FORTUNE: Iger's new model - Jan. 10, 2006
None of that will matter if Disney can't keep making content that people really want to consume. One consequence of the digital world is that viewers will reject second-tier content -- you know, like that TV show hammocked between two hits that people watched because nothing else was on. Now there will always be something else on. "That might be a good thing," muses Iger. "We'd weed out some of the chaff."I worry that the article is too foamy—painting Iger in a far-too-tech-savvy light—but that last graf is heartening. It's exactly how Big Content should think about the change in distribution and marketing. They should worry about creating compelling stories and music that customers will want to obtain, rather than "plugging analog holes" or outlawing reverse engineering.
Ask him what he worries about, and he does not talk about broadband take-up rates or piracy or cannibalization. He worries about creating hits. Tech, shmeck. Some things never change.
