Dana Walden on juggling of Disney’s linear and streaming activa

Disney has found its distribution balance when it comes to managing linear and streaming TV assets.

Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, outlined the company’s strategy to pass on programs through the assets of the Magic Kingdom during a broad Q&A with Ken Ziffren, co-founder and partner of Ziffren Brittenham, at the annual UCLA Entertainment Symposium.

In her keynote address Walden has made it clear that Disney currently has no plans to dispose of his linear cable channels in the way that is being made at NBCuiversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. Ziffren took Walden step by step through the distribution strategy of the company and the long -term vision for managing the falling linear sector that still generates a lot of cash flow and profit for the mouse house.

Walden mentioned the Big 5 of Disney Legacy Linear channels – Nat Geo, FX, Freeform, ABC and Disney Channel – as programming engines for Streamers Disney+ and Hulu. The home run for Disney are currently shows that appeal to live linear platforms that tend to attract an older audience, but also make contact with viewers in an on-demand format streaming.

“All that programming is deeply embedded in our strategy for streaming,” Walden told Ziffren. “It is a pipeline of programming that we can optimize and earn money along multiple platforms.”

Walden emphasized that there is little duplication from the audience between platforms. This enables Disney to get the best out of his production and marketing expenditure. “We spread each with fresh eyes,” she said.

The same applies at the local level for Disney’s eight ownership and operated ABC branches on markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. Local news and other localized content make those stations invaluable for a company like Disney with so many components.

“Notwithstanding that it is clearly a decreasing ecosystem, those stations are very profitable and very with a very high margin,” Walden said. “For many viewers, they are a daily contact point with the Walt Disney company. We promote our parks, our cruise ships, our films that are launched, our shows. And we have been feeling comfortable for a while that maintaining well-run stations on very high markets is the right strategy for us.”

While the couple had spoken to the basic principles of running Disney’s huge TV operation, Walden and Ziffren demonstrated a natural report that comes from a long relationship. Walden said that at the age of 14 she first met her friendship with the daughter of Ziffren. As she settled for the Q&A Hourlong, she acknowledged that she thought in mind: “This is my friend Laura’s father,” she joked.

Among other things discussed topics:

** Walden described a formative experience from earlier in her career when she ran the 20th Century Fox Television, long before Disney Fox took over. A year after the studio broke the industrial records by taking about 28 series orders from broadcast networks, Walden was taken home by her boss on the plane, former News Corp. -President Peter Chernin.

“He said,” Congratulations, you break our company. If you are only network order branches, you don’t make content that will be useful and endure the test of time and this company goes to the future. ” He was exactly right, “she said.

** Walden offered a little behind the scenes insight into Disney’s recent deal with cable giant charter communication. The deal makes Hulu content available for charter subscribers, and it represented a victory for Disney in that Charter restored the linear distribution for various smaller channels (such as the pre-school-oriented Disney Junior) that had fallen from Charter’s line-up a few years ago.

“It is a good example of how a company like Disney has assets that can exist in linear existence and can work in streaming with an MVPD partner like Charter,” she said. “The economy worked based on the assets that we could shift and how they were packed on Charter.”

** Ziffren pressed Walden on rival companies and shows that she admires. Netflix’s “adolescence” and HBO’s “The White Lotus”. “As far as strategies are concerned, it is difficult not to be impressed by Netflix,” she said.