Disney after Eisner -- better, same, or worse?

[SpaceAce]

There was a lot of anti-Eisner sentiment before his departure, right or wrong.

My question is: how have things gone since Eisner? What are the thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[OKW Lover]

IMHO, Perhaps the best thing after Eisner left was the acquisition of Pixar and the active participation in the iTunes store (music & movies).

 

[rutgers1]

There is a thread that basically covers that here.

 

[YoHo]

Things are worse, because Iger is incapable of defining the company and moving it back to it's creative center.

 

[Peter Pirate 2]

It's really a loaded question and most of our opinions are in that other thread, but I think the short answer is yes, it is worse under Iger.

 

[~Kik-Kik~]

The same.

Eisner did a lot of good early on in his rule as CEO, but then ruined it all as years went on. He made 3 parks incomplete, released several disaster movies, and nearly ruined Disney's relationship with Pixar.

Iger has begun to pick up the pieces. He has started to retheme DHS so it less of a mess, though it still is, it has some hope now. It actually got lands, and a new name. Hopfuly we will keep getting changes.

DCA is getting a makeover, slowly but surely.

Animal Kingdom got one new E ticket ride and a new show. They are also clearing out the junk (Pocahontas Show).

New movies that look decent, Rapunzel and The Princess and the Frog.

He hired John Lassater as Head of Disney Imagineering and has no one above him besides Iger himself.

It's too soon to judge, but he seems to has planted the seeds of sucess. I doubt he will be able to fix it himself though. I think it will take many people many many years to fix the mess that was left behind after Walt died. Eisner would have been a great start if he left in 1997.

 

[micknpluto]

worse, worse worse.

 

[MJMcBride]

same

 

[DVC-Landbaron]

WORSE

Ditto YoHo!

 

[deej696]

No please no. Not this thread again. I....just....cant....handle...it.......

 

[DVC-Landbaron]

Did you finish Disney Wars yet?

 

[zulemara]

Did you finish Disney Wars yet?

I don't know about him, but I am going to my bf's cabin this weekend so I pretty much intend on spending hours upon hours and finishing Disney War..not matter how painful it is, I must know the truth!

 

[deej696]

Did you finish Disney Wars yet?

If you were asking me Baron, yes I read your "only true account of Michael Eisner and all other books are lies" about 6 months ago. Sorry I couldnt resist. It was Zulemara who was in the process of reading it. I look forward to hearing your take Zule when you finish it

 

[rutgers1]

I am about 40 pages from the end of Disney War. After reading this board for the past few months, I expected to hate Eisner MUCH more by the time I got to this point in the book. Here are my thoughts:

1) Since I don't buy the argument here that blames Eisner for every bad thing that occurred over 20 years yet credits others for all of the good things, I will say that I do indeed think that the good outweighs the bad. I think Disney is better off for the growth of the parks under his watch (could it have been better? yes, but I still like it), some of the great movies and Broadway shows that came out under his watch, the transformation of Times Square, and the Disney Vacation Club....among other things.
2) I think he was an egocentric loon who thought he was "up there" with Walt Disney.
3) Things could have been better under different leadership, but it could have been much worse. After some major stagnation in the years leading up to Eisner's hiring, I don't believe the arguments of some here that all of the good of the Eisner era would have happened anyway without him. Once again, if you are going to blame him for the bad things that happened under his watch, you have to give him credit for the good things.

Obviously, we don't have a control group for this experiment. We will never know what would have happened had someone else been running the company for the past twenty years. All I can say is that, despite operating in a world that was much more competitive (more competing theme parks, more competing media outlets, more pressure from shareholders) than his predecessors, he took the Disney company to some places that I have really enjoyed. I think movies like Little Mermaid, Nemo, and Lion King are some of the best Disney movies ever. I absolutely love the transformation that has occurred in Times Square due in large part to Disney. Disney World has gone from a place that I might have visited for a few days every few years, to a place where I am now a DVC owner and plan to visit at least once a year for the rest of my life. Could someone else have nurtured the old parks better while creating fascinating new ones? Sure, but they didn't. In other words, we have no one else to compare the past 20 years of Disney growth to. Although I find some of the parks lacking, I do realize that some of that is because my standards are ridiculously high. I also realize that, given the choice to go anywhere else in the world, I would still choose Disney. There is enough there - and enough magic - to keep my family happy for a long, long time.

