- Alternate meanings: Disney
(disambiguation)
The Walt Disney Company (also known as "Disney") (NYSE: DIS (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=DIS)) is one of the largest media and
entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Oliver Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, it is
today the number two media company in the United States. The company's
corporate headquarters are located in Burbank, California.
Disney had revenues of 30.8 billion USD in 2004, and it is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For much of its history, the company was known as Walt Disney
Productions, until on February 6, 1986, when it was rechristened with its current name. An alternate corporate name, Disney Enterprises, Inc. has
been used interchangibly with "The Walt Disney Company" since 1996.
Overview
Disney's main operating units are Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks, and Consumer Products.
Studio Entertainment
Its Studio Entertainment unit, also known as The Walt Disney Studios, is headed by Chairman Dick Cook. It includes the
Buena Vista Motion Pictures
Group, a collection of movie studios including Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, and Hollywood
Pictures. The Miramax and Films
studios are also a part of the unit, but operate autonomously in New York. Disney's Buena Vista Music Group, which includes Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records,
Lyric Street Records, and Hollywood Records, also falls under the umbrella of The Walt Disney Studios. The unit also includes
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions and Disney's distribution companies: Buena Vista International, Buena
Vista Home Entertainment, and Buena Vista Home Entertainment International.
One of the company's most successful subsidiaries is its animation studio, Walt Disney Feature Animation, responsible for producing a number of successful and influential
traditionally animated features. After witnessing the box
office failures of some of its recent animated films and the stellar successes of computer-animated films from Pixar, Disney has decided to shift its production from "traditional" hand-drawn animated films
(which in recent years have incorporated much work done on computer) entirely to computer-animated films. The last
traditionally-animated film produced by Disney was Home on the Range. Its first computer-animated film will be Chicken Little. Disney has
fallen under much criticism for this change in direction, especially as fans see the strength of a movie as its plot and its
characters and not as the technology used to make it.
Disney is becoming a direct competitor to Pixar in a market dominated by the latter. Disney has failed to renew its contract
with Pixar to release Pixar's films under the Disney name, an arrangement which had been extremely profitable to Disney and whose
termination means that Pixar is now free to pair up with a competing studio.
Walt Disney Studios, the company's main film and
television production facility as well as corporate headquarters, in Burbank, California, is the only major Hollywood film studio that has never offered tours to the
public. A parital tour of the Orlando, Florida feature animation
satellite studio was available to attendees of Disney-MGM Studios until 2003.
Parks and Resorts
Disney operates ten theme parks at the Disneyland Resort, the Walt Disney World Resort, the Disneyland Resort Paris, and the Tokyo Disney Resort. An eleventh is under construction at the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, which is set to open in
2005.
The company also owns through Anaheim Sports, Inc. the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey club, which it recently agreed to sell to Broadcom executive Henry Samueli, and owned the
Anaheim Angels baseball team, which was later sold to advertising
magnate Arturo Moreno. The Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation
Club, and the chain of ESPN Zone sports-themed restaurants also operate as a
part of the Parks & Resorts unit.
Media Networks
Its Media Networks unit is centered around the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network, which it aquired through a merger
with Capital Cities/ABC in 1996. Disney also owns a group of
cable networks including The Disney Channel, ESPN, ABC Family, Toon Disney, and SOAPnet. Disney also holds substantial
interest in Lifetime (50%), A&E
(37.5%), and E! (39.6%). and ESPN's family of cable
television networks. The company operates the Disney Vacation
Club resorts
Through ABC, Disney also owns local 10 television stations, 71 local radio stations, and ESPN Radio, Radio Disney, and ABC Radio News, which carries such
radio personalities as Sean Hannity and Paul Harvey. Buena Vista Television, which also is a part of the Media Networks unit, produces such syndicated television programs as Who
Wants To Be a Millionaire?, Live with Regis and
Kelly, and Ebert & Roeper.
Disney also operates its Hyperion publishing company and Walt Disney
Internet Group (WDIC) through Media Networks. Hyperion has recently published books by comedian-author Steve Martin and bestselling author Mitch Albom. WDIC includes the Go.com web portal, based on the old Infoseek search engine which it
purchased in 1998, and leading websites such as Disney.com, ESPN.com, and ABCNews.com.
Consumer Products
Its Consumer Products unit includes Disney's merchandising and licensing business and its Disney
Publishing Worldwide group, whose imprints include Disney Editions, Hyperion Books for Children, Disney Press. It also
published the Disney Adventures children's magazine.
The unit once included the Disney Store chain of shopping mall
locations, which it sold in 2004. It does now include Jim Henson's Muppets characters, which it purchased from The Jim Henson Company in 2004.
