Disney CEO Bob Iger Calls His 2023 Linear TV Comments “A Mistake,” Says FX Emmy Noms Help Justify Fox Deal, Insists He Was “Not Bored At All” During Retirement

deadline.com:

It was “a mistake” to tell CNBC in an interview last year that linear TV assets “may not be core” to the company, Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a new podcast interview. “I wasn’t wrong about my observation, but it wasn’t necessary for me to utter those words publicly, because it caused an incredible amount of anxiety,” Iger said during an interview on Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa. “I should have been more sensitive to how those words would be not just interpreted, but how they would be felt by people who are really important to me, who are even Disney legends.” Iger explained his thought process in approaching the July 2023 appearance on CNBC, which came as the company was in the midst of major cost cuts, reorganizing and strategic planning. “I was intent on communicating to Wall Street an open-mindedness in general about our business in the future, and I wanted them to know – this was after I came back to Disney – that my head was not in the sand,” he said, echoing reflections he shared last fall at the New York Times DealBook conference.

Aiming to show he was “a realist” and “not in denial,” Iger recalled, he decided to say that “everything’s on the table. … That was a mistake, it turns out.” The podcast interview was largely a synergistic and lifestyle-oriented chat, conducted at ABC’s New York headquarters, where Ripa shoots the daily morning talk show Live with Kelly and Mark.

The conversation ranged across topics like Iger’s favorite cheese (mozzarella), artists on his personal music playlist (country singer Zach Bryan is one) and whether his physical appearance at age 73 is in any way “medically induced,” in Ripa’s words. (“No medically induced” procedures, Iger replied, apart from two hips and a knee