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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile deals with the Disney conglomerate.
It covers -
introduction
Disney has strongly promoted its image as an extension
of the animation studio founded by "kindly Uncle
Walt". Behind the trademark mouse ears lies a global
empire that - like Viacom , AOL
Time Warner and Vivendi
- encompasses film production and distribution,
broadcast and cable television, theme parks, merchandising,
shipping, multimedia, books, newspapers, magazines and
the odd oil well.
A chronology of the group is here
the group
Disney began as a small animation studio and was financially
shaky until the success of Disneyland, the prototype theme
park (it had been dependent on bailouts from Howard Hughes
and ABC).
After a messy diversification effort it survived successive
corporate raiders during the 1970s and under the leadership
of Michael Eisner in turn gobbled up other media groups
(notably the Capital Cities-ABC broadcasting chain), becoming
a major film/video financier and distributor, building
additional parks, aggressively merchandising its brands
and expanding into ventures such as cruise lines.
Late 1990s nostalgia, particularly among cultural studies
academics, has mythologised the pre-Eisner group as elevating
art or creativity over vulgar money-grubbing. (An example
of laments about how "the Disney Empire has shrunk
from heroic morality tale to amusement park to mere market
share" is here.)
A closer examination suggests that Disney has always been
closely concerned with money and growth; the Walt and
Roy regime was at best marked by paternalism and production
quotas, at worst by Ford-style surveillance, blacklists
and strikebreaking. We leave our readers to make their
own judgements about the enduring cultural value of Fantasia,
Snow White or Annette Funicello.
ABC
The group now includes the American Broadcasting Company
(ABC), discussed in more detail in a separate
profile.
In February 2006 Disney announced an agreement to merge
its ABC Radio stations with Citadel
in a deal that Disney valued at US$2.7 billion. Disney
said it would spin off ABC's 22 radio stations and its
ABC Radio Networks programming arm into a separate entity,
which would then be merged with Citadel to make the transaction
tax-free to Disney shareholders.
The expectation was that Disney shareholders will own
52% of the new company once the deal is completed, with
Disney keeping up to US$1.65 billion in cash. The new
company, to be called Citadel Communications, will own
177 FM radio stations and 66 AM stations.
holdings
The following page provides
an indication of Disney holdings, which encompass -
- US
television and radio broadcasting
- US
and international
satellite and cable television
- film/television
production and distribution
- book
publishing
- magazines
and newspapers
- resources
- retail
- multimedia
- record
labels and music publishing
- theatrical
production
- sports
franchises
- theme
parks and resorts
-
property development
- cruises
Disney's radio group includes 72 stations, with 44 in
the top 25 US markets.
studies
Contrasting studies of Disney and ABC are provided
in Ron Grover's The Disney Touch: Disney, ABC &
the Quest for the World's Greatest Media Empire (New
York: Irwin 1996) - for us as sweet and almost as indigestible
as the fast food at a theme park near you - the more visceral
Disneywar (New York: Simon & Schuster 2005)
by James Stewart on recent corporate infighting and the
zany Team Rodent: How Disney Devours The World
(New York: Ballantine 1998) by wacko thriller writer Carl
Hiaasen. Deconstructing Disney (London: Pluto Press
2000) by Eleanor Byrne & Martin McQuillan is insightful
and recommended.
Janet Wasko's Understanding Disney: The Manufacture
of Fantasy (London: Polity 2001) offers an intelligent
analysis from the left. In contrast Disney: The First
100 Years (New York: Hyperion 1999) edited by Dave
Smith may strike some readers as unabashed corporate propaganda.
John Taylor's Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street,
The Raiders & the Battle for Disney (New York:
Knopf 1987) retains its relevance as Disney under Michael
Eisner gropes for a strategy to handle the web, amalgamating
units and dealing with the failure of Disney's online
retail strategy.
Eisner's Work in Progress (New York: Random 1998)
memoir is altogether too suave and self-satisfied - there
are shark's teeth behind the impeccably tailored suit
but in his book you rarely see them (they're reserved
for employees and rivals like Jeffrey Katzenberg). Prince
of the Kingdom: Michael Eisner & the Re-making of
Disney (New York: Wiley 1991) by Joe Flower is a useful
corrective.
The Keys To The Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip
(New York: Morrow 2000) by Kim Masters is another expose:
lots of detail about assassination among the corporate
aspidistras, few insights into how Disney and the other
entertainment behemoths can tame the Web.
