Enough. A couple quick news items…

And now, speaking of imaginative executive moves…

After a quarter-century at Netflix, Ted Sarandos is a perfect leader for The Walt Disney Co. as its succession derby drags on. There are serious challenges, yes, but also 100 years of I.P. and brand loyalty to build upon. Plus, it’s no secret that he wanted to become sole C.E.O. when Reed Hastings left.

I was at a media investor get-together recently where someone asked me a provocative question: When The Walt Disney Co. finally names a successor to C.E.O. Bob Iger—which allegedly will happen by early 2026—is there a name that would cause the stock price to instantly pop? Something like when Starbucks brought in Brian Niccol from Chipotle as its chairman and C.E.O. last summer, and investors were so pleased that shares jumped 25 percent, or $21.4 billion, in one day—and were holding until the recent Trump tariff sell-off. At Disney, I responded, there’s probably not a stock-popper among the internal candidates. That’s partly because Disney—unlike, say, Starbucks—is not perceived to be in drastic need of a course-correction post-Iger. But it’s also because the four finalists—Josh D’Amaro, Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, and Jimmy Pitaro, with an emphasis on D’Amaro and Walden—have been discussed and debated more than Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. And because Disney has drawn out this derby, there’s a sense that none of the candidates is an emphatic home run—or at least that board chair James Gorman, who is managing the secretive succession process, doesn’t think so. Josh and/or Dana might ultimately make a great C.E.O., but if either was a clear choice, the thinking goes, he or she would be the clear choice. Now consider what would happen if Ted Sarandos were named the next leader of Disney. He’d almost certainly pop the stock—immediately, if not during an extended honeymoon period—not to mention turn heads in the broader business community. Imagine the great digital disruptor of Hollywood bringing the town’s largest and most influential studio into the digital future. It’s kinda perfect. Sure, Disney is an insular institution, from its buttoned-down corporate culture to the fact that it hasn’t appointed an outsider as C.E.O. in more than 40 years. And even if Netflix is currently worth $370 billion—more than twice its size—Disney is a much more prodigious company, with its huge theme parks and consumer products businesses, as well as linear TV and theatrical film distribution. But given the importance of streaming to the company’s next 20 years, as well as Sarandos’s experience as a top media C.E.O. at a company making more movies and television than anyone, he seems like a no-brainer candidate. Except, of course, that Ted doesn’t want it. Or at least he’s repeatedly said publicly and privately that he doesn’t want it, including at a Journal conference in October, where he was asked if he would even take Gorman’s call. “No, I wouldn’t, not even on my mind,” Sarandos said, adding, “I’m so energized every day by what we’re doing. And I know that sounds crazy after 25 years, but every couple of years it feels like we’re doing something completely different.”

Okay… Admittedly, things are going pretty well for Ted. The Great Netflix Correction of 2022 is solidly in the rearview. Two decades of debt-fueled investment—and traditional rivals asleep at the wheel—built a company with more than 300 million subscribers worldwide, technological superiority, and $8.7 billion in profit last year. Netflix’s own C.E.O. succession generated little public drama, with co-founder Reed Hastings passing the baton in early 2023 to both Sarandos and Greg Peters, his counterpart in Los Gatos. The fundamentals are so strong, even the Netflix bears at MoffettNathanson recently switched their stock rating from Neutral to Buy and upped their share price target to $1,100. “Netflix has won the streaming wars. Case closed,” analyst Robert Fishman declared. Indeed, the next decade of growth at Netflix likely will not be dependent on proving out a new model, but on executing the established one: pushing into emerging markets, maintaining a compelling content mix, figuring out gaming and experiential, judiciously raising prices, and growing an advertising tier. Why would Sarandos want to give that up to walk the Disney tightrope between the old linear world and the new? And put movies in theaters? Ew. Disney’s stock has been flat for a decade, despite a strong C.E.O. for most of that time. Sarandos, a lower-middle-class kid who started at a video store, has ridden Netflix to phenomenal wealth, with houses in Hancock Park and Montecito and Malibu, and status as Mayor of Hollywood that, frankly, only Iger can rival. It’s a nice place to be. But honestly, those are great reasons to leave. Ted’s dreams of doubling subscribers, seriously challenging YouTube in the ads business, and winning a best picture Oscar, have remained out of reach. But he’s done nearly everything else at Netflix, and few would be surprised if he decided 25 years was enough. Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant, have been on a press blitz recently—everything from media conferences to a Variety cover to CBS Sunday Morning, to an “at home” feature in the Times. It almost feels like a victory tour.

Disney would be a natural next platform, with serious challenges yet 100 years of I.P. and brand loyalty to build upon. Plus, it’s no secret that Sarandos wanted to become sole C.E.O. when Hastings left. He’d proven himself as chief content officer, then as co-C.E.O alongside Reed for a few years. Yet the Netflix board felt comfortable handing Sarandos the reins only if he was paired with a former C.O.O. and chief product officer in Peters. A slight, for sure, though Sarandos is said to have defended the co-leader setup when Iger asked him whether it could work at Disney. Now, that same company could offer him the chance to go solo. Yet just last week, at a Paley Center event, moderator Ben Smith asked if Sarandos had even been approached about the Disney job. “No one’s ever talked to me about that,” Ted insisted. Why not? Disney, since its 1995 acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, has essentially been a television company, with the majority of profit coming from the TV division, which includes ESPN. That’s one reason why Iger, who once picked the shows at ABC, was handed the gold-plated mouse ears in the first place—a TV C.E.O. for the TV era. All the more reason to anoint a streaming C.E.O. for the streaming era. “Disney’s streaming business is critical to the company’s vitality,” Peter Supino, the Wolf Research analyst, told me recently. “Short and medium term, streaming is the only large business at Disney that competes in a high-growth market segment. Longer-term, direct-to-consumer digital distribution means that Disney controls how consumers find and consume the I.P. that is the source of the Disney flywheel.” That’s analyst-speak for, Streaming is really, really important. And unless Disney wants to lure Hastings away from a private chair lift at his ski resort, streaming kinda equals Sarandos.