Its the nature of the CEO spin game, but I always get a chuckle when these guys do the mea culpa routine as a way to try to regain investor confidence.
It usually goes like this: Its not that Ive been a bad CEO, or have made bad decisions, Ive just gotten distracted lately. In fact, now that I am getting back to my strengths we will really be able to turn this thing around.
And now, Mr. Eisner is ready to get back in the game again, after spending a few years on what he considers the sidelines.
At least he is admitting there are problems. Isnt that the first step to recovery?
Spin aside there is some interesting material here.
Good to hear that STORY (content), MAGIC (substituted for silly), and SHOW are still in their vocabulary and I assume their mission statement. Also good to hear him reference Walts philosophy.
I'm nervous that we'll all including me lose sight," he says. "I have to tie myself to the vision and I have to say to myself, `What is Disney? But for us, the main product is intellectual product, or content
.watch a television show in a group or you go to a theme park and you see people react, then you start to understand content. And it is our single driver.
You ask what is the soul of the company and what is our direction? I'm trying to be the bridge from what Walt Disney made and created," he added, "to whoever will be the next person after me that maintains that same philosophy of `Let's put on a show.' Let's be silly. We're a silly company. Let's never not be a silly company.
I agree that actions will be key, but it is at least comforting to hear the words again.
I think we also debated whether he sees himself as a businessman or creative head.
But that may be because he genuinely sees himself as an entertainment producer who happens to be running a big company, rather than as an executive whose company happens to be in the media business.
Mr. Eisner is counting on Mr. Iger to make the trains run on time while Mr. Eisner himself concentrates on the movies, shows and theme parks that are still his passion.
"When Frank Wells was here, I was 90 percent in creative and 10 percent in making big decisions and Frank was the opposite," Mr. Eisner says, almost wistfully. "And when Frank died I ran it by myself for a while, which was fine. Then I made a mistake and that really put me back. And then I ran it for a little while longer alone and then Bob came in."
That seems pretty clear.
Question: Is the TV distribution model that much different than the internet distribution model?
Mr. Murphy is working on a plan to use television broadcast spectrum to transmit movies overnight to hard-drive devices, much like Tivo recorders, that sit atop televisions. The boxes might store 100 movies at a time, from Disney and other studios.
While Eisner downplayed the need to get bigger and acknowledged the risk of losing their way (more than they already have I guess), it seems like they are still intent on being a wide media content provider.
"We see movies as the Trojan horse. Once you have a relationship with the customer and you have a big hard drive in their house, there's all sorts of different data you can put on there. It can be music, it can be TV, it can be text."
So the creative Michael is back. If this isnt a good news / bad news story.
I have been critical of his micro-management and authoritative style. If he was better at creating an open/empowered organization than the creative side wouldnt have suffered so much when he stopped paying attention to it. When you are use to having someone else always making your decisions it can be quite paralyzing when it stops doing so.
While I would be happier if someone else was given their chance to be the creative mentor of the company, things have gotten so bad that a refocused Eisner is starting to look good. As Ive said before I was reasonably happy with the product being produced up until the early 90s. Maybe, we can at least get back to that level???
