Will Disney be in danger of running into severe Silos in the future?

[TheMisterManGuy]

Too much corporate silos is rarely a good thing for a large company. Having a ton of autonomously running divisions, competing for the parent company's attention more often than not, results in chaos rather than profits. The Walt Disney Company is to this day, the largest media empire in the world, and through acquisitions, has grown into a monolith. For the most part, Disney runs its businesses autonomously from each-other across different industries, now to be fair to Disney, they're better at handling their units than most companies like them, since the divisions are usually grouped up with their respective brands and industries.

But as Disney changes, the company could suffer in the long run if its not careful. As I said, Disney's subsidiaries all run independently from each-other, but if this autonomy isn't tamed, it could spell disaster. An example, Disney owns Marvel Entertainment, which consists of all the Marvel Superheroes and properties, yet for some god-for-saken reason, Marvel Studios operates under the Walt Disney Studios division (which itself runs Walt Disney Pictures, LucasFilm, and TCF independently from each-other) as of 2015, pretty much barred off from its original parent. That means if Disney were to ever sell off Marvel, then Marvel Studios would be staying with Disney, leaving all of the MCU rights with the Mouse. Yet Marvel Television still operates under Marvel Entertainment. Which begs the question, why even take the Film division out of Marvel to begin with?

Another example is TV animation. Since 2002, Disney Television Animation has operated under the jurisdiction of Disney Channels Worldwide, which runs under Walt Disney Television, which runs under Disney Media Networks. Ignoring the needless amount of corporate oversight, Disney TVA creations are pretty much ignored by the rest of the Disney Empire, and the unit itself hasn't communicated with other Disney branches in years. That's not even getting into the mess that Walt Disney Television is, which runs 5 different autonomous units in-and-of-itself, including the FX and NatGeo networks Disney got from its Fox purchase. And on the subject of that, Why are Walt Disney Television and ESPN two separate companies? Wouldn't it make sense to just have one unit for ALL of Disney TV, and not this unneeded clutter?

Like I said, Disney is better at handling corporate synergy than most companies of similar size, but at the moment, the company is a bit of a mess, and if it's not careful in the future, than it could get a LOT messier.

 

[Erased Paper]

It's not autonomous.

 

[TsWade2]

I'm sorry, but you're overreacting. But, that's just me.

 

[AdrenalineRush1996]

I feel like you're coming off as doomsaying.

 

[Fone Bone]

What's silos?

 

[Red Arrow]

What's silos?

Those large things in which you store bulk materials like grain.

 

[TheMisterManGuy]

What's silos?

In corporate terms, its used to describe subsidiaries and content libraries within a company that for the most part, are completely barred off from other corporate siblings within that same company unless they negotiate directly. A good example would be Pre-AT&T Time Warner. HBO was siloed off from Tuner, which were both siloed off from Warner Bros. Each division of the company was its own little walled-garden that rarely communicated with other divisions. Another, more notorious example is Sony, who's divisions are famous for rarely working with each-other on anything, and pretty much act like their own entity.

Disney's better at getting its divisions to work together when needed than Time Warner or Sony, but they still have a lot of fiefdoms within their empire. Walt Disney Studios for example is like 5 different walled gardens, within a walled garden.

 

[Fone Bone]

Isn't that a bit of a dry subject for an animation website? Should we look at etchings next? Who wants to hear a good story about a bridge?