KlicKNettars, we're back! After about two weeks of being off the air, WKLY HIT LIST returns with BIG NEWS and GREAT FUN. I've been in the middle of deciding what I'm going to do for the 100th Episode of FakeTV Box, I've opened up a new 60-second daily series called FTB 60 and it's hosted by Senior Correspondent, Kwame Alexander. I feel like I wanna bring Tuck Tomeson back to the channel and maybe another old face will show up, you never know what might happen. Super Bowl LVII is tomorrow and I've been wanting to air a new episode of FTB immediately following the first half of the game and right before the Halftime Show just like last year. As I work to get the channel back on track, all I can say is that the news has been crazy for the past two weeks, and we'll able to read the best of the best in today's 7-Day Rounder.
It's the day before Super Bowl LVII and tomorrow we'll see the Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs taking on Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles. While not I'm telling you I pick to win the game because it's almost impossible to decide, I am looking forward to all the great Super Bowl commercials movie previews that will drop during the game. Take this one for instance, in our Sneak Peek of the Week, NBC's Today guides us through a new Doritos' commercial starring Jack Harlow and Missy Elliot. Take a look.
Our Inside Scoop this week on Disney, the House of Mouse full of wonderful characters and creations that you'd think their storage space would be full by now. This week was The Walt Disney Company's Quarter 1 Earnings Call and we have several details of the results and announcements. For starters, this was Bob Iger's first earnings call after returning to the role of CEO of Disney and Bob Chapek left after a short tenure in the position, here's what he had to say about the transition and what's going on with the company moving forward.
“After a solid first quarter, we are embarking on a significant transformation, one that will maximize the potential of our world-class creative teams and our unparalleled brands and franchises. We believe the work we are doing to reshape our company around creativity, while reducing expenses, will lead to sustained growth and profitability for our streaming business, better position us to weather future disruption and global economic challenges, and deliver value for our shareholders.”
To get a few things out of the way before we get into all the interesting stuff, The Walt Disney Company will be laying off nearly 7,000 thousand employees as a part of a new round of cost cutting measures. These will be across almost all of Disney’s empire but to only a few working in the Parks and Resort division. That's good knowing the Parks and Resorts took a really big hit during the COVID-19 Pandemic and with Universal"s Epic Universe coming soon in Orlando The company is targeting $5.5 billion in cost savings, including $3 billion in non-sports related content and $2.5 billion in general operating costs. Basically, there's going to be a $3 Billion cut in content costs which will be need to transform the company into a new era, but this era that we're living in has seen some startling numbers for Disney+, and it's startling to me because I never wonder how business was doing until now.
Disney+ lost a net of 2.4 million subscribers in the last three months of 2022 last year — this marks the streaming service’s first decline since launching in late 2019. In other analytics, Disney posted revenue of $23.51 billion (up 8%) and adjusted earnings per share of 99 cents for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2022 (Disney’s Q1 of fiscal year 2023). That beat analyst consensus estimates of $23.37 billion and 78 cents, respectively. Iger had said that Disney plans to reinstate payment of a dividend to shareholders by the end of calendar year 2023, after the company had suspended the dividend in the spring of 2020 amid the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. Speaking about the matter, he made this statement: “Our cost-cutting initiatives will make this possible, and while initially, it will be a modest dividend, we hope to build upon it over time.”
Now here are the three things during the earnings call that I found interesting. First, Bob Iger revealed that he's planning to restructure the company by reorganizing its businesses under three core segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN and Disney Parks, Experiences & Products. Dana Walden and Alan Bergman were appointed to run the entertainment division as co-chairs and will not only oversee the global streaming business but also manage all content decisions for main streaming services including Disney+. Jimmy Pitaro will stick around as chairman of ESPN, while Josh D’Amaro will keep his job as chairman of the Parks, Experiences, and Products division. Above all, the new structure will aim to return was taken away by Bob Chapek when he was in charge and that's creative authority to Disney’s “world-class creative team” and its unparalleled brands and franchises of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. That's a big "ALRIGHTY THEN" as it could come into play for the other two things I found interesting.
In a bit of a shocking pair of announcements, Bob Iger declared that a new experience based on the World of Avatar will be coming to Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. After hearing this, there are a few questions I wanna ask like: "What part of Disneyland Resort is this new experience gonna be?", and "Will it be different or the same as Pandora in Animal Kingdom?", and "Why the heck haven't we heard anything new about Disneyland Forward?!". All Iger could say is that details will be “coming soon.” The same can be said for when it was revealed that Pixar and Disney Animation Studios have sequels in the works to some of their most popular franchises of Toy Story, Frozen and Zootopia. I was totally caught off guard on this one and like everyone else I thought Toy Story had ended its run in 2019, but I guess the toys have one more adventure left in them and fans can't wait to see Toy Story 5 down the line. Personally, I'm excited to hear that Zootopia 2 is being made as I saw the first movie in theaters in 2016, and I'm glad that Frozen 3 is coming as well because after seeing Frozen 2 in theaters I felt like they need to do one more movie and complete the trilogy that Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven deserve.
Final thoughts for today, I'm looking forward to where The Walt Disney Company goes from here after its first Quarterly Earnings Call, knowing that they need a new CEO to replace Bob Iger later in in the future, I can only hope that they continue the new structure and direction that Iger has laid out because I actually like it for it let's every studio, every park and every resort be their own bosses once again.
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