LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Firm’s prime streaming government, Kevin Mayer, resigned on Monday to grow to be the chief government of TikTok, the app for making and sharing brief movies that has exploded in reputation through the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Mayer, 58, can even function chief working officer of ByteDance, the Chinese language conglomerate that owns TikTok. “I used to be pleased with my job at Disney,” Mr. Mayer stated by telephone. “The magnitude of this chance was simply one thing I couldn’t move up.” He cited gaming and music as two growth potentialities. (He sounded significantly much less wanting to put up TikToks of himself.)
TikTok’s app has been downloaded about 1.9 billion occasions worldwide, together with 172 million downloads in the US, based on Sensor Tower, an app information agency. And its surging reputation has elevated through the pandemic. Within the first quarter of this 12 months, it was downloaded 307 million occasions, greater than some other app on this planet, based on Sensor Tower information.
That reputation has made TikTok by far the largest digital success for a Chinese language-owned firm within the Western world. Because of this, it has confronted deep mistrust throughout the U.S. authorities. A number of authorities businesses, together with practically all branches of the army, have barred workers from downloading or utilizing the app. In March, Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, proposed laws to bar any federal worker from utilizing the app.
“.@tiktok_us beforehand advised me they couldn’t attend hearings and testify as a result of executives had been situated in #China,” Mr. Hawley wrote on Twitter after Mr. Mayer’s hiring was introduced. “However this new government lives within the USA. I sit up for listening to from him. Beneath oath.”
Each Republicans and Democrats have questioned the Chinese language authorities’s affect over the app. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority chief, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, co-wrote a letter to the director of nationwide intelligence in October, requesting a assessment of the national-security implications of TikTok’s increasing affect.
TikTok has in the meantime employed a quantity of American executives and workers to run its enterprise and assessment content material on its app. Vanessa Pappas, a former YouTube government who joined TikTok as one of its American chiefs final 12 months, stated in a November weblog put up that the corporate’s United States-based workforce would name the pictures on TikTok’s U.S. enterprise, together with by setting particular guidelines for American customers.
Now Mr. Mayer will present a transparent hyperlink between TikTok and ByteDance’s management in Beijing, together with his twin roles on the two corporations.
Mr. Mayer’s departure from Disney is just not totally a shock. Disney’s board of administrators handed over him this 12 months when it was searching for a successor for Robert A. Iger, who abruptly stepped down in February. (Mr. Iger stays government chairman, with a concentrate on the artistic course of.) Many individuals in Hollywood and on Wall Avenue had considered Mr. Mayer because the logical inside candidate as a result of the long run of Disney rests on its capability to remodel itself right into a streaming titan. The highest job, nevertheless, went to Bob Chapek, the lower-profile chairman of Disney’s theme parks and shopper merchandise companies.
“Kevin has had a rare impression on our firm over time,” Mr. Chapek stated in an announcement. “Having labored alongside Kevin for a few years on the senior administration workforce, I’m enormously grateful to him for his assist and friendship.”
Regardless of being handed over, Mr. Mayer had indicated that he was in no hurry to depart. There isn’t any enterprise extra vital to Disney than streaming, and Mr. Mayer has relished engaged on providers like Disney Plus, which rolled out in November and now has about 55 million subscribers — a runaway hit. Disney Plus will arrive in components of Asia and Latin America this 12 months. Hulu, which has about 30 million subscribers, and Hotstar, the main streaming service in India, have additionally been half of Mr. Mayer’s portfolio.
Mr. Mayer is greatest generally known as Disney’s longtime offers maven. Earlier than operating the direct-to-consumer and worldwide division for the previous two years, he served as Disney’s chief technique officer, serving to to orchestrate the purchases of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, most of 21st Century Fox and BamTech, a know-how firm that focuses on streaming video.
Disney named Rebecca Campbell as Mr. Mayer’s successor. She has been ascending shortly. Simply final 12 months, she was named president of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif. Earlier than that, Ms. Campbell had a senior management position at Disney’s Europe, Center East and Africa operation; she labored on the launch plan for Disney Plus. Disney additionally named a brand new chairman for theme parks and shopper merchandise: Josh D’Amaro, who was president of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
ByteDance, based in 2012, has shortly grow to be a serious participant within the international tech business with a quantity of wildly standard apps, together with Douyin, in impact the Chinese language model of TikTok, and Toutiao, a information aggregator that has run afoul of Chinese language regulators for its generally racy content material. Zhang Yiming, 37, its secretive founder and chief government, has shortly grow to be one of the richest and most influential folks in China. Whereas scrutiny of ByteDance will increase with its measurement, his feedback have resembled these of Mark Zuckerberg, Fb’s chief, arguing that ByteDance is a tech firm, not a media firm.
A TikTok spokesman on Monday careworn that TikTok was not owned by a Beijing-based firm. As an alternative, its father or mother firm, ByteDance Ltd., is included within the Cayman Islands, although he couldn’t say how many individuals are based mostly there. That entity owns TikTok and all of the companies in China, he stated.
Mr. Mayer will stay in his present house in Los Angeles, although he’ll journey steadily to Bytedance’s headquarters in Beijing, in addition to TikTok’s main places of work in New York, London, Japan and India, the spokesman stated.
Brooks Barnes reported from Los Angeles, and Jack Nicas from Oakland, Calif.