The Los Angeles County-based Walt Disney Co. will slash 7,000 jobs as part of a $5.5 billion cost-cutting effort, CEO Bob Iger announced.
The possibility of layoffs at Disney has been rumored for weeks, with Iger regaining his footing in the CEO’s office following the surprise ouster of CEO Bob Chapek in November. Iger broke the news during an earnings call on Wednesday, Feb. 8, following the release of the company’s first-quarter earnings report. Iger said he is targeting $5.5 billion in cost savings “across the company.”
“To help achieve this we will be reducing our workforce by approximately 7,000 jobs,” Iger said. “While this is necessary to address the challenges we are facing today, I do not make this decision lightly. I have enormous respect and appreciation for the talent and dedication of our employees worldwide and (am) mindful of the personal impact of these changes.”
No details were immediately released on where the layoffs would be made, or how quickly. Iger said the company’s organizational structure was being changed, with the company being divided into a trio of divisions — Disney Entertainment; ESPN; and Parks, Experiences and Products. The move is an undoing of the changes that Chapek instituted when he took over the company three years ago.
Iger said the restructuring will return “greater authority to our creative leaders” while also making them “accountable for how their content performs financially.”
“Our former structure severed that link and must be restored,” he said. “Moving forward, our creative teams will determine what content we’re making, how it is distributed and monetized and how it gets marketed.”
Stanley "Stan" Morgan says
I like it.
But as usual, the weird fixation of conservatives with their pet perversions about other people in this world appear first and often. These voyeurists are wrong, stupid, and frankly boring. Why do they hold such curious focus upon what others are doing in their own bedrooms? Nobody wants to watch their conservative proclivities…ewwww. Why are they insisting upon exposing the proclivities of others? It is quite perverse, just like….um….this…
Disney is a perverse company that amps up whatever SEEMS to be the trendy thing(s) that attract people into their enterprise. For years the descent of Disney to base modernity has doomed their fare as trite and shallow. Watch almost ANY ABC (and now21st Century Fox, Marvel, Disney+ and Hulu) mainstream product and it is sadenning/maddening how it markets amplified caricature versions of Americans in a macabre nonreal fantasy of modern life.
In Addition, Mousechwitz has been on an acquisition binge (see aforementioned list), and its likely their financials were based, like many enterprises, in a 20-year-running low cost of finance, which, as you might have noticed, has changed.
Mickey and Minnie bought so many things in the past 20 years that it is FAR from the initial vision that Walt had for his company.
The Mouse Family is suffering from what many families whose borrowing has exceeded their ability to pay, and rather than gorge on finer cheese, they must now must get by on more meagre rations like the cheap WalMart ‘cheddar’.
It is no politicians’ fault. It is simple (bad) calculus by their C-suite officers, like Iger, their CFO and treasurer.
The firing will boost or suspend the stock price from too much sag as investors get to ‘believe’ in the Mouse Mania for a little longer.
Bugs and Daffy of Warner Bros. says
Disney’s animated movies are awful. The animation is awful.
In the old days, each frame of film was hand-painted, and the quality showed.
Tim Scott says
In the really old days they chipped images into the cave walls. No one misses the old days, really, except old people, and only then if they have the ‘good old days’ delusion sickness.
Bugs and Daffy of Warner Bros. says
Go watch the fluidity of Fantasia and then a current animated feature and then get back to us.
Tim Scott says
I’ve seen it. I like it. It absolutely informed my taste in classical music which leans heavily to Mussorgsky. But it has no plot. It was strictly made as a demonstration of the then brand new art form, which is fine, but it’s a banana in the apple barrel as far as comparisons go.
Mike says
I found this announcement hilariously amusing coming 2 days after Sleepy Joe’s State of the Union speech where he touted a healthy economy and record job growth. HA!!!
Tim Scott says
LOL…you are so obvious in your desperation. One company laid off 7000 employees…in a job market that is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month that we are already struggling to fill because unemployment is down to friction levels. But you gotta vent some hate at a democrat. What a hate filled buffoon you are.
Laughing At The Trumpers says
Sleepy Joe showed the MAGAts who is boss at the State of the Union speech. They are still rattled. See Mike’s comment. They are now firing blanks.
Now, they are fighting amongst eachother and that’s a good thing.
Nikki Haley announces. She’s at <1% in the polls.
The CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD is coming your way.
Bizniz Anullist says
Yo. We need a guy like Iger to help us with fraud and multi-year underwater losers like Trump who cant seem to make a nickel without spending a dime.
Like Iger says: make ’em “accountable for how their content performs financially.”
Republican’ts don’t make money, they spend it first and hope they can get someone else to pay for it, get a tax break, or a bail out. They are GREAT at charades.
Just look at the Donald’s 1990’s watershed in NY…Penn Station. If it wasn’t for tax breaks and incentives and permittage leniency the State of New York and the City of New York, his watershed would have been a washout.
Without that help, that handout, he would be the true broke ass chump he is on the outside that he is on the inside. A white welfare mother f#$%er.
Taylor Hall says
To hell with everything Disney PUKE!
William says
I still love the way they made “Shrek” look like Michael Eisner even though he was supposed to look like Lord Farquaad. Revenge by Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Speaking of balloons. Whatever happened to that giant Baby Trump balloon they used to fly in London when Trump visited?
Has anyone read a current high school history book to see how they told the story of the Trump era? No wonder MAGAts want to ban books in schools. They don’t come off well.
Nixon=Watergate
Reagan=Iran-Conra
Bushes-Iraq failures
Trump=Leavenworth
Why no Trump presidential library or would that be a joke?
East Palmdale's Most Ignorant & Blissful says
“Speaking of balloons. Whatever happened to that giant Baby Trump balloon they used to fly in London when Trump visited?”
Don Jr. suggested we send it over China. That will horrify them.
East Palmdale's Most Normal says
Go woke = Go Broke! As Sarah Sanders said: “It’s normal versus crazy”.
Promoting gender bending. Reparations. Critical Race Theory. Racial division. Identity politics. Woke, weak military. Surrender borders to drug cartels. Overdose deaths. Spend our children into debt and poverty. Turn the greatest country into a 3rd world sh!th0le. Corrupt president bought and sold by China. Inflation, taxes and recessions. 401k crashes.
“It’s normal versus crazy”. Which side are you on?
Tim Scott says
LOL…not the side that Sarah Sanders is no, for sure. I am amazed that she could get that line out with a straight face though, because there isn’t a lot of doubt about her being on the crazy side.