Bob Iger, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Bob Iger comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 1:16:13 Ben Gilbert There's even a quote in Bob Iger's book, which, which we haven't talked about Bob yet, but we will.
- ▶ 1:16:22 David Rosenthal Bob is COO of Cap Cities.
- ▶ 1:27:59 David Rosenthal Well, before we tell the story of Save Disney and Disney's ultimate leadership transition to Bob Iger that would come out of it, now is a great time to thank one of our favorite companies, Sentry.
- ▶ 1:31:08 Ben Gilbert First, let me just open with an excerpt from Ride of a Lifetime, Bob Iger's book.
- ▶ 1:35:53 David Rosenthal Bob Iger is there.
- ▶ 1:41:17 Ben Gilbert Initially, it actually said internal and external candidates, and Bob Iger was reviewing the press release, because he's COO, and he goes to the board and says, wait, Michael's gonna be CEO for another year?
- ▶ 1:41:30 Ben Gilbert Bob's like, you, you can't really do this.
- ▶ 1:41:53 Ben Gilbert You have to say external candidates and Bob Iger, and they agree and say, okay, then we'll do it.
- ▶ 1:41:59 David Rosenthal So Bob is announced as the internal candidate, and the board promises they will run an exhaustive search for external candidates.
- ▶ 1:42:06 David Rosenthal Bob, and he recounts all of this in Ride of a Lifetime, comes up with
- ▶ 1:42:58 David Rosenthal Which both is the right way to look at this, and it is Bob's only chance to win.
- ▶ 1:44:49 David Rosenthal Bob is saying, no, we are going to embrace technology.
- ▶ 1:45:08 David Rosenthal And then Bob's third pillar of his strategy is expand global reach.
- ▶ 1:45:46 David Rosenthal Bob wins on this campaign.
- ▶ 1:45:49 David Rosenthal In March of 2005, the board announces Bob Iger will be the future CEO of the Walt Disney company.
- ▶ 1:48:34 David Rosenthal So Bob Iger is named CEO.
- ▶ 1:51:03 David Rosenthal So during his CEO audition process, Bob Iger had completely lost faith that Disney animation can be fixed from within.
- ▶ 1:51:33 David Rosenthal There's this famous moment that Bob writes about where he's at the opening parade of Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005.
- ▶ 2:26:48 David Rosenthal And, uh, Bob Iger has a quote about this in right of a lifetime.
- ▶ 2:34:12 David Rosenthal So this brings us back to Bob Iger's phone call to Steve and his conviction that Pixar needed to come in and be part of Disney and not just be owned by Disney, but take over Disney animation.
- ▶ 2:35:02 David Rosenthal Once again, just like Bob made peace with Roy and instantly fixed that relationship, he pretty much instantly fixes the Steve Jobs relationship.
- ▶ 2:35:11 Ben Gilbert So, listeners, we talked to Bob Iger as part of the prep we were doing for this episode.
- ▶ 2:35:15 Ben Gilbert Bob had this idea, and before he called Steve, he went to the board and said, hey, can I have authorization to, like, open a conversation with Steve Jobs about buying Pixar?
- ▶ 2:35:42 David Rosenthal So Bob calls Steve back and floats this idea.
- ▶ 2:36:02 Ben Gilbert And interestingly, Iger also said, hey, Lasseter and, and Catmull, you can also tell us you think Disney Animation is unrescuable, or that you think that you'd kill both things by splitting your time, and you can just tell us you want to…
- ▶ 2:37:27 David Rosenthal Bob flies up to Emeryville to the Pixar campus the morning of the announcement.
- ▶ 2:37:33 David Rosenthal And before the official time when they're going to announce the deal, meet with the whole company, Steve comes up to Bob and says, let's take a walk on the Pixar campus.
- ▶ 2:38:23 David Rosenthal Bob says, wow, that's a lot.
- ▶ 2:38:43 David Rosenthal So Steve would end up living another five and a half years after this, but he and, and Bob and, and Apple, and then eventually the rest of the world knows soon it's, it's just all borrowed time.
- ▶ 2:42:29 David Rosenthal So years later, after many of these movies come out, during the months before Steve died, he and his wife Lorraine have one last dinner with Bob Iger and his wife Willow, and during it, Steve raises a glass and a toast to Bob and them…
- ▶ 2:46:42 David Rosenthal So, after Pixar, Bob and the Disney board are like, uh, well, that worked well.
- ▶ 2:46:52 Ben Gilbert And that sure is in line with Bob's point number one in his three point strategy.
- ▶ 2:47:00 David Rosenthal But before we talk about the other two of Bob's big three acquisitions, Marvel and Lucasfilm, now is a great time to thank our friends at Anthropic, the makers of Claude.
- ▶ 2:53:14 Ben Gilbert It's pretty interesting reflecting back on these, what a tear Iger was on, of identifying
- ▶ 2:53:36 Ben Gilbert There are a few things left, but Iger kind of saw this before anyone else went in with a bigger checkbook that I think a lot of people would have been willing to go in with.
- ▶ 2:56:17 David Rosenthal Overall, parks revenue nearly doubles and operating income nearly triples in the decade from 2005 when Bob takes over to 20 15.
- ▶ 2:56:30 David Rosenthal Disney's market cap is up four X to two hundred billion dollars up from the fifty billion dollars when Bob took over.
- ▶ 2:58:25 David Rosenthal As you pointed out, it's like, Bob has finally figured out a way to marry these two sides of the company.
- ▶ 2:59:02 David Rosenthal So on that earnings call on August fourth, 2015, Bob Iger mentions that ESPN was experiencing quote, modest subscriber losses due to consumer cord cutting of cable subscriptions.
