcare.
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Julia Alexander
I'm Henry Blodgett and this week on my show Solutions, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Bob Wachter, author of
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Peter Kafka
A Giant How AI is Transforming Healthcare
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Julia Alexander
and what It Means for our future.
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Peter Kafka
Dr. Wachter was not expecting to be an AI optimist. What convinced him?
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Julia Alexander
Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts. To hear more foreign.
- [02:02]
Peter Kafka
From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider. Today we are coming to you a little earlier than normal because we have news to discuss. Disney has a new CEO and Bob Iger says this time he means it. Really? He swears? So who is Josh d'?
- [02:24]
Julia Alexander
Amaro?
- [02:25]
Peter Kafka
Who is Disney's new CEO? And why will this time be different than the last time? Bob Iger appointed a new CEO and then came back shortly after? We have an excellent person to walk us through it. That's Puck's Julia Alexander. She has covered Disney for years and as we discuss, she worked there for a little bit on strategery stuff. Julia is smart and informed. You will like listening to her. So here's me talking to Julia Alexander. I'm here with Julia Alexander from Puck. Welcome back, Julia.
- [02:56]
Julia Alexander
Thank you so much for having me. How are you?
- [03:00]
Peter Kafka
Everything is great. The world is fantastic and I know that you are fantastic as well. So now that we've skipped that part, there is news today. Very delighted that you're on to talk about this news. There is a new CEO of Disney who is Josh d' Moro and why is he the new CEO of Disney? Julia Alexander.
- [03:21]
Julia Alexander
Josh d' Amaro is another parks guy for Disney watchers. This is the second parks guy in less than half a decade who's coming into Disney to run Disney.
- [03:31]
Peter Kafka
We had Bobby Bob Chapek. Yeah. Six years ago, almost to this date was was announced as the new Disney CEO. That did not work out.
- [03:38]
Julia Alexander
It did not work out. And I think that's why you have plenty of Disney watchers both on, on the analyst side as well as just the fan side, questioning whether Josh is the right guy over. Dana Walden, who is the head of tv, head of streaming, has now been promoted to kind of this chief content officer role that Bella Bajaria holds at Netflix. Kind of her contemporary. And why is Josh d' Amaro the now the new CEO of Disney? Because Disney is going forward, Disney will be more of an experiences company than it already has been and less of a media first company.
- [04:14]
Peter Kafka
So slow that down. So people on who listen to this podcast, we spend a ton of time talking about Disney and streaming and sometimes Disney and movies and sometimes espn. I think we never talk about the parks business on this podcast, so that's my fault. But. But what does that mean that Disney is becoming a park slash experience company more than a TV streaming movies company? Is that because the the parks business is really growing and that's the future, or is it because the other business is shrinking so that makes parks a bigger deal in comparison?
- [04:53]
Julia Alexander
It's a 10,000 foot question, so I'm going to try to answer it as succinctly and entertaining as possibly. Here's the thing. Disney's always been up and experiences business. Disneyland has existed for many, many, many years.
- [05:07]
Peter Kafka
Disney World Paris had a big. Yeah. And when we say experiences, we're talking about parks and cruises and there's parks all over the world.
- [05:14]
Julia Alexander
Cruises, video games. Right. We're also talking about that Disney invested in Epic Games, which has Fortnite and building out a digital theme park that is also under Josh tomorrow. I think if you look at the numbers, Peter, like tomorrow's unit, which, which is all these different experiences contribute roughly 60% of Disney's profit in the last year they invested or they plan to invest $60 billion back in 2023 into the parks division. If you look at the growth in the experiences segment, it grew 6% in fiscal 2025 compared to the prior year, finishing at just over $36 billion. We're talking about the first quarter ever that experiences saw 10 billion plus in revenue. These are the basic data points that explain why tomorrow is there. But the fandom reason is that it's really difficult to try and predict what entertainment will look like a decade from now, let alone Disney's role in entertainment will look like a decade from now. With YouTube coming in, obviously on the TV sets, with Instagram, with TikTok, with anything that we haven't even seen yet. OpenAI Sora, whatever it might be, we don't know. It's really easy to look at other supplementary data points and say that people are spending more than ever on experiences and tangible experiences that they have intimate memories of with their friends and family. And I think Disney goes, and if the big question at the Mouse House is how do we monetize love? And it is the big question, the answer is no longer necessarily in content first. It's, it's, it's experiences first.
