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Iger’s ESPN Game of Chicken

Notes on the existential reality undergirding Disney’s white-knuckled negotiation with Charter. (“The game is over,” as one media executive put it.)

We are in the “everything on the table” era, after all, when Bob Iger is publicly floating an ABC sale and seeking a strategic partner for ESPN.
We are in the “everything on the table” era, after all, when Bob Iger is publicly floating an ABC sale and seeking a strategic partner for ESPN. Photo: Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
September 6, 2023

Last Thursday, as I went to turn on ESPN2 to catch my nightly fix of U.S. Open tennis, I received a text from a Puck colleague bemoaning the fact that his plans to watch college football on ESPN had been foiled by a new carriage dispute between Disney and Charter Spectrum, the cable TV operator that serves as the primary provider for both the Los Angeles and New York City media markets.