Bob Thomas' Building a Company: Roy O Disney &
the Creation of an Entertainment Empire (New York:
Hyperion 1998), like his Walt Disney: An American Original
(New York: Simon & Schuster 1976) is indulgent. We
suggest instead Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic
Kingdom (New York: Routledge 1994) edited by Eric
Smoodin, in particular for Douglas Gomery's lucid 'Disney's
Business History: A Re-interpretation'. It is complemented
by Tom Sito's Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of
the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson (Lexington:
Uni Press of Kentucky 2007). The Mouse That Roared:
Disney & The End of Innocence (Tottowa: Rowman
& Littlefield 1999) by Henry Giroux, Babes in
Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American
Child, 1930-1960 (Durham: Duke Uni Press 2005) by
Nicholas Sammond are critiques from the left, less perceptive
than Wasko. The latter edited Dazzled by Disney? The
Global Disney Audiences Project (New York: Continuum
2001).
The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit
of Property Values in Disney's New Town (New York:
Ballantine 1999) by Andrew Ross is a respectful but ultimately
critical of Disney's 'new urbanism' in the town of Celebration.
Stalinist building codes, dress rules, mandatory happiness
and mellow mood music from speakers hidden among the o-so-carefully-tended
foliage at the foot of the palm trees can't disguise that
people - like information - just wanna be free.
Ross is more nuanced than the upbeat Celebration, USA:
Living In Disney's Brave New Town (New York: Holt
2000) by Douglas Frantz & Catherine Collins. Stephen
Fjellman's Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World & America
(Boulder: Westview 1992) is an intelligent study of the
theme parks. Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World
and Orlando (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2001) by Richard
Foglesong considers the "economic-development marriage"
between Orlando and Disney. Designing Disney's Theme
Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance (Paris: Flammarion
1997) edited by Karal Ann Marling has less substance and
more psychobabble. It is complemented by
Douglas Brode's From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney
Created the
Counterculture (Austin: Uni of Texas Press 2004)
and Multiculturalism & the Mouse: Race and Sex
in Disney Entertainment (Austin: Uni of Texas Press
2006)
Ken Auletta's Three Blind Mice: How The Television
Networks Lost Their Way (New York: Random House 1991)
gives a picture of 'old media in crisis' as the businesses
and consumers first started to head onto the information
highway. It is deeper and more original than the
disappointing collection of profiles in his The Highwaymen
- Warriors of the Information Superhighway (New York:
Random House 1997) or Michael Wolff's Autumn of the
Moguls (New York: HarperCollins 2003). For the ABC
network see the separate profile
elsewhere on this site.
For the founding father consult Marc Eliot's Walt Disney:
Hollywood's Dark Prince (New York: HarperCollins 1993)
and Steven Watts' The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney &
the American Way of Life (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
1997) and Michael Barrier's The Animated Man: A Life
of Walt Disney (Berkeley: Uni of California Press
2007). Eliot is overly psychological but for us more persuasive
than Leonard Mosley's Disney's World: A Biography
(New York: Stein & Day 1985) or Alan's Bryman Disney
& His Worlds (New York: Routledge 1995).
Richard Schickel's The Disney Version: The Life, Times,
Art & Commerce of Walt Disney (Chicago: Dee 1997)
is sweeter than Eliot, albeit peppered with observations
that Disney is "a kind of rallying point for the
subliterates of our society". Schickel's criticisms
are offset by Neal Gabler's Walt Disney: The Triumph
of the American Imagination (New York: Knopf 2006).
Inside the Mouse: The Project on Disney (London:
Duke Uni Press 1995) edited by Stanley Fish & Fredric
Jameson is one of the funnier books we read in 2001, although
acolytes of those cultural critics will no doubt treat
it as a masterpiece of high seriousness. David Whitley's
earnest The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2008) argues that Disney animations
have "taught us variously about having a fundamental
respect for nature", although presumably haven't
fostered a love for stepmothers (wicked or otherwise).
Disney's aggressive protection of its intellectual property
continues to attract attention. One example is Bob Levin's
The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney's War Against the
Underground (Seattle: Fantagraphics 2003), which
considers the 1971-79 Walt Disney Productions v The Air
Pirates litigation, in which US Supreme Court Justice
Kennedy tartly described the Air Pirates in passing as
profiteers
who did no more than ... place the characters from a
familiar work in novel or eccentric poses.
For
Pixar see To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar
Animation Studios (London: Virgin 2007) by Karen
Paik.
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