Originally Posted by
CitizenBBN
Regardless of politics, it's simply a horrible business model. I recently read about an interview with one of the members of ABBA back in the day when they were the biggest band in the world. He was asked why they didn't comment more on politics and social issues in their music and otherwise.
His answer was honest and simple. He said the second they do that they alienate half their audience, so they stick to happy and positive things.
That's Disney's job. To entertain. It's bad business to alienate your customers and it's also very bad for the production of entertainment to be more focused on moralizing then entertaining.
You can't lose sight of having good stories, but Disney at every level is changing the story to fit "the message", and it's simply not as entertaining, and turns off a lot of potential customers to boot.
It's a losing gig, and when you combine that with the lower production values and promoting people within the organization on the basis of their politics and not their ability to produce, manage or create a story, you will get bad results.
Dan's article is also right that there's no placating the "woke" extremists, so you end up in a really losing battle to engage in it. You end up taking stands to make them happy which in turn alienates larger numbers of other people who won't spend their time protesting (they have jobs and stuff) but will vote their dollars. Then the woke people push for the next thing and an endless cycle is created.
Disney needed to hold the line on not being political and let that be their stance internally and otherwise. Yes some of their employees would gnash their teeth. Far better to replace some of them than to get caught up in the current cultural schism in this country. Don't take sides in it as a business or you will end up worse off no matter what you do.
As a company Disney has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, and they are failing that duty miserably.