• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 24, 2025

Let’s make it simple.

How about just shutting down a big TV network -- and shifting everything to streaming?

Sounds crazy. But Needham & Company recommends Walt Disney just accelerate where the world seems to be going.

Not a sale of ABC. Not a merger. Not a spinoff. Just over and out.

This isn’t just about declines in finances for the broadcast business, but now adding in an environment that seems to aggressively attack content -- heightened recently by freedom-of-speech issues and the suspension and return of ABC late-night comedian/host Jimmy Kimmel.

Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to take action after Kimmel's remarks with regard to conservative activist Charlie Kirk -- with threats to ABC TV stations and ABC affiliates' broadcast licenses.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said last week on a conservative political podcast.

That puts nervous major TV station groups on high alert -- closely monitoring the content from TV networks feeding their affiliated TV stations.

Sinclair Inc. immediately threatened to pre-empt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” unless he made an apology as well as a contribution with a donation to the Kirk conservative organization “Turning Point USA.

After Disney announced that Kimmel would return to the airwaves this week, Sinclair reiterated its decision to pre-empt “Kimmel” -- as did another big TV station group, Nexstar Media Group.

Laura Martin, media analyst of Needham & Company, believes the time is now to make a dramatic change -- to abandon the network and shift everything to streaming.

“Given Disney’s negative share price performance based on recent FCC comments, we argue that Disney should shut down (not sell) ABC,” Martin wrote.

The rub, of course, is that Disney’s legacy TV business -- although steadily declining -- is still currently profitable and will be for the near term.

So why do it? Disney’s stock price, of course. The hard-pressed entertainment stock could benefit in another direction, seeing sharp gains.

“Together, these would add $20 billion -- 10% -- of incremental value to Disney shareholders,” says Martin.

Disney would also benefit by writing off about $10 billion to $11 billion of its $204 billion market value.

So how can Disney -- or anyone with the broadcast network -- transition everything in one big, dramatic move to streaming?

That would seemingly require seismic business changes and a massive marketing campaign to communicate with consumers.

That said, Disney is a master of this kind of consumer marketing.

Still, it won’t be as simple as ABC.