- ▶ 3:04:06 David Rosenthal Bob and the board basically draw a line in the sand and they say, we are not going to just sit around and let ourselves get Netflixed like everyone else.
- ▶ 3:04:20 David Rosenthal This goes back to Bob's priority number two in his strategy presentation to the board when he became CEO.
- ▶ 3:06:31 David Rosenthal So after August, 2015, Bob and the board decide very quickly, let's go build our own Netflix competitor or more accurately,
- ▶ 3:07:17 David Rosenthal Jack Dorsey happens to also be on the Disney board at the time, so they basically get all the way to a deal, and then at the last minute, Bob backs out.
- ▶ 3:07:25 David Rosenthal He just, like, can't imagine Disney owning and operating Twitter, and that was probably the right decision.
- ▶ 3:07:35 Ben Gilbert It was like Sunday night that he bailed on it.
- ▶ 3:11:43 David Rosenthal So Bob basically issues an all-hands-on-deck directive.
- ▶ 3:11:48 David Rosenthal He directs all the creative studios within Disney, Disney Animation, Disney Live Action, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, to start producing content and gearing up specifically for the new first-party Disney streaming service coming in, on top of…
- ▶ 3:12:10 David Rosenthal And then he gets a call from Rupert Murdoch.
- ▶ 3:17:58 David Rosenthal And this is back to Bob's strategic pillar number three for the company.
- ▶ 3:35:22 David Rosenthal Iger ended up realizing of, of having these two businesses together was take that stable cash flow and use it to invest in the Disney flywheel.
- ▶ 3:36:15 David Rosenthal February 2020, Bob Iger retires as CEO.
- ▶ 3:38:20 David Rosenthal So, that December of 2021, Bob Iger fully retires.
- ▶ 3:42:15 David Rosenthal After the earnings call, the board meets and fires Bob Chapek as CEO of Disney, two and a bit years into his tenure, and Bob Iger returns out of retirement to come be CEO again and stabilize the ship.
- ▶ 3:42:39 Ben Gilbert Why did Bob come back?
- ▶ 3:42:40 Ben Gilbert Why did Bob need to come back?
- ▶ 3:42:41 Ben Gilbert What does it mean that Bob came back?
- ▶ 3:42:44 Ben Gilbert Ultimately, I kind of think they just chose the wrong guy in Bob Chapek, and I think Iger's mistake in recommending Bob Chapek for the job was thinking that the company was about to enter a peacetime.
- ▶ 3:49:41 David Rosenthal President number two and chief creative officer of the company, a new role within the company, and Bob Iger will stay on as a senior advisor and board member until his full retirement at the end of this year in 2026.
- ▶ 3:49:54 Ben Gilbert So before we get to the business today, we should talk about the beginning and end of Bob Iger's tenure, just like we did with Michael Eisner.
- ▶ 3:50:02 Ben Gilbert So when Bob Iger came in September 30th, 2005 market cap of about
- ▶ 3:54:18 David Rosenthal And, and really this is what Bob Iger spent the last couple years since coming back from retirement doing.
- ▶ 4:15:48 David Rosenthal I think Disney still is just like it was when Bob took over.
- ▶ 4:30:20 David Rosenthal First to Nancy Lee, to Bob Iger, to Josh DeMauro, to Pete Docter, Jim Morris, and all the incredible folks who hosted us for the day at Pixar, including Danielle Feinberg, Catherine Serafian, and
The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 39:15 Ben Gilbert Bob Iger, one of his first acts as CEO, did the deal.
- ▶ 39:19 David Rosenthal Do you know how Bob got Oswald back for Disney?
- ▶ 39:37 Ben Gilbert So, there's an ABC asset that Bob effectively trades in exchange for Oswald, and I think that ABC ESPN Monday Night Football asset is Al Michaels.
- ▶ 4:11:34 David Rosenthal I mean, Bob Iger, when he took over the company in 2005, had that famous quote of, as animation goes, so goes the company.
The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:00:11 David Rosenthal So Rune would ultimately become Bob Iger's mentor, and Bob Iger would rise through the ABC Sports ranks in the beginning of his career before taking over Cap Cities and then obviously all of Disney.
Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:59:08 David Rosenthal What is Disney and Bob Iger's number one strategic priority during this period?
- ▶ 2:59:24 Ben Gilbert Iger has those three big principles in his book.
- ▶ 3:10:44 David Rosenthal Remember, Disney Plus is the cornerstone of Disney's strategy at this point in time under Iger.
- ▶ 3:10:51 David Rosenthal Iger has come back.
- ▶ 3:10:53 Ben Gilbert Twenty-twenty-two was the return of Bob.
- ▶ 3:10:55 David Rosenthal He architected this before he left.
- ▶ 3:10:57 David Rosenthal He's now come back from retirement, and Disney Plus has gone from the most incredible, greatest strategy, greatest thing from sliced bread to this total albatross hanging around the company's neck, and now they lose IPL digital streaming…
Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 45:41 Ben Gilbert It's Bob Iger.
- ▶ 2:18:33 David Rosenthal And, um, Disney Plus, despite all the turmoil and Iger and all that, it's a hell of a drug.
Charlie Munger (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:02:43 Charlie Munger Well, I think a lot of companies are pretty good, but you can't confidently say what's going to happen because you may get some guy like Iger in that just wants to push everything and do the right public relations.
Enron · Acquired
- ▶ 3:26:31 Ben Gilbert It ain't what Bob Iger originally intended.
- ▶ 3:26:43 Ben Gilbert We should do an Iger Plus episode.