"As our economy recovers so will the travel industry, the airline industry, consumer confidence will drive stock price."
Disney's continous problem dragging the stock down and earnings has been the poor performance of ABC. It's been the problem within a year of them buying Capital Cities/ABC. I had a guy who freelanced for my company, who worked for an ABC radio flagship, and he said that ABC would drag this company down for years, he was right.
Even with the tourism slump, the theme parks still were a cash cow, especially with all of their cutbacks. The economy doesn't apply to a stinker of a television network. They still saw increases in advertising dollars spent on the net, although ratings have been dismal for most programming. Only 8 Simple Rules is a hit of the new crop, excluding the gimmicks of the Bachelor... In our house, ABC is usually home to Another Bad Comedy.
Mr. Eisner takes a low salary compared to other CEO's because that has always been his game. He takes low upfront and has huge incentives in the back such as grotesque stock options.
His
Disney Store chain is in doubt, Club Disney and Disneyquest a failure, eying the bottom line and not common sense, he had ABC run Millionaire into the ground without developing new programming for the network, built what many consider (and fiscally) a dud next door to
Disneyland, seen growth continuing in attendence in Florida... of Islands of Adventure in a downturn... Several big budget flops including Pearl Harbor.
The company continues to lose sponsors of attractions that have been with the company for years and decades. That speaks volumes.
Sorry for the rant, but to hear that Mr. Eisner is worthy of his position and dollars just doesn't cut it anymore. It did 20 years ago when he and Wells came to save Disney, but you can't give someone the "well since he saved the company" garbage a reason to justify the current state of affairs.
