Disney is “very encouraged” with how well the Disney Channel...

ultimately authenticating has been impressive,” he said. “And what is really impressive, particularly from the Disney Channel side, is the number of shows that have been viewed on that app.” Its initial success “proves a number of things to us,” Iger said. “One, the power of mobile media. Clearly the [mobile] device, mostly the tablet, to some extent the smartphone, is a device that people are willing to watch a longform video on, particularly kids, and that is very encouraging. What we have got here is a model that benefits the consumer, because it gives the consumer more ways to access the programs conveniently. It benefits the distributor, because we're protecting the business model, because of the need to be a multichannel subscriber, and it certainly benefits us.” As a result, Iger thinks Disney “will do more deals like the one that we did with Comcast,” he said. “There is a variable, too, of distributors that would like to launch these apps,” he said. “But we are willing to launch them as part of overall extensions of the omnibus deals that we have done with them, or the deals that we have done for the channels, and not just allow to distributors to launch them basically outside of the format of an extension of our deal.” Disney also is developing technology it expects to deploy in the fall for ESPN- and Disney-branded apps “to embed advertising that is discrete to these apps,” both for VOD and for streaming, Iger said. “And so we have an opportunity, we believe, not just to use these apps to increase the value of the multichannel ecosystem, but ultimately to drive greater revenue through advertising.” Asked in Q-and-A whether Disney sees social gaming as a lower-priority business opportunity, given that Wall Street has soured on it, Iger said: “Our strategy on the games front is to diversify a modest investment in console, investment in mobile and investment in social. We have actually grown share a bit on the social front lately.” Disney also has seen “some interesting growth thanks to the new Facebook app center that was launched recently, where we are gaining access to customers -- the users of Facebook for marketing purposes that we didn’t have before,” Iger said. “If you check the app center out, if you play social games, you will note that you will be marketed to by friends or through friends who are playing social games, and you will be marketed to from companies that create games because of the games you may have already played.” And so Disney thinks it’s “gaining access to a marketing platform that we actually believe is encouraging,” Iger said. “The other things to notice there is still growth in Facebook in terms of number of users. And the numbers in terms of how much time Facebook users spend playing games are staggering. And so we still believe in that business. But, look, our investment is relatively modest in the space. I think we launched about 10 games this year. A lot of them are based on Disney-owned IP, which we believe gives us not necessarily a great advantage, but an interesting way into that space. So we feel relatively good about it. It is not a huge business for us, but it is one that we are going to continue to be in.” Disney revenue for the three months ended June 30 increased 4 percent from a year earlier to $11.1 billion and profit rose 24 percent to $1.8 billion (CD Aug 8 p19).