Brandon Blake-Managing Partner at Blake & Wang P.A
There’s been new developments in Disney’s long-term overhaul of their corporate structures to match their new focus on content for direct-to-consumer resale. We took a look at their late-fall 2020 restructuring earlier in the week. Now it’s time for BLACK & WANG P.A entertainment law firms Los Angeles to dive deeper into newer developments.
The latest developments are intended, once again, to ‘better support’ the entertainment giant’s growth. This included the addition of the Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution Technology Group, or DMED. This new division will take responsibility for next-gen direct-to-consumer distribution, as well as their remaining linear distribution. It also adds advertising tech, engineering, operations, and Disney’s extant digital product portfolio to the mix.
In this new structure we now see 8 core groups formed. Business Operations, Consumer Experiences and Platforms, Advertising Platforms, Content Operations, Content Platforms, Design, Media Engineering, and Engineering Services
We’ve seen several power-execs, both new and experienced, tapped to lead or contribute to these entities. Jeremy Helfand will stay as lead for Ad Platforms, in collaboration with Disney Advertising Sales. Mike Andres has been named SVP for the Content Platform group, capping off several decades' work in challenging engineering projects for both Disney and ESPN. Tago Kato, who moved in 2017 to Disney from Nike, will take over the Design Team, while Chris Lawson moves over to Content Operations as SVP. Michael Pollard steps out of media operations/engineering directly to head up the Media Engineering arm.
There’s new names in the mix, too. Especially three technologists – Oke Okaro (Business Operations), Jen Schwarz (Engineering Services), and Mike White (Consumer Experiences/Platforms) –were added to the senior team. John Heerdt, after 2 decades in the role of SVP Media Engineering, moves to an advisory position until the end of the year.
This is the culmination of a process we saw begun last fall, as content creation and distribution were separated, and distribution and commercialization centralized into the Media and Entertainment Distribution entity. Overall, Disney presents this latest move as a way to ‘enhance connectivity and collaboration between software, platform, product, and service teams at all levels’ and ‘reinforce a culture of imagination and innovation’. Time will tell if they got it right- but it’s looking good so far.