I tend to think that his falling out with Katzenberg is blown out of proportion on this board. I sincerely believe that, if an investigative journalist took on the assignment, he or she could write a very long book detailing how nutty Katzenberg is. In fact, Disney War actually did portray Katzenberg as a bit of a loose cannon who really wasn't fit to be president or CEO of Disney. That fact gets lost in the rest of the text, which shows how obsessed Eisner was with everything Katzenberg was doing. But perhaps that obsession had some merit. Perhaps Katzenberg was a loose cannon who couldn't be trusted completely. Trusted yes, completely no. For all of his genius, I haven't been overly impressed with anything that he has done at Dreamworks, aside from Shrek, I suppose.

So, while I believe Eisner was an egomaniac who made some bad decisions (including bad personnel decisions) along the way, I still think Disney could have done much, much, much, much worse. For all we know, this company could have been bought out in 1985 and never grew beyond what it was - end of story. In fact, if it is bought by some cable company or other poorly matched suitor sometime over the next few years, my guess is that we will all be wishing Eisner had never left.

 

[deej696]

Good show Rutgers, I couldnt have said it better myself. I expect the post to be ripped to shreds by the Anti-Eisner League any minute, but I enjoyed reading it. You and I are on the same page, no pun intended

 

[Another Voice]

Thank you for your thoughtful posting Rutgers1.

It would be very easy to write a whole other book about Michael Eisner and Disney. But in the interest of times, I'll be very brief here. There are two stages of Eisner's tenure at the company. The first was when Eisner was part of a management team with Frank Wells and with strong leadership at the business units. Eisner and Wells had been hired together as equals. For the most part, Eisner was the public face of Disney - the guy introducing 'The Wonderful World of Disney' and appearing on all the business talk shows. But it was Frank Wells and the business unit leaders who were running the company. At most Eisner was allowed to dabble - he would stick his nose into the individual businesses when things interested him. While Eisner was busy picking drapes for new hotels, Frank Wells was the one deciding that Disneyland needed 'Splash Mountain' to keep attendance up.

As Disney's fortunes soared, Eisner began to believe his own press. This is Hollywood after all, it's the only place in America that rewards pure ego more than Washington D.C. does. Then with the tragic loss of Frank Wells and outing of Jeffrey Katzenberg (and yes, this loose cannon needs his own book), Eisner lost both the company's real management and the checks that had kept his "dabbling" from becoming "micro-management". The more Eisner became convinced of his own genius, the less tolerant he grew of different opinion. In a story that's all too familiar about anyone with power, strong management was replaced with ineffectual yes-man.

And I guess that's the sad thing here - Eisner's story is just the same old story of power corrupting.


Just as you assert without proof that Disney could have done a lot worse, I too would assert that Disney should have done a lot better. Imagine what the resources that have been poured into ABC, GO.com, and other failed plans had gone into Disney's real businesses. The entire economic structure of the parks have been corrupted by cash flow demands from the parent company - imagine the billions of dollars spent on GO.com invested in the parks, imagine the parks operating on a margin fit for the travel business instead of the needs to write-off Cavemen - The Television Series.

For every "benefit of Eisner" you can point to I can point to a dozen examples where greater resources were squandered on things "not Disney".


And that leads me to the final point. What exactly is "Disney" about ESPN? No one has ever been able to answer that.

It is a fundamental problem of the Eisner years. "Disney" became wildly successful because of they created a specific type of entertainment. Disney's style, Disney's attitude was directly tied to the American mindset (and the mindset of a large part of the world). Disney used to embody the joy, the excitement, the wonder of the worlds - both real and imaginary.

