It was “a mistake” to tell CNBC in an interview last year that linear TV assets “may not be core” to the company, Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a new podcast interview.

“I was not wrong in my observation, but there was no need for me to say those words publicly because they caused incredible fear,” Iger said in an interview on Let’s talk to Kelly Ripa off camera“I should have been more sensitive to how these words were not only interpreted but also perceived by the people I truly care about, including Disney legends.”

Iger explained his thinking ahead of his July 2023 appearance on CNBC, when the company was in the midst of major cost-cutting, restructuring and strategic planning. “I wanted to convey to Wall Street a general openness about our business going forward, and I wanted them to know — and I did so after I returned to Disney — that I’m not burying my head in the sand,” he said, echoing thoughts he expressed at the New York Times DealBook conference last fall. Iger recalled wanting to show he was “a realist” and “not in denial,” and decided to say that “everything is on the table. … As it turns out, that was a mistake.”

The podcast interview was largely a synergistic and lifestyle-oriented chat conducted at ABC’s New York headquarters, where Ripa films the daily morning talk show Live with Kelly and Mark. The conversation turned to topics like Iger’s favorite cheese (mozzarella), artists on his personal music playlist (country singer Zach Bryan is one), and whether his looks at age 73 are in any way “medically conditioned,” as Ripa puts it. (“No medically conditioned” procedures, Iger replied, aside from two hip and one knee replacements. “A lot of it is genes and a lot of it is taking care of myself.”) Iger also returned to familiar territory, like his brief consideration of a presidential run in the 2020 presidential race and the state of the current succession process, which he called “a huge priority.”

Along the way, however, this episode also revealed a few business gems.

When Iger was asked to take stock of his accomplishments during his two terms as CEO, the first from 2005 to 2020 and the current one that begins in 2022, he mentioned the $73 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox. While some critics in the industry and on Wall Street decried the high price of the deal, which recently factored into activist investor Nelson Peltz’s proxy war with Iger, the CEO pointed to the Emmy nominations.

Shogun And The bearwhich contributed a large portion of the company’s total of 183 Emmy nominations, “both came to us from FX, and FX came through the acquisition,” Iger said. “So I thought about it. If you take away that acquisition, I don’t know what our Emmy count would have dropped to in terms of nominations.”

Ripa asked Iger if he had become restless in 2020 and 2021 after leaving his CEO post (although his official ties to the company did not end until late 1921 and he was back in the corner office by November of the following year).

“Many people exaggerated that I was bored,” he said. “I wasn’t bored at all. I loved not having a to-do list that was so long, not waking up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to be late for my next meeting (which happened a lot) or missing a flight, being able to read the newspaper and not having to keep checking the clock in the morning because I had somewhere to go.”

During his absence, Iger continued, “I had plenty of stimulation,” but at the same time, “I really had nothing to feel stressed about. And that was a pretty luxurious feeling.”

Iger’s contract runs through the end of 2026. The Disney board’s succession committee is considering candidates, including internal executives Jimmy Pitaro, who runs ESPN, Josh D’Amaro, who is in charge of theme parks, and Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, co-chairmen of Disney Entertainment.