# FiveThirtyEight.com decimated by Disney layoffs **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 27, 2023, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242 "2023-04-27T01:23:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/1 "2023-04-27T01:23:57Z")
Nate Silver has had an up and down career since he came to fame forecasting the 2008 election. He went from the New York Times to Disney, which tried to make him a personality at ESPN and then transferred his website [fivethirtyeight.com](http://fivethirtyeight.com) to ABC News, which never wanted it. The site remains a go-to for political sanity. I assume everybody who posts here goes there at least occasionally. But maybe not for much longer. > **[Nate Silver expects to leave Disney/FiveThirtyEight](https://awfulannouncing.com/disney/nate-silver-five-thirty-eight-exit-layoffs.html)** > > The era of Nate Silver running FiveThirtyEight at Disney/ABC News/ESPN looks about to end, with Silver talking about plans to leave. Silver plans to leave as soon as his contract is up, apparently really soon, after Disney laid off huge numbers of staff yesterday. Disney is busy cutting 7000 positions. Why, since it has all the money in the world, I don’t know. Hopefully they need more money to fight DeSantis, maybe turn Tallahassee into a theme park. Anyway the site as we knew it is probably gone despite ABC’s bland words of reassurance. Silver has been talking to people about where he’ll land. Watch this space. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/2 "2023-04-27T01:38:51Z")
It should have stayed at the NYT. That was always the best place for it. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/3 "2023-04-27T01:42:34Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Why, since it has all the money in the world, I don’t know. Because you get to keep all of the money if you have no headcount. [Simple accounting, duh!](https://youtu.be/6cE-3NHXcPU) Frankly, FiveThirtyEight has been on a downward slide since ABC specifically targeted [Clare Malone](https://www.claremalone.net/about) to be cut, and I’m kind of relieved to not have to hear any more inane discussion about “Good use of polling or bad use of polling?” I’ve mostly supplanted my commute podcast politics listening to _The Lawfare Podcast_ and _Behind the Bastards_ anyway, and I can only take so much of that before switching to _The Joy of Y_, _Quanta Science_ or _Old Gods of Appalachia_ anyway. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/4 "2023-04-27T01:54:28Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Disney is busy cutting 7000 positions. Why, since it has all the money in the world, I don’t know. [It seems to be part of a major cost-cutting restructuring headed by newly reinstated Disney CEO Bob Iger.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/disney-reorganization.html) > [@](#): > > On Wednesday, during its [quarterly earnings](https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/app/uploads/2023/02/q1-fy23-earnings.pdf) call with investors, Disney also announced it would be cutting $5.5 billion in costs, which will be made up of $3 billion from content, excluding sports, and the remaining $2.5 billion from non-content cuts. Disney executives said about $1 billion in cost cutting was already underway since last quarter. > > Disney also said it would be eliminating 7,000 jobs from its workforce. That would be about 3% of the roughly 220,000 people it employed as of Oct. 1, [according to an SEC filing](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001744489/000119312523014219/d431948d10ka.htm), with roughly 166,000 in the U.S. and about 54,000 internationally. > > Disney’s stock rose about 6% in premarket trading Thursday. […] > > Media companies, such as [Warner Bros. Discovery](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/WBD/), have been pulling back on content spending and looking to make their streaming businesses profitable. Heightened competition has led to slowing subscriber growth, and companies have been looking to find new avenues of revenue growth. Some, like Disney+ and Netflix, have added cheaper, ad-supported options. > > “We will take a very hard look at the cost of everything we make across television and film,” Iger said on a call with investors Wednesday. Streaming services in general seem to be tightening their belts [in the aftermath of the pandemic boom.](https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/21/video-streaming-services-2/) They made shedloads of money from home-viewing subscribers during lockdowns, but not so much nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Skypist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skypist/32/169_2.png) [@Skypist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skypist)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/5 "2023-04-27T14:37:13Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Frankly, FiveThirtyEight has been on a downward slide since ABC specifically targeted [Clare Malone](https://www.claremalone.net/about) to be cut I’m still mad about that! I haven’t listened to 538 as much as I used to. Definitely looking for other, better podcasts at this point. Will be interesting to see what Nate does. Too bad ABC owns it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/6 "2023-04-27T17:50:19Z")
I’m not a podcast guy so any problems there slip by unnoticed. I just want a good source for the numbers and I want it in print, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/7 "2023-04-27T20:20:52Z")
Also note from the OP’s article: > [@](#): > > Former FiveThirtyEight writer Clare Malone, now at The New Yorker, tweeted that FiveThirtyEight’s models licensed to Disney end with Silver’s contract So when Silver leaves, he takes all of his prediction models. At that point, what’s left at 538 to pay attention to anymore? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/8 "2023-04-27T20:27:01Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > So when Silver leaves, he takes all of his prediction models. At that point, what’s left at 538 to pay attention to anymore? The “prediction models” (which I believe are just SAS analytics code) have to be rebuilt for every election cycle anyway. Having a bunch of legacy models isn’t of any real benefit except for reviewing the results of past elections. I think the point is that Disney doesn’t think that FiveThirtyEight has any real value (in a financial sense), and frankly, they’re probably correct that it doesn’t bring in a huge audience or add revenue streams. Next cycle, they’ll probably just prompt ChatGPT for who it thinks will be elected and copypaste the results even if the response is “Scrooge McDiggler”. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/9 "2023-04-27T21:14:25Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > “Scrooge McDiggler” This is Disney - wouldn’t it be Scrooge McDuck? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/10 "2023-04-27T21:27:52Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > This is Disney - wouldn’t it be Scrooge McDuck? ChatGPT’s training data set includes both Disney+ and XXX Porn .com, so of course it produces a syncretism. Now try getting that image out of your head. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/11 "2023-04-27T21:57:34Z")
