overview
ABC, SBS, BBC
Advance
Annenberg
AOL
APN
Astors
Aust Networks
Beaverbrook
Bertelsmann
Black
Cox
Disney
DMG
Elsevier
Fairfax
Financial Press
Fleet Street
Hearst
industry
Liberty
Maxwell
News & Murdoch
New Yorker
NY Times
Packer
Sony
Thomson
Time Warner
Tribune
US Networks
Viacom
Vivendi
W Post
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Disney
Kindly Uncle
Walt's animation studio's grown to become a global empire
that - like Viacom -
encompasses film production and distribution, broadcast
and cable television, theme parks, merchandising,
shipping, multimedia, books, newspapers, magazines and the
odd oil well.
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 96) - as sweet
and indigestible as the fast food at a theme park near you
- and the zany Team Rodent: How Disney Devours The
World (New York, Ballantine 98) by wacko thriller
writer Carl Hiaasen. In contrast Disney: The First 100
Years (New York, Hyperion 99) edited by Dave Smith is
corporate propaganda.
John Taylor's Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street,
The Raiders & the Battle for Disney (New York,
Knopf 87) 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 98)
memoir is altogether too suave - 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 91) by Joe Flower is a useful corrective.
The Keys To The Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip
(New York, Morrow 00) 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 98) is dutiful but revealing. The Mouse
That Roared: Disney & The End of Innocence (Tottowa,
Rowman & Littlefield 99) by Henry Giroux is a critique
from the left.
The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty & the
Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town (New
York, Ballantine 99) 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. Stephen Fjellman's Vinyl
Leaves: Walt Disney World & America (Boulder,
Westview 92) is an intelligent study of the theme parks.
Ken Auletta's Three Blind Mice: How The Television
Networks Lost Their Way (New York, Random House 91)
gives a picture of 'old media in crisis' as the businesses
and consumers first started to head onto the information
highway. It's deeper and more original than the
disappointing collection of profiles in his The
Highwaymen - Warriors of the Information Superhighway
(New York, Random House 97).
For the founding father consult Marc Eliot's Walt
Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince (New York,
HarperCollins 93) and Steven Watts' The Magic Kingdom:
Walt Disney & the American Way of Life (Boston,
Houghton Mifflin 97). Eliot is overly psychological but more
persuasive than Leonard Mosley's Disney's World: A
Biography (New York, Stein & Day 85) and Richard
Schickel's The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art
& Commerce of Walt Disney (Chicago, Dee 97).
Holdings
The following page
provides an inventory of Disney holdings.
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