Steve Jobs Doesn’t Call all the Shots; Well When it Comes to Disney
Posted by Dave on July 30, 2008 at 6:52 pm PST
One of Disney CEO, Bob Iger’s strongest moves since taking office was the acquisition of Pixar, bringing the animation studio in-house.
The biggest perk of the deal may not just have come through keeping the award winning firm under one roof, but rather keeping a close connection with former Ceo Steve Jobs. As the largest shareholder of Pixar, as well as holding a seat on the Disney board, one would assume that he would have quite a sway over what is being said and done.
This may, however not be the case. While the connection is often displayed positively, for example, Disney’s ABC being the first network to sell TV shows on iTunes, there has been worrisome opposition in the past. There were beliefs that Jobs would somehow be able to overtake Iger and annex Disney into the Apple kingdom. Well, we certainly have not seen anything that closely resembles that type of behavior (yet? kidding). While Disney was on board to sell movies via iTunes, they were hesitant to allow rentals.
The following is taken from a transcript of Disney’s earnings call today, and shows that these questions are still being asked.
Are your interests aligned with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, your single largest shareholder? Does he influence how you distribute content digitally?
Iger: Decisions how to distribute content and what to charge for it are made entirely by the management of Disney. Steve is not involved. Decisions of how we distribute content digitally are made by us. I happen to believe that in a world where more and more people are migrating online that the Disney company would be served well be having a strong presence in that environment. Since we decided to put movies in the iTunes platform we have sold 5 million movies. We believe it’s incremental business.
Our ability to monetize will become more evident. You are seeing an expansion of the marketplace and an increase in consumption. We’ve seen that at ABC where access of to TV programs has never been greater and the amount of consumption has never been greater. I think we’ve been driving incremental revenue.
We have no conflict of interest at all. Our decisions are all made for the shareholders of Disney.
The biggest perk of the deal may not just have come through keeping the award winning firm under one roof, but rather keeping a close connection with former Ceo Steve Jobs. As the largest shareholder of Pixar, as well as holding a seat on the Disney board, one would assume that he would have quite a sway over what is being said and done.