- [06:56]
Peter Kafka
That's real. So that's really interesting, right? We don't know what the future of movies and television, et cetera, is, is going to be like. If you're Disney, you're hopeful, you're a big player in that, but you don't really know, right? What if we're in a world where everyone is just watching six seconds, you know, not Vines, TikToks, whatever. And maybe they're involving Disney, maybe they're not. The presumption is then people will continue to go to parks and go on cruises and spend money. There are just talk about the little bit more about the parks business just in general. Is, is that, is it growing because more people are going to parks every year? Is it growing because Disney has figured out how to extract more money from the people who are going to parks and, and going on cruises?
- [07:43]
Julia Alexander
It's definitely the latter. It's this idea that people are willing to spend more on luxury experiences. And this isn't central to Disney. Disney just smartly, the Executives at Disney smartly looked around at what was happening and said, we can play in this game too. I mean, if you look at the amount of pure dollars that people spend on going to concerts, that people spend on going to sporting events, that people spend on these kind of experiences like Meow Wolf, which is this kind of interactive experience out in Las Veg and other parts of the country, this idea that Disney realized they could just raise prices. And to Bob Chapek's credit, this was something that he realized back in the day too. And people will continue to spend because it is an experience that they are not going to get elsewhere, means that they can monetize per customer at a higher rate than they're going to get in the content business. So while people are saying, I will go to the parks more often, I will go on the cruises, we're seeing Disney launch a lot of new vessels in different parts of the world too. We're seeing them kind of go out to the Middle east. We're seeing them go out and buy more islands to kind of have these experiences on the cruise front as well to. To kind of supplement the parks, I think you're seeing more and more that if anyone who's listening to this has been to a park, they know that they can just get more dollars per customer. I went recently with a few friends who work at Disney, and the amount of money that you spend just to ensure that you can get on a ride within the allotted time, that you're
- [09:15]
Peter Kafka
at the park, at Disney and every other park, essentially. Right. You buy your ticket to get in, but essentially, unless you're buying the upgrades to help you get through the lines faster, you can't really go to the park. Like, you can technically go to the park, but you'll go to like two rides and you'll kind of have a shitty experience.
- [09:34]
Julia Alexander
Right? And this is why I think that New York Times op ed from a few months ago, I'm sure you remember it, Peter, which kind of looked at the state of arguably the kind of state of wealth inequality in this country through the lens of Disney and Americana nostalgia, I think really hit at the core of what a lot of Disney executives get worried about. They're worried about the idea that Disney is no longer this affordable place, not that it ever really was, but to. To bring your family and go and have this incredible experience that then redefines the love that you have for the IP and the content and kind of creates this flywheel. And at the same time, they also realize that they can serve the top 10%, 20% of customers and not have to wor about any meaningful isolation from their customer base and they're still going to increase profits. And so if the idea, again the sentence is how do you monetize the love that people have for these worlds, Star Wars, Avatar, Mickey Mouse, whatever it might be, it's less clear that you're going to be able to monetize that the way you want on the TV front and on the film front. But you can absolutely continue to kind of price gouge at the parks and it will continue to increase year over year.
- [10:45]
Peter Kafka
So. So beyond the fact that tomorrow runs parks, parks are the key engine to Disney. According to this line of thought. What has he done during his tenure there that suggests that he's really good at that business? In particular, before we get to the rest of of what he has to do now that he's going to be CEO of Disney, this is a guy who was essentially a Disney lifer. I think he worked at Gillette for a few years, but he spent a couple decades at Disney, almost all of it in parks. What has he. Where are his wins?
- [11:15]
Julia Alexander
The big ones are really overseeing and helping in the launch of parks in China. You've got Hong Kong, you got Shanghai. He's also the one who led the deal on investing in Epic Games and looking at what the digital theme park component may look like. This is at the height of the Metaverse. We can debate on whether or not that plays out long term. I think Mark Zuckerberg over at Meta is having those same debates with his team. But he's also just. There's an A quality to him. Someone at Disney said this to me, an executive the other day when we were talking about the succession. And he said there's a Walt like quality to him, as in a Walt Disney that Bob Iger has. The CEO of Disney, unlike even the CEO of Apple or the CEO of Nike or any of these other big American brands. The CEO of Disney really means something to Disney fans as much as they do analysts.
- [12:12]
Peter Kafka
It's a public figure.
