There are those times that one has to wonder if the goodwill and congratulations that are being touted in public and shown to the general audience when such moves as this are made are genuine or if behind the scenes there’s a great deal of in-fighting and gnashing of teeth that goes on within the competitive world of business. It’s easy to want to think that Kevin Mayer, the head of Disney+ and a big reason for its continued success, wasn’t too happy to be passed up as the heir apparent when Bob Iger stepped down, but it’s important to put forth a smiling face and start off on the good foot for the public in an effort to show there are no hard feelings and no resentment. After all, as Justin Case of MovieWeb and many others have announced he is heading off to become the CEO of TikTok, an app which has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years. A lot of people would rather think that the silver lining in his departure is more important than any resentment that might have risen from Mayer’s failure to replace Iger. In fact, going over to TikTok might have been a contingency plan, or perhaps even THE plan, all along. It’s hard to know unless one is right there in the thick of it where they can see the facial expressions and listen to the voices of those involved as they discuss the matter.
As far as becoming the CEO of TikTok it does sound like a wise move since the app is still climbing in popularity as its content continues to grow and more and more people find themselves turning to it in order to contribute their own stories and strange but compelling videos. There is a thought that it might go the way of Snapchat, which did suffer a pretty big setback at one point, but as of right now there’s nothing to say it will lean in that direction since the overall popularity of the app is still growing in some ways. Mayer’s switch from Disney to TikTok is advantageous at this point really since it’s a boost to his career that may or may not have been felt quite as acutely had he taken over for Iger. Right now Disney is doing its best to scramble when it come to producing content that people will want to see and making decisions that will keep them smoothly sailing towards the hopeful end or gradual cessation of the current pandemic. As of now Disney+ is still sitting pretty, but without any new content able to be worked on in the next few months it’s likely that the shows that people are waiting on might not be arriving for a while yet.
One massive benefit of TikTok is that it can operate in the presence of social distancing and does, while Disney and all of its properties are still bound by the shutdown and are at this moment really feeling the pinch like the rest of the entertainment industry. Jon Swartz of MarketWatch has more to say on this matter. At this rate anything that can be done from home and online is going to be about all we have for current entertainment other than the shows and movies that were finished before the pandemic hit, though it’s not likely that the studios will release them unless there’s no other choice. The fun part of TikTok and one of its most advantageous is that it’s people, not just movie stars and not big-time celebrities, but people that are contributing to the network with various stories and other videos that a lot of folks are getting into and finding highly amusing and informative at this point. It’s easy to think that celebrities could possibly take over this platform since there’s not much else they can do at this point, but so far a lot of people have found the possibility of becoming known online by using TikTok and simply sharing something with the world that people find that they can’t look away from. In a sense TikTok has become more popular in a short time than many other apps that took a while to really blossom into something that people wanted.
Mayer obviously made the right move for himself, as he’s leaving behind a job that will be taken over by a worthy successor but isn’t bound to be entirely easy since even when the pandemic lets up there’s going to be a lot of catching up to do and a lot of long days that will be needed in order to get things back to where they need to be. Thankfully the person coming in for the job is up to the challenge, though we’ll see just how Disney recovers along with the rest of the entertainment industry when it’s all said and done.
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