Argentina’s Diego Lerner, who was a leading force in the Walt Disney Company’s expansion into Latin America and Europe from 1990 to this year, passed away at the age of 71 in Buenos Aires on December 18th after a long illness.
At Disney’s request, Lerner was named president emeritus of The Walt Disney Company Latin America in November, with Martin Iraola to take over the position.
Lerner’s funeral was held privately on Friday, with close creators in attendance, including Mariano Cohn and “The Boss” creator Gaston Duprat.
A consummate office worker, Mr. Lerner spent nearly 35 years at the Walt Disney Company, a career that almost perfectly spanned the two great rises in television over the past 30 years. “The long expansion or ‘golden age’ of multi-channel pay TV in the region” and “a strategic shift towards streaming, Disney+ and local production,” said Maria Rua Aguete, senior research director at Omdia.
Lerner has always maintained that the key to success is “storytelling, not technology. It’s the quality of the content that counts. The script is still king,” Lerner told Spanish-language website ConverCom in 2019.
“He has made invaluable contributions to our company and our storytelling tradition,” Disney said in a statement Friday, highlighting his philosophy.
“We extend our deepest condolences to Diego’s family, his friends, and everyone affected by this loss,” said Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger. “We know we speak for everyone at Disney when we say how much Diego will be missed, but we are extremely grateful for nearly 35 years of cooperation and friendship.”
What Lerner Accomplished: The Development of Disney
Joining Disney in 1990 as executive director of Latin American video and pay-TV, he undertook what would become a classic corporate move to combat piracy in Latin America while attuning to local sensibilities, including starting direct distribution operations in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina. Previous judges had largely dismissed Disney’s claims of intellectual property damage as “too abstract,” he told ConverCom in 2018.
In the early to mid-1990s, pay-TV penetration in Latin America was still in the single digits, well below 10 million people, according to Omdia.
As the Latin American region experienced sustained growth driven by cable expansion and later accelerated by DTH, Lerner, who was promoted to president of the Walt Disney Company in Latin America, launched Disney Channel in 2000, Jetix in 2004, and Playhouse Disney in 2008, channels that gained a bigger slice of the subscriber cake and scaled to match the growing size of Latin America.
Lerner also credited Disney with the struggle to consolidate all business units into a single vertical and create a template for Disney’s international operations.
In fact, he performed so well in Latin America that in 2009 he was appointed president of The Walt Disney Company in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (MENA), applying his expertise to Disney’s No. 1 international market, an unusual honor for a Latin American. Based in London, Lerner drove “continuous improvements in consumer friendliness” during his tenure, Disney said in 2017, noting that another challenge was looming: the industry’s shift from linear growth to streaming competition.
Launching Disney+ and moving into local content
Netflix first launched in Latin America in 2011. The company also used the area to create the world’s first entirely non-English original production. In 2015, it produced Mexico’s “Club of Crows” and a year later Brazil’s “3%,” with 80% of its audience coming from outside Brazil. A new business model was born, based on locally produced and sometimes blockbuster shows and movies produced on a global scale.
Mr. Lerner’s distinguishing feature was not only his strategic growth vision, but also his sensitivity to the value of regional revitalization. Already in 1997, Buena Vista International Latin America joined the Patagonic Film Group, founded by Pablo Bossi, in partnership with the Argentine media conglomerate Clarin and the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica. Patagonik, which co-produced Alan Parker’s Evita, starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas, has produced some of Argentina’s greatest masterpieces of modern times, including Fabian Bielinski’s Nine Queens, which launched Ricardo Dalín, and Juan José Campanella’s Son of the Bride.
Mr. Lerner returned to Argentina and was reappointed president of The Walt Disney Company Latin America at the end of 2018.
In November 2020, Disney+ announced that it has over 70 original productions in various stages of development and production in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. “At The Walt Disney Company Latin America, we know how important locally relevant stories are to our audiences,” Lerner said at the time.
Disney had already embraced the rich line of what TWDC executive producer Leonardo Arrangivel calls “true life fiction,” with BTF Media’s Juan Gabriel biopics Since I Met You (2016) and Selena’s Secret (2018), and arguably Bossi’s Pampa Films’ Monzón (2019), directed by Bossi. Since then, Disney has produced its masterpiece Santa Evita, backed by Salma Hayek and Rodrigo Garcia, its first TV show Nada, in which Robert De Niro played a character, and its greatest masterpiece, The Boss (El Encargado), currently in its third season.
Mr. Lerner may be deeply involved in the production. While in Europe, he helped create the teen musical novel Violetta (2012-15), which became a phenomenon. He was the idea behind the ambitious drama series “Limbo,” which will have its Cannes Series 2022 world premiere.
But while he was essentially an entrepreneur, he was able to act at the highest political level and also knew how to get his way, an art of persuasion based on knowing what other people wanted and giving them a significant portion of it.
Perhaps Lerner’s best moment came in 2019-21, when he inherited 50% of the rights to Argentina’s Primera División, which he shares with TNT, the country’s content crown jewel, after Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Through Fox and ESPN, Disney acquired an estimated 64% of the television sports rights in Argentina.
Lerner and Disney were against everything. He is a close personal friend of former President Mauricio Macri and has even had lunch with the Macri couple. Argentina was ruled by Alberto Fernández and former president and current vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who defeated Macri in the 2019 general election. Cable operator Telecentro had offered an additional $10 million. In October 2020, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) terminated Fox Sports’ ownership of the soccer rights to the Argentine Primera Division. Mr. Fernandez is said to have had, not unreasonable, antitrust concerns about Disney’s dominant position in the sports market.
Mr. Lerner sought out allies in Argentina’s centre-left to make the case, including Sergio Massa, president of the Argentine Congress, and allies of Mr. Fernández. Disney also sold Fox Sports Channel. Disney could also boast a record for exporting Argentine hits to other parts of Latin America, relying on Fernández de Kirchner in 2012. It was considered impossible for Macri’s allies to contest the rights to football from the Kirchner Union. But that’s exactly what Lerner accomplished. In January 2021, he announced that ESPN would continue to share Primera Division matches with TNT in a deal through 2030.
