CMO Today: Disney COO Exits Amid Succession Drama
05 April 2016 - 10:05PM
Dow Jones News
By Mike Shields
DISNEY SHOCKER: The question of who would succeed Disney
Chairman and CEO Robert Iger appeared to be settled when Thomas
Staggs was tapped as COO last year. But in a surprising twist, the
media giant announced Mr. Staggs will step down on May 6, though he
will be a special advisor to Mr. Iger for the remainder of the
fiscal year, The Wall Street Journal reports. The change comes at a
tricky time for Disney, which is riding high on the performance of
its film business, thanks to Star Wars, even as it tries to
reassure investors that ESPN is on track to weather the
cord-cutting storms in cable TV. The New York Times reports that
Disney's board wasn't convinced Mr. Staggs was up to the challenge
of following Mr. Iger, who is set to step down in 2018. The board
is broadening its succession hunt and is now likely to focus in
large part on outside candidates, reports WSJ.
FACEBOOK SUGGESTION BOX: Publishers love that Facebook has
become a powerful distribution outlet for their videos. Now, they
want to make money on the social media platform. Last year,
Facebook rolled out its Suggested Videos product, which is designed
to help people find more video content on the site beyond what pops
up in their feeds. It's also designed for Facebook to show people
more video ads, and help publishers share in the ad revenue. The
initial reviews are in and they're mixed, reports CMO Today. Some
publishers say the Suggested Video treatment is helping them find
new audiences, while others think the product is too easy for
people to ignore. Either way, nobody's making much revenue yet.
YAHOO'S MEDIA CORRECTION: Just when you thought you'd read your
last "man, Yahoo is super dysfunctional" story, here comes another
from Vanity Fair. It details the beleaguered Web portal's recent
expansion in the content and news business, and subsequent pullback
when it became clear the strategy wasn't quite panning out. It
seems that Chief Executive Marissa Mayer wanted Yahoo to be more
like Time Inc. or even Vanity Fair, but original content on Yahoo's
homepage is always competing with the latest news on Kim
Kardashian's anatomy, as some staffers see it. Now the company is
"reverting to its natural form," a former Yahoo staffer is quoted
as saying, "a crap home page for the Midwest." In defense of the
Midwest, people in New York and Los Angeles care about the
Kardashians too.
DATA LEVY: Maurice Lévy, the chief executive of Publicis Groupe,
has some intriguing ideas about how the ad industry should deal
with the rise of ad blocking on the Web. He proposes that ad firms
work together to build a system that would empower consumers to
control how their data is used by marketers and even pay people a
small sum for allowing ads to be targeted at them, reports The
Globe and Mail. That's potentially complicated and expensive. But
Mr. Lévy believes something that drastic may be necessary, given
what he sees as a major deterioration of trust between marketers
and consumers. If ad blocking continues to grow, "we are wasting
the investment of our clients," he said.
Elsewhere
Taking a page out of HBO's playbook, the premium cable network
Starz is rolling out a direct-to-consumer subscription app aimed at
people who pay for broadband but don't have cable. Starz, which has
long been the subject of merger-and-acquisition rumors, will charge
$9 a month for access to its content. [ New York Times]
One of Bill Simmons' first big projects for HBO will be a talk
show, "After the Thrones," which will follow--and dissect--each
week's episode of "Game of Thrones" this season. [ Medium]
Bidders for a minority stake in Viacom's Paramount Pictures
include Lionsgate, Comcast, Wanda and Amazon, according to the New
York Post. [ New York Post]
The Federal Communications Commission has created a system of
new labels aimed at helping consumers better understand how
different broadband services should perform based on a range of
performance levels and data packages. [ WSJ]
The Web video company Machinima is planning to launch a daily
"SportsCenter"-like news show covering professional video games
exclusively on Verizon's mobile service go90. [ Variety]
Lawyers for Erin Johnson, the chief communications officer at J.
Walter Thompson who is suing the company, are trying to stop the
agency's lawyers from blocking the release of a video which
allegedly features ousted CEO Gustavo Martinez making sexist and
racist comments. [ Ad Age]
Just how did over 100 news outlets collaborate on the "Panama
Papers" investigation that details offshore holdings of foreign
officials? They worked in password-secure encrypted forums and
built a search engine for the leaked documents at the heart of the
reporting. [ Poynter / Wired]
Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei will leave next week, months
earlier than originally planned, though Mike Allen, author of the
famed Politico Playbook newsletter, will stay on through the 2016
election. [ CNN Money]
Adweek takes a long look at why marketers, who are enamored with
millennials and for decades have been fixated on baby boomers, have
largely ignored poor Generation X. [ Adweek]
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 05, 2016 07:50 ET (11:50 GMT)
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