Amid the Hollywood strike, Disney is looking to hire a senior executive to “lead crisis communications response efforts,” as well as other senior communications experts to “retain” and “motivate” employees, according to company job postings reviewed by The Intercept.
One posting offers up to $337,920 for a vice president of public affairs to lead a “communications team to assist senior executives in preparing for media events” and “interviews.” The posting follows a disastrous July 13 interview by CNBC of Disney chief executive Bob Iger, in which he called the actors and writers strikes “very disturbing,” their demands “not realistic,” and coming at “the worst time in the world.”
The interview was widely panned as a catastrophe, with the Hollywood Reporter calling it “infamous” in an article titled “Unpacking Bob Iger’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good PR Week.” The same week, one day prior to the interview, Disney announced that his contract was being extended to 2026, raising his target annual compensation to $31 million. The eye-popping sum drew cynical comparisons to the statistic that only 14 percent of actors represented by the SAG-AFTRA guild earn the minimum $26,470 necessary to qualify for health insurance, per the union’s chief economist.
“We’re unrealistic when he’s making $78,000 a day,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said of Iger during an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders. Drescher went on to chide his CNBC interview, remarking: “He stuck his foot in it so bad that you notice they’re not letting any of the other CEOs open their mouths.”
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It’s been more than 6 weeks. Did it take them that long to convince Iger that he did a bad thing, or is this a job they can’t find anyone cynical enough to take?
More than likely. In the C-suite, you can’t admit you made a mistake because business logic is faulty and you’ll get replaced asap.
They’re trying to starve the writers and actors out.