- [12:13]
Julia Alexander
He's a public figure. He walks the parks and people want to come up to him to take photos with him. This is something that Bob Chapek never had. He didn't appre. He didn't want to hang out with the people who were creating his business, who were, who were paying to thousands of dollars in order to kind of hang out in these parks. And whenever I talk to people at Disney, the two people or the two executives who were in this front running race originally to be CEO. Right. When we look at the four, it was, it was Dana Walden and Alan Bergman from the content side. It was Josh DeMar from the park side and Jimmy Pitaro from the ESPN side. The only two executives that I hear over and over and over again from people inside Disney that really had that quality that the board was also looking for that they couldn't put a number to. But that was so important for the Disney CEO. Whereas Jimmy Pitaro and Josh Tomorrow. And I think the other part that Josh tomorrow has that is so important
- [13:05]
Peter Kafka
in 2020, in some ways a vibes pick, right? Like we like the way he looks and appears and carries himself and represents the company and that is a big part of the job. And he kind of looks like a guy in the Bob Iger mold.
- [13:23]
Julia Alexander
He also is one of the only guys with experience dealing with the government in Florida. Right. Disney at its core is a real estate company at this point. And dealing with Ron DeSantis and whoever might come next in Florida, dealing with the Trump administration over the next few years is a very important quality. We know that Dana Walden's best friend is Kamala Harris. We know that Dana is extremely la. Alan is extremely la. Jimmy's extremely Connecticut. The idea that Josh d' Maro has experience with global policy, with Republican policy in Florida. The idea that he has this affable quality of being like Walt that also goes a long way when you are in the midst of trying to figure out what potential M and A activity as well as what potential investment activity in general you're going to have to do on the entertainment side to get through this kind of weird transition period.
- [14:20]
Peter Kafka
So we've talked about Dana Walden a bunch now. In theory, like you said, this was supposed to be a four person internal bake off. Practically it was seen as Dana Walden versus Tomorrow in theory. They were also going to look at outside candidates. No names have ever leaked out of anyone they looked at seriously. So maybe they did, maybe they didn't. And one of the the main argument for Dana Walden was separate from the Kamala Harris stuff was Disney's an entertainment company. She runs entertainment. She knows, she knows how television and movies work. She has relationships with all those people. They've gone ahead and promoted tomorrow to CEO. They are keeping Walden on. They've given her a new title as Chief Creative officer. Is that Chief Content Officer essentially sort of his number two. Is that a move that is meant to placate people in the creative community? Agents, directors, talent, etc, hey, you can still work with us Dana's still on board. Do they expect her to stick around, do you think? Or is this sort of you paper over? This is a consolation prize, but you don't expect her to take it.
- [15:32]
Julia Alexander
You know what's funny, Peter? And I'm going to throw this back at you because I'm curious on your for your thoughts on it. If you if this was 2019, this was 2018, if this was the height of streaming subscribers and everyone investing in original content, I think the question of does this placate Dana Walden is much more interesting. Since 2026, streaming at best is a manageable operations business. It is equivalent to having the tech. The tech, the futurist component of it has gone away. Now it's just how do we get to 10% profit margins?
- [16:06]
Peter Kafka
Where's the we know how, we know how it works. And it's just a matter of your lovers are what kind of shows can you create and acquire? How much can you charge for them? How do you manage your churn? There's no sort of mystery to running it. There's skill, but there's no mystery.
- [16:22]
Julia Alexander
That's right. Where does Dana go? Where is she going to go? Is she going to go to Netflix? They're trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. It's going to go to Apple or Amazon. They're invested in sports. And who knows what Eddie Q or whoever the next future CEO of Apple wants to do with that division genuinely in 2026. Even if they didn't want to play Kate, Dana, I don't know where she would go. She's got the best job. Outside of Donna Langley over at NBC
- [16:48]
Peter Kafka
Universal, there are very few of these jobs. True. But do you think that, that they think they really need her? Because again, we're talking if this is a replay of six years ago where Bob Iger very suddenly right before COVID and says, you know what? I'm done being the CEO of Disney. Here's the new CEO. He's the Parks guy. He content background either. But don't worry, I Bob Iger, I'm going to stick around to be sort of a creative helper. And that didn't work for a bunch of different reasons. But they, they needed to say, look, we know the park sky doesn't have any entertainment experience, but we're going to figure it out. Do they think they need Dana Walden to help Josh tomorrow figure out entertainment, or do you think they think they can succeed one way or the other?
