Losing a PR Battle
Over the last couple of weeks, it’s been fascinating to see how the pandemic has played out in the world of entertainment. I don’t mean the content of new films or TV shows — the notion that someone has already made a coronavirus-themed film doesn’t likely speak highly of its quality, but who knows. I’m thinking more in terms of how companies are responding to the crisis. As you may have heard, companies — they’re here! For you! All of them! They’re all here for you, for me, for everyone we know, etc. It’s quite assuring, no? Ahem.
Specific to this Substack, I’m really thinking about how there is an easy set of victories to be won by a major conglomerate, how some major entertainment companies are winning them, and how Disney is mostly…not.
On March 12, Disney was able to sway California Governor Gavin Newsom to say that Disneyland would be exempt from his executive order limiting the number of people at public gatherings. That, of course, is the same day that they announced…well, this.
Disney did do the right thing. Eventually. After people rightly excoriated them online. And even then, the people spending time at Walt Disney World or Disneyland the day before they closed acted like it was a big party where everyone needed to get in nice and close.
This week specifically has been very up and down for Disney in terms of public relations, in ways that make me wonder where the mistakes are being made. The story about Gavin Newsom relaxing his order to allow Disneyland to keep operating emphasized that he was in conversation with Robert Iger, who…isn’t the CEO of the Walt Disney Company anymore. And stories like the one posted by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, in which executives groused about having to live with pay cuts a day after thousands of Cast Members were furloughed amount to, if nothing else, hideous public relations.
As a compare-and-contrast, consider what’s going on at NBC Universal, where their CEO literally has coronavirus. Comcast has pledged a half-billion dollars to its employees; many of its top executives donated their entire salaries to charity this week, too. While Iger and Bob Chapek are foregoing half of their salaries, the Hollywood Reporter article notes that “note that the bulk of Iger and Chapek’s compensation will remain untouched because the cuts only apply to their base salaries. In the case of Chapek, his base is $2.5 million, but his annual target bonus is $7.5 million and his annual long-term incentive grant is $15 million.”
I’m not saying that Comcast / NBCUniversal isn’t being different, that much, from other major corporations. They like money. They would no doubt like to make even more money. As does Disney. But Disney is making weird miscues during this entire situation, miscues that seem instantly obvious and fumbling as soon as they’re reported. Is no one at the helm there? Is Chapek leading, and doing so poorly? Is he even getting the chance?
I wonder.
Your Recommendation for Today
One of many short films that arrived on Disney+ yesterday, Lambert the Sheepish Lion is a sweet late-era piece of Disney animation. The title all but tells you what you need to know about the eight-minute short. It focuses on a bashful lion named Lambert who’s been raised by sheep his whole life, and thus doesn’t act much like a lion until a wolf comes by threatening his adoptive family.
Lambert the Sheepish Lion is a short I must have seen the right number of times as a kid. From searching Wikipedia (which, as we all know, is never wrong), I see that it was released on two VHS collections focusing on Disney shorts, both culled from the 40s-era package films and free-standing shorts from the 1940s and 1950s. I must have rented that VHS from my local library or Blockbuster Video (ask your parents what Blockbuster was, kids) enough times, because the title tune has been embedded enough into my subconscious that when I saw the press release announcing the new arrivals to Disney+ in April, all I could hear was “La-a-a-a-ambert!”