I didn't read everyone's posts because frankly, I find these discussions to be supercilious. Everyone knows that Eisner saved the company in the 80s and everyone agrees that he nearly destroyed it in the mid 90s through the turn of the century.
There's a clear business reason for this, and it's the same reason that business classes teach that for optimum results, corporate management should change about every seven years.
Eisner became too comfortable with a formula, and the formula got stale fast. Furthermore, after Frank Wells decided that Eisner would be the corporate face of the new Disney, Eisner erroneously believed that he was responsible for the company's greatness, as opposed to the creative people he hired. Eisner saved Disney through savvy business decisions, but he also wanted to shut down the animation division. When the
Little Mermaid was successful, Eisner took credit for it (he had nothing to do with the film) and made sure that every Disney film after it was a musical that involved sappy social messages.
In my opinion, Eisner also made the company too big; it's bloated now, and can't operate as efficiently as it should. Disney was successful in the 40s-60s, and then the 80s, because it lacked the corporate bureaucracy that plagued every other Hollywood studio. Did Disney really need to own book publishers, newspapers, sports teams, and a broadcast network to be successful? No. Eisner wanted to be the one-man dream answer to everything; remember Go, his failed attempt to put Google out of business?
Even his success stories are marred by his ego. Touchstone was a great idea, but Disney put out a lot of crap as Touchstone, Hollywood, and Miramax supported quantity over quality. He single-handedly destroyed working relationships with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and other creative geniuses who would have significantly contributed to Disney's bottom-line profitability. He killed "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" through over-exposure. He grossly overpaid for Fox Family, and allowed the premium Disney Channel to become a sappy pre-teen station that
is successful, but eroded the Company's reputation for high-quality broadcasting. (The teenage angst should have moved to ABC Family, and the DC should have remained a commercial-free, tiered cable network to preserve the Disney brand identity.)
When Eisner's stale, unimaginative plans stagnated in the late 90s, he blamed the creative people whom he had been restraining. Instead of letting them explore new possibilities, he cut corners and budgets. We got DCA and Disney Studios Paris.
Here's irony for you: Disney was floundering when Eisner took over, and many critics accused them of playing "What Would Walt Do?" and being too safe for an entertainment company. Eisner came in as a risk-taker and made the company successful again. Then he became more concerned with his ego as a Hollywood tycoon and began greedily purchasing as much as he could. All the businesses forced him to become safe because risky ventures would affect the Company too much; and Disney became stagnant again, just like in the early 80s.
It will be interesting to see what Iger does other than find new ways of delivering content. I believe that he has taken some very good first steps, but somebody needs to remind the Disney executives that the entertainment industry relies on risky, creative ventures. The successful
PotC and
Narnia films are theoretically being produced independently; the corporate-culture animated films are flops. If Disney execs are not comfortable with risks, they need to work for a snack foods company.
~end pamphlet
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