- [17:38]
Julia Alexander
I think if you asked Josh that question, he would say he also needs Dana Walden to compare it to another company's organizational structure. I think if you asked Greg Peters, does he need Ted Sarandos and Bella Bajari over at Netflix, he would say absolutely. He can run 500 AB tests over the course of a year, but he doesn't know what great content is entertainment, what is culturally zeitgeisty and what to invest in and who to invest in. And Dana has that. I don't think Josh is as interested in taking lunches in West Hollywood with Ryan Murphy the way that Dana Walden is now. Is the park's chief role different today than it was 20 years ago? 100%. Think about how they launch IP from the parks, how they bring IP into the parks when they're launching a new Galaxy's Edge in some country. Josh is talking to George Lucas, he's talking to J.J. abrams. Right. He's talking to the people who are developing this ip. So he has the relationships with talent, but he doesn't have the expertise and the gut to say this is the type of content that we should invest in. And I, and I think that's important to point out here, Peter. Just because Disney picked another Parks guy and just because Parks is clearly the profit center of this company over the next 10 years, especially entertainment throughout theatrical and television and streaming goes through this transition period, does not mean that Disney works as a non media company. The media is so important to it and so they do need, so you
- [19:12]
Peter Kafka
need an important, you need a person who understands media doesn't necessarily have to be Dana Walden. Right. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who have relationships with talent and are fancy themselves good at picking movies and TV shows. Right. There are other people available for that work.
- [19:28]
Julia Alexander
Work.
- [19:29]
Peter Kafka
If she doesn't stick around, and I will point out, and I always love pointing this out, that when Bob Iger initially was Disney CEO, the savvy take was he is not going to be Disney CEO for long because he doesn't have any creative capacity because he is a suit. Yes, he in theory came up through talent because he was a weatherman, but really he's a stuffed suit. He'll never have the creative capacity that Michael Eisner who he was replacing was. And so he's a short term guy. He's not going to be having this job. Obviously now he's considered this great talent whisperer. So it is possible that Josh tomorrow has that capacity and or can grow into that capacity.
- [20:08]
Julia Alexander
Absolutely. And I mean if you look at Bob Iger, he strikes this very strong friendship that he loves to Talk about with Steve Jobs circa 2006, right? That leads to a lot of the Pixar stuff and kind of the early distribution deals on itunes puts Disney ahead of the game. But if also, if you look at what he did, you know, he buys Lucasfilm and brings in Kathleen Kennedy, he buys Marvel, and there's Kevin Feige. He has this team of directors that he works with who he says, you go and figure out what this IP is going to look like. And I'm still the operator. I think if you also. Again, going back to that comparison of what we see happening at Netflix, which I think is a structure Disney is likely to copy down to the point that up until today when we're recording this and the news was announced that Josh is coming in, there was still conversation about whether it would be a co CEO between Josh and Dana. I think if you look at who Dana relies on, she also has someone like John Landgraf, who's the head of fx. And that's akin to Bella Bajaria having a Casey Bloys coming in if they get Warner Brothers discovery. This idea that one person is going to be the talent whisperer or the operational guru doesn't make sense in 2026 and certainly doesn't make sense for a company like Disney. And so I think that Josh d' Amaro will continue to focus on turning this very untangible adoration for IP into tangible money at the parks level and the experiences level. But still rely on Dana and John Landgraaf and others to make sure that the content is still keeping that attention long term.
- [21:44]
Peter Kafka
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- [21:52]
Julia Alexander
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Peter Kafka
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Julia Alexander
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Peter Kafka
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- [22:48]
Julia Alexander
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- [24:20]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. I want to go back to how this keep going back to how this is a repeat again. Six years ago that Bob Iger said, I don't want to be a CEO of Disney anymore. I've always said I'm going to leave. I. I never left. But I've decided randomly, weeks before the pandemic comes to America, that I no longer want to run this this company. Like we said, Bob Chapek did not work out for a bunch of reasons. One is he just may never have been the right person to run that company. Another is that Bob Iger stuck around not very far in the background and kept telling everyone what a terrible job Chapek was doing, which doesn't help. But the other problem was that Bob Iger created a bunch of problems for Bob. He had done this big pivot to streaming, laid out a ton of expenditures, did a bunch of things to ramp up production. We're going to churn out a Ton of Marvel stuff. We're going to churn out a ton of Star. We're going to have a Star wars show on every week, et cetera. Bob Iger comes back after pushing Chapek out and goes back to immediately sort of fix. He's describing it as fixing the problems Bob Chapek created, but they're really Bob Iger's problems that he created. Created that Bob Iger has then had to go to sort of unwind for the most part long winded way of saying has Bob Iger left Josh tomorrow a bunch of problems to solve or does he. Has he put Disney sort of at least on solid footing because the stock has not performed under Bob Iger. So how is the company itself doing?
