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- Over the summer, Bob Iger seemed to hint that ABC and Disney's other networks were for sale.
- The CEO walked that back on Wednesday, saying he was just testing the waters.
- Since returning as CEO, Iger has turned his focus to streaming.
Bob Iger made headlines earlier this year when, in an interview from Sun Valley, Idaho, he let it slip that anything was on the table for ABC and Disney's legacy linear networks — including a sale.
Turns out, it wasn't so much of a slip as it was a test.
"When I am looking for a reaction to my own thought process, I like to test that process in public — particularly in ways that I might be able to actually get a reaction from the investment community," the Disney CEO said at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday afternoon.
A CNBC interview during the Allen & Co. conference — also known as billionaire summer camp — is a pretty good way to get the attention of that community.
But it looks like the idea failed the test: Iger said on Wednesday that ABC and the other networks were not, after all, for sale — though he added that Disney was "constantly evaluating" their value.
In fact, he pushed back on the idea that he had ever said the networks for sale in the first place. (You can decide, as his actual words were: "We have to be open-minded and objective about the future of those businesses. They may not be core to Disney.")
"That was a means of my saying to Wall Street or the investment community that our heads were not in the sand about the challenges that those businesses were having," he said Wednesday.
Of course, the networks could be off the table simply because no one responded with an offer that was high enough for him or because his comments set off anxiety at the House of Mouse.
In September, rumors swirled that Disney was in talks to sell ABC to either Nexstar Media Group or to Allen Media Group, whose CEO Byron Allen had offered to buy the news network, as well as FX and National Geographic, for $10 billion.
Perhaps Iger is once again testing the waters of the investment community. For the right price, anything can be sold, and the CEO was quick to boast about improvements to the linear networks, including cost-cutting and more synergies with streaming — one of Iger's core areas of focus.
Even with Iger's magic touch, streaming may kill the linear star.