Bob Iger has long been one of the more moderate and eloquent speakers in Hollywood. Well, until last summer, he was cautious. In a wide-ranging interview at last summer’s Sun Valley conference, he lost some sympathy when he said the demands of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were “not realistic.”
And then he lost even more – this time internally. Iger also said he believes Disney’s TV businesses, including ABC, its local TV stations and other cable channels, “may not be part of Disney’s core 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 on camera.
“I was not wrong in my observation, but I didn’t need to say those words publicly because they created incredible fear,” he said on “Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa.” “I should have been more sensitive to not only how those words were interpreted, but how they were perceived by people I really care about, who are even Disney legends.”
Iger’s intention at the time was to signal to Wall Street that everything was on the table. He noted to Ripa that he never actually said they wanted to sell ABC. Ripa, who hosts “Live with Kelly and Mark” alongside her husband Mark Consuelos, said she wasn’t really panicking about Disney selling the network — but she wasn’t blind to the trends.
“And 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 caused collateral damage.
“I wanted them to know that when I returned to Disney, I wasn’t going to bury my head in the sand and I wasn’t going to deny the changes in our business that were making it harder to do business. I wanted to show them that I wasn’t going to bury my head in the sand, that I was realistic and that everything was on the table,” Iger said. “As it turns out, that was a mistake.”
Elsewhere in the Ripa interview, Iger discussed his succession plans. Iger said he was “obsessed” with finding his successor and that he couldn’t wait to retire again. He also addressed rumors that he was considering running for U.S. president; a prominent Democratic figure told Iger he should run for office because he “looks like the part,” Iger said.
“I said, ‘Give me a chance. That’s not enough,'” he explained, without revealing the politician’s identity. (He went only so far as to say it was not Bill Clinton.)
Watch Iger’s full podcast interview here.