- [25:53]
Julia Alexander
Yeah, the stock is an interesting question because if you go back the last 20 years, the stock hasn't moved. Just as someone who is Disney stockholder for a long time. Like it's not a great stocks necessarily have. That's not financial advice. I think what Bob Iger has left Josh Tomorrow in 2026 versus what he's left Bob Chapek in 2020 is a stark reality versus a optimistic hope. When we talk about, when we talked about streaming, you remember this, Peter, you covered this, you still cover it. Streaming was like this, this reinvention of a business and of a behavior. You remember this. It was this idea that like all of a sudden you weren't just going transition of customers, you're going to have a new customer, you were going to have a new type of content, a new type of monetization. I think very quickly, within the first few years after the pandemic, once we saw all the pull forward activity kind of cease when people could start going back outside and not just sit in front of their television sets. What we started to see was that it was a business. You could bring sports over to an extent, it would bring some people over, you could create content that might juice some of the engagement that you were seeing. But overall, like it wasn't creating new behaviors, it was just establishing old behaviors. Works in a different format. That's really hard to square with analysts on Wall street when you've spent the last four or five years telling them that streaming was the future of your business. Which is why, by the way, we've seen Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro and people like Brian Roberts at NBC Universal really go back to saying, well, we still love the pay TV business, we still love the bundle. We still want to be in here because it' not just going to be Streaming. Bob Chapek had this moment, the end of 2020, going to 2021, where he told investors and analysts during a very hyped up investor day that Disney was going to quadruple its streaming subscribers over the next three years. And I remember talking to a bunch of Disney executives and they went, why the hell would he say that? Like subscriber numbers don't mean anything. You can get subscribers, low quality, cheap subscribers pretty easily.
- [28:02]
Peter Kafka
If you go, well, that was the era that's right, when companies are being re rewarded. Or the theory was they would be rewarded for doing what Netflix did, which is add as many subscribers as possible. That was a big thing again when Iger kicked off Disney streaming. Thing was how many subscribers do they have? What does the number come from? It was very subscriber focused. That was the metric you needed to give Wall Street. Now it has moved on to actual profit and no one cares about subscribers. In fact, Netflix and everyone else no longer gives out subscriber numbers on the the regular.
- [28:33]
Julia Alexander
Yes, this was the first quarter that Disney did not report subscribers. But to your point exactly, there was this idea that streaming was going to be defined by how many subscribers you had. You could spend whatever you want, it didn't really matter. There's a lot of, I would argue, similarities to what's happening in the AI industry right now and kind of this idea of just grow, grow, grow, grow, and we'll figure out revenue later. And then it all came crashing down. It all came crashing down after the great Netflix correction. And all of a sudden Wall street said, okay, well are you making money on this and are you making by but 20% profit margin, like cable money? Are you making cable money on this product? And so that was a period of time where Bob Chapek had to navigate truly outlandish expectations that he also set for himself, that Bob Iger left him with, but he set for himself. He was trying to transition the company organizationally into something that looked more like Google than it did an entertainment company. Something that I think David Ellison at Paramount, by the way, is going to also struggle with, because it's really hard to turn an entertainment and media company into a tech company. But also this idea that if we
- [29:39]
Peter Kafka
just keep saying that it's a tech company and you keep saying that Steve Jobs was your mentor and that you let other people understand that Larry Ellison's your father and so you're a tech genius and obviously you're going to transform Paramount into a tech company. That's easy to do.
