Sounds Like ABC Is Not for Sale, After All

Bob Iger has taken down the “For Sale” sign outside of ABC.

The Disney CEO said clearly today that ABC and its legacy, linear network assets were “not for sale,” at least as it stands right now. Could that change? He left the door open a crack there and said that the company is always assessing, but Disney isn’t marketing any of those assets today.

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“Like all of our assets, we constantly are evaluating what is their value to the company today, what could the value be tomorrow. Is it a growth business, is it a business that is going to contract,” Iger said at the NYT DealBook Summit.

But what about when he said back in July that those linear TV networks “may not be core” to the business? Iger told moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin that was his way of testing the waters with Wall Street, and the media got the wrong idea that ABC was already packing up its boxes.

“That was a means of me saying to Wall Street that my head was not in the sand,” Iger said. “I did not want to get accused of being an old media executive, that we were a company that had already shown an ability to basically adapt to new circumstances.”

He continued: “I did not say they were for sale. The coverage of what I said said they were for sale.”

Though it wasn’t just us that got that idea. Media mogul Byron Allen made a $10 billion bid for ABC and Disney’s other TV networks like FX, Nat Geo, and more (excluding ESPN) in September. His bid followed a report that Disney was already in initial sales talks with Nexstar, the owner of The CW, but Disney denied the report.

Iger’s remarks come one day after he hosted a pep rally of sorts as part of a Disney town hall, where he said that the company is back in a rebuilding mode after being in a “fixing” mode in the first year since his return as CEO. He did say then, though, that they’re trying to find ways to migrate the legacy businesses into Disney’s new business model.

“As is the case with all of our businesses, which we must do in order to basically serve shareholders, is we look at the future of all of our business with an eye towards are these businesses going to grow?” Iger said on Nov. 28. “Will they stay the same or will they possibly decrease in value? And if so, what should we do about it?”

Elsewhere during Wednesday’s conference, Iger reiterated prior remarks that Disney is making too many sequels and needs to prioritize quality over quantity. He also criticized his predecessor Bob Chapek saying he was “disappointed” in what he saw during the transition period before he returned as CEO. Iger did say the search for his next successor is “robust” and that he would still step aside in 2026. He even said the company should be willing to comment on political issues like climate change, something for which Chapek was criticized for not being more vocal about hot button cultural topics.

To that end, he addressed Disney’s recent decision to suspend advertising on X after owner Elon Musk made antisemitic comments, leading to an exodus of other advertisers in Hollywood. Iger said the association of those comments was “not a positive one for us.” But he declined to comment on whether Disney will permanently suspend ads from X.

Earlier at the DealBook Summit, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav defended his company’s decision to shelve content as requiring “courage.” See Zaslav’s full remarks here.

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