SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – On today’s edition of Rob Black’s Winners and Losers, our financial expert Rob Black and KRON 4’s Mark Danon talk about Apple, student debt and Disney selling ESPN on the side.
Americans are divided over Apple’s phone privacy fight. Democrats, independents favor company; Republicans worry government won’t go far enough to protect national security
Student debt load is growing, and so are delinquencies. Since growth rates in debt began to accelerate around 2012, some 90 percent of new debt has come in auto and student loans. However, while auto debt balances have merely returned to around where they were in 2003, student loan debt has accelerated dramatically – up about 58 percent during the same period to an average of $25,000 per borrower. That’s more than double the average auto balance of $12,200.
Disney CEO Bob Iger says Disney needs to improve on the digital front, and that selling ESPN direct-to-consumer is on table. ESPN lost about 7 million subscribers in the previous two years. That means ESPN left an estimated $1.3 billion in subscriber revenue on the table in 2015, compared with what it would have made with steady cable company growth.