Timeline
- 1923: The Disney Bros. studio, founded by Walt and his brother Roy Oliver Disney, produces the Alice in Cartoonland series
- 1927: The Alice series ends; Walt picks up the contract to animate Oswald the
Lucky Rabbit
- 1928: Walt loses of the Oswald series; first Mickey Mouse cartoon: Steamboat
Willie
- 1929: First Silly Symphony: The Skeleton Dance
- 1930: First appearance of Pluto
- 1932: First three-strip Technicolor
short released: Flowers and Trees; first appearance of
Goofy
- 1934: First appearance of Donald
Duck
- 1937: Studio produces its first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- 1940: Studio moves to the Burbank, California buildings where it is located to this
day
- 1941: A bitter animators' strike occurs; as the USA
enters World War II, the studio begins making morale-boosting propaganda
films for the government
- 1944: The company is short on cash; a theatrical rerelease of Dumbo generates much-needed revenue and begins a reissue pattern for the animated feature films
- 1945: The studio hires its first-ever live actor for a film, James Baskett, to star as Uncle Remus in Song of the South
- 1949: The studio begins production on its first all-live action feature, Treasure Island; the popular True-Life Adventures
series begins
- 1954: The studio founds Buena Vista International to distribute its feature films; beginning of the
Disneyland TV program
- 1955: Opening of Disneyland in
Anaheim, California
- 1961: The studio licenses the film rights to Winnie-the-Pooh, whose characters continue to be highly profitable to this day; international distribution
arm Buena Vista International is established
- 1964: The company starts buying land near Orlando, Florida for Walt Disney World -
then known as Disneyworld, or 'The Florida Project'
- 1965: The regular production of short subjects ceases, as theatres no longer have any
demand for them
- 1966: Walt Disney dies
- 1967: Construction begins on Walt Disney World; the underlying governmental structure (see Reedy Creek Improvement District) is signed
into law
- 1971: Walt Disney World
opens in Orlando, Florida; Roy Oliver Disney dies; Donn Tatum becomes chairman and Card Walker becomes CEO and president
- 1977: Roy Edward
Disney, son of Roy and nephew of Walt, resigns from the company citing a decline in overall product quality and issues with
management
- 1978: The studio licenses several minor titles to MCA Discovision for laserdisc release; only TV compilations of cartoons ever see the light of day through this deal
- 1979: Don Bluth and a number of his
allies leave the animation division; the studio releases its first PG-rated film, The Black Hole
- 1980: Tom Wilhite becomes head of the film division with the intent of modernizing studio product; a home video
division is created
- 1981: Plans for a cable network are announced
- 1982: EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World; Ron W. Miller succeeds Card Walker as CEO
- 1983: As the anthology series is canceled, The Disney
Channel begins operation on US cable systems; Tom Wilhite resigns his post; Tokyo Disneyland
opens in Japan
- 1984: Touchstone
Pictures is created; after the studio narrowly escapes a buyout attempt by Saul Steinberg, Roy Edward Disney and his
business partner, Stanley Gold,
remove the Ron W. Miller as CEO and president, replacing him with
Michael Eisner and Frank Wells
- 1985: The studio begins making cartoons for television; The home video release of
Pinocchio is a best-seller
- 1986: The studio's first R-rated release comes from Touchstone Pictures; the anthology series is revived; the company's name is changed from Walt
Disney Productions to The Walt Disney Company.
- 1989: Disney offers a deal to buy Jim
Henson's Muppets and have the famed puppeteer work with Disney resources; the
Disney-MGM Studios open at Walt Disney World
- 1990: Jim Henson's death sours the
deal to buy his holdings; the anthology series canceled for second time
- 1992: The controversial Euro Disney opens outside Paris,
France
- 1993: Disney acquires independent film distributor Miramax Films; Winnie-the-Pooh merchandise
outsells Mickey Mouse merchandise for the first time; the policy of
periodic theatrical re-issues ends with this year's re-issue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but is augmented for video
- 1994: Frank Wells is killed in a
helicopter crash; Jeffrey Katzenberg resigns to co-found his
own studio, DreamWorks SKG
- 1995: In October, the company hires Hollywood superagent, Michael Ovitz, to be
president
- 1996: The company takes on the Disney Enterprises name for non-Walt Disney branded
ventures and acquires the Capital
Cities/ABC group, renaming it ABC, Inc. ;in December, Michael Ovitz, president of the company, leaves "by mutual
consent"
- 1997: The anthology series is revived again; the home video division releases its first
DVDs
- 1998: Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt
Disney World
- 2000: Robert Iger becomes president
and COO
- 2001: Disney-owned TV channels are pulled from Time Warner Cable briefly during a dispute over carriage fees; Disney's California Adventure opens to the
public; Disney begins releasing Walt Disney Treasures DVD box sets for the collector's
market
- 2003: Roy Edward Disney
again resigns as head of animation and from the board of directors, citing similar reasons to those that drove him off 26 years
earlier; fellow director Stanley
Gold resigns with him; they establish "Save Disney"[1] (http://www.savedisney.com) to apply public
pressure to oust Michael Eisner
- 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl becomes
the first film released under the Disney label with a PG-13 rating
- 2004:
- The studio breaks off renegotiation talks with Pixar (their current contract expires
in 2006); Disney announces it will convert its animation studio to all computer-animated production
- Announced the closure of their florida feature-film animation department (http://www.savedisney.com/news/se/wdfa_closure.asp);
- Comcast makes a $66 billion unsolicited bid to buy The Walt Disney Company
(Comcast withdraws its bid in April);
- Disney purchases rights to The Muppets;
- Company stockholders give Michael Eisner a 43% vote of no
confidence; as a result, Eisner is removed from the role as chairman of the board (but maintains his position as CEO) and
George J. Mitchell becomes chairman in his place.
- After investing $6 million into production of the documentary
film Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore, Walt Disney Pictures announced their previously mentioned intentions of not distributing
the film. The director and the heads of Miramax arrange an alternate distribution arrangement and the film becomes the most
successful documentary film of all time. At $100 million+, that film earns more than most of Disney's other film releases that
year.
- 2005:
Financial
Highlights (Fiscal year ended September 30) ($ in millions)
| Business |
Revenue |
Operating income |
Operating profit margin % |
| 2004 |
| Media Networks |
11,778 |
2,169 |
18.4 |
| Parks and Resorts |
7,750 |
1,123 |
14.4 |
| Studio Entertainment |
8,713 |
662 |
7.6 |
| Consumer Products |
2,511 |
534 |
2.1 |
| Total |
30,752 |
4,488 |
14.6 |
Management, 1929-present
Disney Chairmen of the Board
Disney CEOs
Disney Presidents
External links
SEC
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