• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Bezos’s WaPo Countdown & Iger Under Pressure

News and notes from across the media industry: ESPN’s profit cliff, the Bezos C.E.O. announcement timeline, and Apple’s “clear and present danger.”

It’s now clear why Bob Iger hung a “For Sale” shingle on ABC and the linear networks in Sun Valley.
It’s now clear why Bob Iger hung a “For Sale” shingle on ABC and the linear networks in Sun Valley. Photo: Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
October 20, 2023

Activist investors tend to speak in their own lingua franca of euphemisms. When Nelson Peltz launched his initial proxy fight with Disney earlier this year, he intimated that he merely wanted a board seat in order to better understand the company’s non-public financials so that he could be helpful—so that The Smiling Crocodile, as he has been known, could simply and amply diagnose areas of deterioration and best ascertain opportunities for potential growth. What a mensch. “I don’t need to overwhelm them,” Peltz told CNBC in January. “I don’t need more than one person on the board.”