Who owns Disney?

Disney’s founder was Walter Elias Disney. He had the dream of producing something of a very creative and innovative nature. This continues to lie as the underlying message of the company’s success.

His brother Roy also had an equal share in the business and at the formal beginning of “The Walt Disney Company” he suggested the name to be changed from “Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio” to “Walt Disney Studio.”

Walt Disney died on Dec 15th, 1966 and Roy (who was a year older than him) took over the company. Roy Disney died two months later.

The company was then led by a team including Card Walker, Donn Tatum and Roy Miller. They were the originals all trained by the Disney brothers.

On October 1, 2005, Robert Iger took to the position of chief executive officer becoming only the 7th individual to lead the company in its entire history. He was born in 1951, has 3 children and is married to television journalist and author, Willow Bay.

Previously, Mr Iger served as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company since 2000. In this role he oversaw all aspects of the company’s international relations including its filmed entertainment, theme parks and consumer business products. -He possessed all the necessary work experience to fulfil his job requirements as CEO. He was also a member of Disney’s board of directors at that time.

His career outside Disney began at ABC in 1974. For 32 years he held responsible senior management positions including President and Chief Operating Officer. He, very importantly, guided the business relationship between ABC and The Walt Disney Company. This allowed him to gain further insight into Disney.
ABC saw tremendous growth during Iger’s career and this was to certainly reflect at his career at Disney too. (More on his work on the “History” section)


Disney and its relationship with other companies:
In 1983, Disney initiates the “Disney Channel” in an effort to extend its business. In doing so they established a new film label, “Touchstone Pictures” with the release of “Splash” in 1984.

With regards to “Touchstone,” Disney then introduced “Touchstone Television” which produced TV shows.

Disney also made use of “Hollywood Records” who supplied the soundtracks to their movies. They produced a wide range of soundtracks raging from rap to contemporary, more upbeat music.

Moving into publishing, Disney then formed “Hyperion Books,” “Hyperion Books for Children” and “Disney Press” which released Disney and non- Disney subjects. All was in effort to respond to the advancing media technology of the age.

In 1995, they joined partnership with “Pixar Animation” to release “Toy Story.”

In 1996, Disney participated in a $19 billion transaction to take over Capital Cities/ ABC. This brought television network to Disney. In addition to 10 TV stations, 21 radio stations, 7 daily newspapers and ownership positions of:
A&E,
Lifetime,
History Channel,
(Powerhouse sports network) ESPN.


In 1998, the company entered the cruise line business with the launch of the “Disney Magic” which was joined by the “Disney Wonder” one year later. Both ships tour the Caribbean, stopping at Disney’s own island paradise Castaway Cay.

The History:
Walt arrived in Disney in the summer of 1923 with dreams and determination but with no finance to fund his dreams. He made a “pilot film” of a little girl in a cartoon world called “Alice’s Wonderland.” On October 16, 1923 a New York distributor, “M.J Winkler” agreed to release these Alice Comedies and this date became the formal beginning of The Walt Disney Company.

The Alice Comedies lasted four years. Walt continuously tried to stretch the boundaries of visual bounds by adopting innovative effects to his works. In 1927, he decided to move to an ALL CARTOON series and created the star “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.” He made 26 Oswald cartoons in a year and when he tried to get more funding from his distributor he found that the distributor had gone behind his back and signed all of Walts animators in an attempt to make the Oswald cartoons in his own studio but for much less money without Walt. From then, Walt decided to own everything that he made.

Walt now had to come up with a new star. With his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, Walt designed a mouse… Mickey Mouse. Ub animated 2 Mickey Mouse cartoons whilst Walt decided that his studio should make a film (the first sound cartoon) and so the third Mickey Mouse cartoon was released with fully synchronised sound. Mickey was an immediate success.

Walt Disney then produced another series- the Silly Symphonies. Each of the films in this series featured different characters. The aim was to allow his animators to experiment with stories that relied less on humour, placing a large emphasis on mood, emotion and musical themes. Silly Symphonies won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon of 1932.

In terms of Disney’s historical, political and social relevance, the introduction of Three Little Pigs in 1933 was not only a break-through in character animation but it provided something of an anthem for fighting “The Great Depression.” (-Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf)

Disney’s merchandise began from a very ordinary situation. As Walt recalls, “A fellow kept hanging around my hotel waving $5300 at me and saying that he wanted to put the mouse on paper tablets fro school children…” In need of money, he accepted this and this led to Disney’s consumer products business.

In 1934, Walt had the idea of producing an animated feature film of the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs. People thought that a cartoon couldn’t hold the audience’s attention beyond the usual 8 minute running time but after 3 years of making the film, it was a spectacular hit.

With WW2 at hand, the company lost access to its foreign markets. It’s next 2 films, Pinocchio and Fantasia; released 1940 were unable to recoup their financial costs. This put the company at financial risk. In 1941, Dumbo was made on a very limited budget but turned out to be profitable. Bambi then followed in 1942.

During the war, Walt Disney made 2 films about South America; Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros at the request of the State Dept. They also produced propaganda and training films for the military.

1950 saw 3 landmark achievements;

* The studio’s first completely live action film - Treasure Island
* The return to classic animated features - Cinderella
* The first Disney television show at Christmas time.

Disney saw the potential of TV and in 1954 launched the Disneyland anthology series, featuring the first TV mini series, Davy Crockett. This ran for 29 years making it the longest running prime time television series in history. The Mickey Mouse club began in 1955.

Amusement parks were next on the agenda. Walt wanted to create a place that could entertain the whole family and in 1955 the first park opened. It was a whole new experience, being with the stars of the shows and successfully attracted visitors.

In the 1960’s, more classical films like 101 Dalmatians were created using Audio - Animatronics. (Whets this?) In 1964 came Mary Poppins which labelled Disney’s achievements as a filmmaker combing live action, animation and animatronics to tell a classic story for the entire family.

In 1969, Disney established itself an educational purpose by producing educational films.

The EPCOT (experimental prototype community of tomorrow) was Walt’s dream of a 400 acre Disneyland park consisting of a theme park, hotels, campgrounds… linked by a monorail. After Walt’s death, this dream was carried out by his team who saw this as a combination of the ‘future world’ and ‘world showcase.’

Disneyland parks then moved to an international level; to Tokyo and Japan.

Films from the Disney library were selected for the TV syndication market; classic animated films were released on video cassette setting a whole new kind of success as they reached a new generation of children who could watch films at their own conveyance at home.

Between 1986 and 2003, Disney saw the business advancing in all of its areas; this can be seen in its increasing numbers of theme parks and film productions.

In 2003, Pirates of the Caribbean, Finding Nemo all smashed audience expectations.

Media material produced by Disney:
* Cartoons:
-Alice’s Wonderland
-Oswald the lucky rabbit
-Mickey Mouse

*Films:
-Silly Symphonies
-The 3 Little Pigs
- Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs
-Pinocchio
-Fantasia
-Dumbo
-Bambi
-Lady and the Tramp
-Sleeping Beauty

Propaganda:
-Saludos Amigos
-The 3 Caballeros

“Package” feature films:
-Make Mine Music
-Melody Time

*Live Action Programmes:
-Treasure Island
-Song of the South
-So Dear to my Heart

*TV Programmes:
-The Disneyland Anthology series
-The Mickey Mouse Club
-Zorro

Responding to the age of the “new media:”
Iger introduced for Disney to become the first broadcaster to have its TV shows made available on ipod’s. This was done in order to connect with its consumers in new ways.