But Eisner has left a company that doesn't make a distinctive type of product anymore. It's a corporation that churns out everything from 'Desperate Housewives' to character licenses for pre-packaged carrots. The core of Disney's business is now broadcasting sports programming and a network with "game shows" of showing people repeatedly being punched in the groin. Is that the "Disney" of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Dumbo? After making movies based on their merchandise potential instead of story, Disney was forced to shut down Animation - the very core and heart of the company (and replace it by purchasing an outside company that grew because it strictly followed the beliefs of "The Dead Guy"). Instead of parks where figments & fireworks of imagination could come to life, we have half-parks of carnival games, caged animals and mall-based chain restaurants.

Is this "Disney" to you? Are you a fan of the corporation, or a fan of the style?

That answer I think, more than anything else, informs about one's opinion of Eisner. There was nothing "wrong" with Disney that ESPN and GO.com fixed, but we've gone more than a decade without a Disney Animated feature that struck a nerve.

You look at Disney and see what could have gone wrong and are happy; I look at Disney and see what should have been and I feel a sense of loss.

Simple growth is not "magic" - anyone can build a shopping mall, time share condos and a zoo. But these days I have to go to Tokyo to find a place that wows my imagination. There is nothing that Eisner built that compares to the rush of walking into Tokyo DisneySea's Mediterranean Harbor or the shear seven-year-old giddiness of Nemo's "Mysterious Island". The only emotion I feel walking into California Adventure (Eisner's last great 'contribution') is the the same disgust over greed and arrogance that I feel over the trillion dollar Wall Street bail-out.

That is the real tragedy of the Eisner years. A company that could have done so much ending up doing so little instead.

 

[rutgers1]

Another_Voice.....That was definitely an interesting post. I come to this board - and find myself spending more time on this one than the others - because of the presence of posts like that. I definitely think that Disney could be even better than it currently is. I definitely think that there is a ton of untapped potential. And I definitely think that my perspective of "at least the worst case scenario didn't happen" can be argued from several different angles.

I guess I am at a stalemate. When I read posts like yours, I find myself getting fired up and wishing that things were better. Yet, whenever I go to Disney, I am very happy with my overall experience. The positives of the Eisner years outweigh the negatives in my mind, even though the vision that you have for the company does indeed intrigue me.

My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between. I find myself wondering if would have been possible to grow and keep shareholders happy if Disney only stuck to cartoons, family movies, the parks, and basic merchandising. Even if they exceeded everyone's expectations in those areas, I wonder if this is a world where they could have survived given the corporate culture of America. Would some other media company have come and bought a controlling interest in the company and, perhaps, taken it in an equally unattractive direction?

With the world getting smaller through mergers and acquisitions, was buying properties such as ABC and ESPN necessary to keep the Disney Channel prominently located on the cable dial? And with other movie companies having ownership in various media outlets, was expansion and diversification necessary simply to ensure that Disney could cross-promote its other properties? Along the same lines, although their internet venture crashed and burned, so did a ton of other internet ventures. And if we are to assume that diversifying in various media was necessary since other companies were doing likewise, isn't their foray into the internet understandable? Prior to the arrival of Eisner, Disney wasn't trying to compete with the new trends in media, and they were losing badly. With Eisner, they were not only competing, but winning for a good chunk of that time.

I would like to think that Disney could operate independently forever as the creator of cartoons and family programming, along with the parks. It sure didn't look like that was going to happen in the years following Walt's death. I guess the question that we will never be able to answer is this:
---> Could Disney have returned to its prominent spot in the media world and continue to nurture its parks without playing by a whole new set of rules dictated by its competitors in the media world?

 

[Another Voice]

First, thanks for the kind words. Even I have an occasional non-snarking moment and it's nice to know those brief instances are appreciated.

What's really interesting is that one of Walt Disney's greatest fears was complacency. That once the company had become so successful people would just assume that it always would be - and that people would no longer put in the hard work required to maintain that success.

Could Disney have returned to its prominent spot in the media world and continue to nurture its parks without playing by a whole new set of rules dictated by its competitors in the media world?

Personally I think the answer is yes because history proves that it can be done.

The "corporizing" of Hollywood isn't new. It happened in the mid-1960s. During the prior decade, all of the Hollywood studios were slow to respond to televisions. Save Disney. The old line studios - MGM, Warner's, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia, United Artists - continued to churn out the same movies, only bigger and with higher and ever higher budgets. The public didn't care and the one by one the studios went bankrupt (MGM, 20th Century) and/or were bought out by large corporations. United Artists was purchased by an insurance company and Paramount was bought by a company that started out in the stamped metal business.

