With every passing day of coronavirus uncertainty and social upheaval, Disney finds itself scrambling not only for revenue but for relevance.
The results for Disney's fiscal third quarter, which ended Tuesday, are expected to be dismal, with revenue massively down compared to 2019′s $20.3 billion. But a growing number of voices are starting to ask whether a more fundamental change is brewing, a change that will affect them beyond one bad quarter. They're wondering whether a company built heavily on a foundation of in-person gatherings, and on the peddling of an inoffensive utopia that largely exists outside racial identity, can be effective in a prolonged period of isolation and fulmination.
"What Disney has to do is figure out how to make itself matter, how to get in front of audiences in very different ways than it has in the past," said Carmen Higginbotham, a professor at the University of Virginia who is one of the country's leading experts on Disney and popular culture. "Because the previous rules - of gathering a lot of people in one place, of just riding safely down the middle of American society - won't apply for the next 12 months. And maybe a lot longer."
Similar comments were made by nine entertainment industry experts interviewed by The Washington Post, from Hollywood managers to Wall Street analysts. Disney, they said loudly if not always publicly, needs not just a new set of dates to reopen its businesses but a new set of principles to guide its mission.
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The absences this year will be jarring for American consumers, who will suddenly feel a large part of their entertainment summer gone after enduring a similar emptiness this spring. Josh Spiegel, a writer and frequent chronicler of Disney, likened it in an interview to "a limb being cut off, or an entire food group being removed."
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But some experts ask whether issues like reopening dates and immediate financial impact miss a larger point, saying the world has changed so dramatically that Disney's all-in bet on in-person gatherings is fundamentally flawed. With cases probably coming in waves around the country for the foreseeable future, they say the answer is not as simple as waiting out the bad news. A more bedrock shift needs to happen.
"This is about Disney needing to find a new way to do business that doesn't require a lot of people to be in one place," said Greif & Co's Lloyd Greif, a Los Angeles-based investment banker who closely tracks Disney. "They need to be making those contingency plans right now."
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Disney-could-be-facing-a-lot-more-than-a-lost-15385894.php
