If Disney owns ESPN...

[nile455]

they really need to do something about the forums at ESPN.com.

Go over there, click on one of the sports message boards (NFL General, for example) it's full of porn links, racists/anti-Semitic threads, and just an unbelievable amount of foul language. It's basically a non-monitored free for all. They supposedly have moderators, but you'd never know it.

I realize Disney execs can't be expected to micromanage something as small as a message board, but ESPN *is* Disney and they really should do something about it.

 

[Uncle Remus]

Honey, do you think Mickey Mouse is the CEO?

 

[bicker]

Disney owns movie studios that produce films that (gasp) actually have partial nudity in them sometimes. Only things under the Disney name are intended to be family-friendly. Everything else Disney does is done to satisfy that specific market.

Regardless, monitoring forums is pretty darned expensive. I would love to know how many hours the moderators of the DIS forums put in, all told. Multiply that by a reasonable amount of compenstation you'd expect someone who would be responsible for determining what is clean versus what is dirty, and then try to figure out where that money is coming from -- what profit will there be from paying that extra money to keep those forums clean?

There probably would be some profit. I only visit moderated forums because it keeps the "cesspool factor" out. (Just compare the DIS to RADP, and you'll see what I mean.)

However, there probably is something else Disney could invest that money in that would make even more profit. Sub-optimizing profit is a sure-fire way of getting your investors annoyed with you -- a much bigger and more tangible worry than concerns about some customers of one division of your company crossing-over to the offerings of another division and being unhappy about how the other division doesn't live up to the qualities they expect from the first division.