The deep divisions in the Disney organization were nevermore apparent than when media chieftain and CEO Michael Eisner gathered the company's most prominent revenue generators to discuss his proposed acquisition of Capital Cities ABC. The disagreement broke into the open as soon as he was done with his presentation.
"Gawrsh, Michael," Goofy opened. "I don' see what we need a network fer. Why can't we jes' keep on bein' plain ol' us?"
"Where'd you get your MBA?" snapped the Beast. "You old characters just don't get the way the game is played today. Belle and I need outlets, channels, distribution systems. We're not just characters, we're commodities that have been developed to be deployed across a wide range of markets in order to optimize yield. The world's changed since the days of the two-reelers, mutt-face."
"Hey, hey," said Jimminy Cricket. "Are we letting our conscience be our guides here?"
"Let's let rates of return on equity be our guides, Cricket," Sebastian the Crab replied. "We've got to be able to market ourselves using every conceivable vehicle if we're going to provide a return to our shareholders. Just look at the record -- there was a year when you couldn't buy your kids a hamburger in this country without having Ariel and I stuck in their face."
"I'm not disagreeing," replied Grumpy, the dwarf with the best feel for the modern media industry. "Snow and the boys, we've been a part of the success story, too. But we didn't have to go out and buy a fast food chain to do it. We had to beat those burger chains off with a stick."
Aladdin stood by his contemporaries. "That's different," he said curtly. "Don't you see the synergies? Think of the cross-promotions! The Mighty Ducks can be a movie, a sports team, a television series, a merchandising line, or a children's cartoon, all coordinated in a single system driven by rates of return. ABC's going to give us their entire Saturday morning line-up. And then there's primetime! It's an incredible opportunity, and it's all ours!"
"Absolutely," agreed Pocahontas. "It's going to be a small world after all once we're done with it."
"Oh, listen to Miss Diversity," said Dumbo, who had flown in for the confab. "Don't tell me about the oppressed Third World. I know about the oppressed Third World!"
"That's enough!" cried a boyish soprano from a far corner of the room. There was a hush that conveyed grudging respect when Mickey Mouse himself -- Steamboat Willie, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Bob Cratchitt -- rose to speak. "But don't you see," he urged, "you don't need ABC to be on television. Television needs us more than we need them. Donald and Minnie and I didn't need to own the theaters in order to be in the movies. And we've always been on television -- not because we own the distribution, but because we're what people want to see!"
"Come on, Mouse," the Lion King retorted sharply. "You didn't complain when Michael got us a cable station."
"But that was different," Mickey pleaded. "That was a way to re-establish our brand name and market our products to a specific demographic segment. You can't fill a broadcast channel with the same stuff."
"Eisner, you've screwed up," said Scrooge McDuck. "If I wasted as much money as you're wasting, I'd be as poor as Donald. Content always dominates technology, Michael. As soon as Gutenberg invented the Bible, God's word was in it. Television was laboratory stuff until Milton Berle was on it. All of history teaches us one thing: software dominates hardware. Content is King, Michael, and we're the content.
"The networks, cable, satellite, Bellcos, they're all the same -- big, fixed-cost systems driven to increase their yield -- their subscribership, their audience. The only thing that will distinguish them from each other is their ability to entertain people. Without us, they're nothing."
"I'm getting a little tired of this," roared the Lion King. "We need scale if we're going to have a global presence. We're not just competing with Woody Woodpecker anymore. We're facing Burtelsmann, Sony, Matsushita, Viacom, all manner of international competitors."
"Scale?" Donald Duck repeated sadly. "Scale? Do you think that's what made the Big Frozen Guy what he was? It wasn't scale, it was his vision. That's where he got scale from. Creativity. Innovation. Content. He didn't draw steamboat Willie because he had theater to fill, but because he knew what people wanted to see, and that's still the bottom line today."
"Michael," Mickey said, "Donald's right. But my greatest fear is that once we have easy entree to the ABC channels, we'll lose the creative edge that led to all of us being here. The edge, Lion. It makes no difference if the content is Mickey Mouse, or Pac-Man, or the Bible, or Lucy and Desi. The creative edge is everything."
"Don't you worry about edge, Mouse," grumped Eisner, ending the discussion, and with that, the meeting was over. Mickey and Donald left the corporate headquarters dejectedly, so much so that they almost tripped over a beggar sitting in the street before them.
"You g-g-g-guys g-g-g-gonna b-b-buy ABC?" asked Porky Pig from the curb below.
"Looks like," said Donald Duck.
Porky shook his head glumly. "Just like W-W-W-Warner," he smirked. "Want to buy a p-p-p-pencil?"
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