- [29:54]
Julia Alexander
But this idea that that's what Chapek had. There was a, an, an optimism, there was a hope that this was going to revolutionize everything. Now, streaming is a manageable business. To your point, what tomorrow has is a stark reality of, oh, we are not going to compete with YouTube, we're not going to compete with Instagram as they come to TV sets. We're not going to compete with TikTok, we're going to invest in OpenAI. Hopefully some of these Sora edits that we're bringing into Disney plus are going to engage people. We're going to hope that some kind of theatrical strategy, we just lean on the avatars and the Marvels makes sense. We're going to hope that some of this China activity from the theatrical side comes, but we don't have the optimism that we once did that streaming is going to solve all of our woes and the cable business declining and wiping out billions of dollars in profit. What we do have is a fundamental reality about what we can do with the parks business and what people are willing to spend on. So I think there's a perfect time for Iger to step back because he comes in and says, I'm going to course correct my last successor. I'm going to pick a new guy. But also I'm leaving at a time when there's not this optimism that whoever comes is going to solve the entertainment and media business. It's an expectation that the guy who comes in is going to get us through this transitional period.
- [31:13]
Peter Kafka
We'll be right back with Julia Alexander. But first, a word from a sponsor. This is what President Trump had to
- [31:21]
Julia Alexander
say about why the United States is at war with Iran.
- [31:24]
Peter Kafka
We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it again. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it, they didn't know what was happening. Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research
- [31:43]
Julia Alexander
kind of guy, but let's ask AI
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Peter Kafka
why we're at war with Iran. Chat The United States attacked Iran in
- [31:51]
Julia Alexander
2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat, particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities, and aimed to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region. Wow.
- [32:04]
Peter Kafka
That. That was a better explanation. Thanks, Chat. Fitting that AI was more clear than
- [32:08]
Julia Alexander
the President of the United States because it turns out the United States is using AI to fight the war in Iran. The future of war is AI and
- [32:18]
Peter Kafka
that future is now here.
- [32:21]
Julia Alexander
You can find out whether or not you should be freaking out over in
- [32:24]
Peter Kafka
the Today Explained feed.
- [32:26]
Julia Alexander
Hi, this is Kara Swisher. And this week on my podcast on with Kara Swisher, I talked to California Governor Gavin Newsom. While he hasn't officially announced or run for president yet, he's telegram all the time. It's exhausting. He's also got a new book out, which is what you do when you're running for president. It's called Young man in a Hurry. I recently interviewed him live in San Francisco. Have a listen.
- [32:47]
Peter Kafka
The problem with the Democratic Party so often is we appear weak and we've got to be stronger and we've got to be more assertive. And so that's, you know, it's the spirit, I think, that is required of this moment.
- [32:58]
Julia Alexander
I've known Gavin Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco a million years ago, a million hair gels ago. And he's a really interesting and compelling politician. He's done a lot of things in his career and this one, this run for presidency which is going to happen, is among the most interesting. You can find a full conversation wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube, obviously. Be sure to follow and subscribe to on with Kara Swisher for more. After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war? The big question is, if there is going to be a next strongman in Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful cleric supreme leader. I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan and we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week we sit down with Kareem Sajapour to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran. The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:07]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. Let's talk about the timing of Iger's departure. Long running joke, because it really wasn't a joke that Iger kept not leaving Disney for it seems like decades. He would say, oh, my new contract has been extended, but that's the last time I'm doing it. And trust me, I'm going to leave. And then he never left. And even when he did leave, he still came back. And now he supposedly is leaving, leaving for good. And even that was still news last week when the Journal basically said they're picking someone next week. And also Bob Iger really is going to leave and he's not even going to stick around basically until the end of the year. He's going to get out of here. Two great lines in that journal article. One is that Bob Iger has told multiple associates he would like to spend more of his time and energy on other things, such as sailing his new and larger super yacht, the Aquarius. So that's just a great line when you say, what are you going to do instead of being CEO? Well, I'm going to. I'm going to spend more time not with my family, with my super yacht, which is great. I don't really need a comment from you on that. I just think it's interesting. The other I think, more interesting thing to me was Iger has told people close to him he's ready to move on from the grind of being CEO and was frustrated by conflicts at ABC over the brief suspension of Jimmy Kim Kimmel. What do you think that means? Do you think that means he didn't like dealing with the Trump administration and Brendan Carr and all the BS associated with that? Do you think that means there's some internal fight about how Kimmel was handled that frustrated him? I mean, he is the CEO, so I'm a little confused about why he'd be frustrated by conflicts at the work.