He’s not a natural-born citizen, but I suppose he could be up for a Congressional seat. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/12 "2023-04-27T23:09:00Z")
nevermind got my facts wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/13 "2023-04-27T23:28:36Z")
I lost my respect for Nate and 538 in 2016 when he had Hillary at like 95% to win not too long before the election. If you can be that wrong, your model is dogshit. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2023, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/14 "2023-04-27T23:33:55Z")
BTW, Disney doesn’t quite have “all the money in the world” right now: > **[Disney+ Drops 2.4 Million Subscribers in First Loss, Bob Iger Heralds...](https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/disney-q1-2023-earnings-bob-iger-disney-plus-loses-subscribers-1235517007/)** > > With Bob Iger back as CEO, Disney reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street estimates while Disney+ lost subscribers for the first time. > [@](#): > > Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer revenue for the quarter rose 13%, to $5.3 billion, while its operating loss increased 78% to $1.05 billion. The higher year-over-year operating loss — which was better than analysts’ forecast loss of $1.22 billion for the DTC segment (and compared with a loss of $1.5 billion the previous quarter) — was due to higher content and technology costs at Disney+ (with higher average costs per hour of programming, which included an increased mix of originals) as well as higher content costs and lower ad revenue at Hulu. Financial performance of ESPN+ improved thanks to [higher retail pricing](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/espn-raise-price-streaming-1235317714/). The company continues to expect Disney+ to hit profitability in fiscal year 2024. They lost a _billion_ dollars on streaming (though, overall, the company was still profitable). (Pretty much) all of the companies involved in streaming right now are suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/15 "2023-04-28T00:26:02Z")
> [@](#): > > The company continues to expect Disney+ to hit profitability in fiscal year 2024. Stock analysts look at today. Companies look years into the future. [https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-profit](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-profit) > Disney gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was **$28.195B** , a **12.49% increase** year-over-year. Disney has all the money in the world. After the layoffs it will have even more. Super large companies tend to buy or form fifty small companies in the hopes that 5 or 10 will pan out. In the long term they cut them out and start another fifty. I constantly go back and forth on whether that’s smart business or criminally negligent. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/16 "2023-04-28T00:33:23Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I lost my respect for Nate and 538 in 2016 when he had Hillary at like 95% to win not too long before the election. So I guess you’ve never rolled a 1 on a d20 before. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/17 "2023-04-28T00:34:37Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I lost my respect for Nate and 538 in 2016 when he had Hillary at like 95% to win not too long before the election. > > If you can be that wrong, your model is dogshit. One in twenty times you’re gonna get that wrong. 95% is hardly 100% confidence. If you always get your 95% winners right, your model is dogshit, too. And the final forecast was Trump at 29% of winning the electoral college, which was better than every other polling model. On November 3, they had Trump at 35% (!!!). Actually, I can’t see them predicting Hillary at any more that 90% at any point during the prediction cycle: > **[2016 Election Forecast | FiveThirtyEight](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)** > > Nate Silver's predictions and polling data for the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump So I’m not sure what you’re remembering. My memory is 538 actually made me more nervous about Hillary’s chances than any other news source. And they were right to. Also, remember Comey on Oct 28 made that announcement about the email probe and Clinton that also sank her chances abruptly. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/18 "2023-04-28T01:08:47Z")
Oh how I remember! Comey and _all_ the shit. I thought it through very carefully at the time, the meaning of such a model. And my conclusion was that it wasn’t all that valuable. If a 75% means “tossup,” then call it that and leave off the exact percentage. If 95% means, “Gonna win! But anything could change this so that it’s meaningless,” then maybe don’t ever call anything “95%.” Because that is what it was like: Hillary at this extremely high percentage, whoops something happened so now it’s a 2 in 3 chance, whoops Trump won! Haha, but our model is just _the shit_–hey, we gave Trump a 1 in 3 chance, so–cool?! And, quite frankly, Nate comes off as this chirpy, kinda know-it-all twat, so I don’t have too many feels for him as he wanders away from Disney to wherever. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/19 "2023-04-28T01:42:48Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I constantly go back and forth on whether that’s smart business or criminally negligent These are not mutually exclusive options. > [@Aeschines](#): > > I lost my respect for Nate and 538 in 2016 when he had Hillary at like 95% to win not too long before the election. > > If you can be that wrong, your model is dogshit. Well, given that you are wrong (FiveThirtyEight projections never had anything near a 95% projection for Clinton, and [certainly not past November 2016 when it gave Trump a over 30% probabilty](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)) I’m sure you’ll retract the claim that the “model is dogshit”. > [@Aeschines](#): > > And, quite frankly, Nate comes off as this chirpy, kinda know-it-all twat, so I don’t have too many feels for him as he wanders away from Disney to wherever. Actual, Silver comes off as an overly qualifying, impossbile-to-pin-down ‘twat’ who hedges his assessments based upon conditional validity of the data. I’ve literally never heard him claim that a result was essential certain because of projections, because like a good statistician he always references the margins even to an absurd degree. But maybe you’ll provide a clip or quote where he makes some unlikely absolute projection about the future that I’ve never, ever heard him make. Yes? Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2023, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242/20 "2023-04-28T02:21:32Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > . If a 75% means “tossup,” then call it that and leave off the exact percentage. If 95% means, “Gonna win! But anything could change this so that it’s meaningless,” then maybe don’t ever call anything “95%.” I don’t know. I think a model with numbers helps me understand the nuance: 95% and 75% and 51% all mean “tossup,” but those numbers show me how likely things are to change. It’s just if your tendency is to round 95% to 100% that you go wrong. There’s no certainty in prediction, but their model seems pretty solid. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fivethirtyeight-com-decimated-by-disney-layoffs/983242.md?page=2)