Only Disney remained independent. It was a unique company with a unique product. Disney remained true to its core while everyone else was chasing after fades and gimmicks. Today Disney makes millions of dollars off The Jungle Book (first released on 1967) - how much will Paramount make this year from Barefoot in the Park, or Fox will make from Dr. Doolittle, or Warner Brothers from Camelot? In fact, how many studios will make as money from movies they released three years ago compared to movies Disney made 25 years ago?


Yes, Disney stayed a little too true, but that problem was being quickly fixed with films like Splash & Country and places like EPCOT Center. The problems in the mid-1980s weren't because Disney was going bankrupt. To be very brief and very blunt, Roy Disney tried to play Big League Financier and blew it (LA Gear, Polaroid among others that Shamrock Holdings gambled and lost). His stockholdings in Disney were his only strong assets and he made a run at taking over the company. With the help (if not dominance) of the Bass Brothers, he was successful.

No one else in Hollywood or the media wanted Disney. It's too hard to make money at - it requires a special attention to detail, a special attention to tradition, a special attention at always getting the job right. Do you think a town based deals like Don't Mess With Zohn and Adam Sander want to put up with that? It was only at a place like Disney that you could get a hundred people to spend years drawing pictures of a young mermaid wondering what it's like to dance.


What makes Disney special is the product. The Little Mermaid came from people with an over passion for making movies, you don't get that from owning ABC. A Disney Channel supported by programming like the Disney library, features like The Lion King and shows made with the same care and attention don't need a push from ESPN to keep it low on the dial.

It's only when the channel, or the studios or the parks or the stores, offer substandard product - that's when they need the help. The 'secret' of Walt's success was that strong product supported other strong product. The 'Disneyland' television series was one of the highest rated shows of the mid-1950s because it ran shows like Davy Crocket. Walt leveraged that attention to Disneyland, another strong product. People in turn, having visited Disneyland and loving it, rushed homes on Sunday nights to see the latest news from the park on 'Wonderful World.'

But Disney's current "branding" strategy relies on having weak products cross promote each other. That's why we're having Fairy meet-n-greets built in the parks long before the public has seen the DVD and why an unuesed ESPN-friendly race track is now rotting in the Magic Kingdom's parking lot. We even had ESPN 'X-Games' try to prop up California Adventure. But promotion can't support a bad product in the long run - witness the 'synergy' between WDW and "How Wants to be a Millionaire".

People like to talk about "new media" and "changing rules", yet the true fundamentals of entertainment haven't changed much since the ancient Greeks figured them out. People like good stories that have a meaning to their life. People want to be inspired, people want to be connected, people want to feel special - and they plays, movies, novels, sand paintings that provide that to them. And any story that does will be successful.

"New Media" isn't going to make that go away. Home video, the internet, portable devices are all just ways of delivering product, but people don't buy a movie just because it's convenient. Yes, I have the capability to download a movie, put it one iPod and watch it on an airplane at 35,000 feet. That doesn't mean I'm going to buy Pearl Harbor. Just because there are more places for bad product to be shown doesn't mean that people will pay for more bad product.


Good product rules the market place. That's how a small time special effects house that made television commercials destroyed the largest studio in Hollywood. That's the short history of Pixar. They are the perfect example of a small company focused on making great product and beating the corporations at their own game. Pixar followed The Rules perfectly - they focused on meaningful stories that are well told and have produced the longest string of hits in Hollywood's history. To the point that Disney's own animation division was driven out of existence.

There are no "whole new set of rules dictated by its competitors in the media world". The people that think there are - like NBC - are imploding even as I write this. The only rule that matters is this: please the audience.

Companies that can do that will thrive; companies that don't will fail no matter how big they get.


(P.S. The history of NBC, now NBC Universal, is going to make the ultimate business book about the era of New Media. No other network has been so aggressive, yet they have plunged from first to fourth and continue to be in free fall.)