- [35:48]
Julia Alexander
It's twofold. I genuinely think the photo I keep thinking about, Peter, to describe how I'm looking at media and tech and kind of the state of business across the board in 2026, is the photo of all the tech CEOs at Trump's inauguration. It was like the capitulation photo before capitulation even happened. And it was that idea of. They know that in this moment of. Of AI disruption of major M and A activity that they need to bend the knee in a way they didn't have to before or they didn't feel like they had to before. I think if you're Bob Iger, you've done this for 15, 16, 17, 18 years. You're tired, you're like, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna have to pretend like I wanna go to the Melania premiere because I want to get this next deal through. I don't wanna pretend that I like Ron DeSantis and have to get this thing done so we can keep our tax break in Florida or whatever it might be. So I think that is a big part of it. I think he. But the amount of jokes I hear from Disney executives about Bob Iger basically waiting out the repairs on his superyacht until he was ready to retire. And once they were done, he was just gonna go and do that. And that's all he really wanted is quite funny and quite true. But I also think I was talking to an executive yesterday about ABC and we were talking about the pros and cons of tomorrow and others. And I said, you know, there's this question about abc. What is it? The ESPN spinoff conversation happens all the time. And we kind of know what's happening with Marvel and Luc film and kind of what's happening with Disney and Hulu and Fubo, what's going on with abc. And they made a really interesting point, which was one, they had no insight. But two, this idea that Josh d' Amaro does not have the rose tinted glasses of ABC and ABC News that Bob Iger did, he did not come up as a weather boy on the channel. He did not come up from being president of abc. And this question of when do you unload a major asset to invest in an asset of the future, whether that is a video game publisher, which people have speculated about, something like an EA before that went private, of course, or another asset entirely. Josh, tomorrow is going to have less attachments to saying, okay, let's get rid of it, let's change this, let's figure this out. And I think that's also important. This moment, even more so than Chapek, is this transitional reality of streaming is not going to save up U.S. parks is going to get us through. But what do we do with our entertainment and media business? And so I think when Bob Iger says, I don't want to deal with this, it is a component of I do not want to deal with the Trump administration in the slightest. But also I don't want to be the person that has to figure out layoffs and M and A and go through all this again like, I'm tired and I want to go sit on my yacht.
- [38:32]
Peter Kafka
Julia, this is great. You are, you're such an expert on this in general, but you're also an expert on Disney because of all the media reporters I talked to all the time and many of them on this show, I don't think any of them have worked at Disney recently. And you did, you worked, you did strategically for them. Just briefly. Tell me about, well, don't tell me about the experience working there. What did you learn working at Disney that helps you think about the company today that someone else might not understand?
- [39:04]
Julia Alexander
What can I say that will not violate an NDA? I'm the main thing to Use a really bad analogy. I didn't realize how hard it was to turn a company that's like a naval sized battleship around in a tiny little harbor, right? This idea of if Netflix 5, 10 years ago wanted to change something, wanted to pivot, they could pretty easily they're getting much bigger. They're clearly trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery or they are buying it, but it's easier for them as like a tugboat to turn around in a harbor and say, okay, we're going to pivot, we're going to go and do this. For a company like Disney to do any type of pivot, whether it is streaming, whatever it might be, AI, you know, user generated content, it's such a effort because they're just such a large enterprise. And I don't think I appreciated how complicated that is. And the way to your question, Peter, about how it informs my thinking about and my analysis of other companies, to your point about David Ellison saying like, oh, we're a tech company now and my father's Larry Ellison and we're a tech company. Way easier to say, way easier to go in and say we're going to be an engineer first, you know, innovative company when you're dealing with thousands, tens of thousands of employees who come from kind of this antiquated media business. And so I think that's the thing I think about with Disney, which is this idea of they know they need to change, they know they need to change faster than they're changing. And they also know that they every minute that they're not changing their strategy, someone like Netflix or Instagram or TikTok is. And I don't think I appreciated how almost impossible it is for a company that size to do so in the time needed to ensure that that change reflects the immediacy of what needs to get done.
- [40:57]
Peter Kafka
Well, I'm glad that you left Disney so you can speak to me on my podcast now. Julia Alexander, your awesome. You guys can read her over at Puck. She publishes all the time. Thanks Julia.
- [41:09]
Julia Alexander
Thanks Peter.
- [41:10]
Peter Kafka
Thanks again to Julia Alexander. She's excellent. Go read her stuff. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver for helping us get this one out to you quickly. Thanks to our sponsors and thanks to you guys, we have a fun episode next week. See you then. Thirty years ago, blinds.com broke the mold
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Julia Alexander
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Peter Kafka
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Julia Alexander
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Peter Kafka
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Julia Alexander
Com.