I am not trying to defend Eisner but I am trying to be objective. Beyond the YIN/YANG, if everybody always says “yes” to a CEO, then bad things will happen. You can feel that Eisner is overrated. I feel that he lost an exceptional partner and the other people around Eisner, for whatever reason - I really do not want to take away from them either because it would not be fair to them - just could not fill in the shoes. Part of it is definitely on Eisner - possibly he did not allow for a transition to happen - but you can not take Eisner’s accomplishments before and after away from him either. Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes, but you do not get to be in certain positions just because. Whether Eisner is a visionary or not, only the future will tell; but based on his track record, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

And regarding Disney’s wheels falling off … well … all companies go through changes, ups and downs. Large companies are more like countries and governments that we care to admit. And the economic cycles are inevitable. And some of these cycles result in M&As (conquests) or reorganizations (revolutions). In some cases the countries become stronger after all and in some other cases they pass into oblivion and they just keep on chugging along.

Who knows .. maybe the best of things are yet to come for Disney. They still have a very strong group of people there and work on a regular basis on some very interesting stuff.

I agree they were yin/yang and together made and attracted other members of a terrific team. That doesn’t negate my basic point that Eisner is overrated. Lots of non-Hollywood people probably attribute Disney’s success to Eisner alone, not knowing what a critical role Wells played. That Disney’s wheels eventually fell off under Eisner alone was inevitable.

I do not 100% agree with you. Yes, Frank Wells was a driving force at Disney and I have the greatest respect for him. I used to work for his son, Kevin, at Disney OnLine in 1997/98. My opinion is that Eisner/Wells was a well oiled team and if the situation would have been reversed, then we would have seen a similar situation. CEOs do not do it on their own. They not only need a team, but a team that SUITS each particular CEO. Wells and Eisner were that to each other - a team.

- Also too many commercials is a turn off; re-invent advertising and become the next google…

-Rbowles

Ze Frank is another example. He did his show for a year, then gladly quit because the workload was killing him. The rumor is that he will have a cable show soon. (He also is vehemently opposed to uploading his stuff to YouTube.)

I’ve watched probably a thousand videos on YouTube over the past year. Of those, probably 85% are copyrighted “old media” creative (Daily Show, Colbert Report, the Simpsons). Another 10% are old media sports — great Michael Jordan moments, for example. The 3-5% come from amateurs. I include Ze Frank in that last category.

Heck, look at TechCrunch. What’s the ratio of old media to new that you’ve embedded in your posts? Especially if you leave out things like screencam demos?

Eisner is overrated. Disney’s success in the 80’s-90’s was largely due to Frank Wells, who was ostensibly #2 until his accidental death (helicopter crash) in 1994. Wells was revered by all at Disney, and was able to keep the peace among all the fractious, fragile egos (Katzenberg, Peter Schneider, etc). To prove the point, Well’s died about three months before the Lion King debuted. Katzenberg left about a year later and the Ovitz debacle followed soon thereafter. Disney hasn’t made good animation movies since, or done anything else memorable (except for making Jobs another billion and adding him to the board).

Eisner never got/doesn’t get the difference between the interactive, instantly switchable nature of the Internet, versus his glory days in the 60’s with Barry Diller doing soap operas when there were only three broadcast TV outlets in the entire US. Only three. The profound difference between that world and today would be analogous to the difference between the world of stage coaches and trains in the 1890’s versus the coming of age of the automobile (and the expansion of personal choice that accompanied it) during the 1950’s/60’s. (difference in length of time for impact due to compression of technology adoption curve).

Eisner longs for yesterday. Diller, his former boss, gets it and participates in creating the future.

I think the “users don’t want advertising” bit is overblown, but time will tell.

I’ve gotta give Eisner credit. Whether or not it takes off, its an innovative idea that has the potential to take advantage of social media and online video while making a ton of money. If it takes off he can sell the full length version on iTunes, DVDs, etc. Maybe Prom Queen II launches in theaters.

He might very well have invented a new model that benefits “old media”, “new media”, amateur film developers and the general public. I think we should be celebrating the idea.

And that attention is shifting towards other things then professionally produced content. And I don’t just mean crappy YouTube videos, I mean myriads off ways of personal interaction (for which a lot of the UGC serves as a context).

People are paying less and less attention to the “quality” product from Hollywood. That is the seismic shift we’re talking about. Whether or not Old Media will continue to have a monopoly on premium content is irrelevant. They will still have to share that attention with millions of others.

from “We Think: Why Mass Creativity is the Next Big Thing” by Charles Leadbeater

Also, While I usually don’t post typos, in this single read I found too many so I thought you might want to know.

Do these typos add nothing?

Also, why don’t you post your comment here that you sent me by email? Should I?

See my comment here: http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=377

@14 Mark - don’t kid yourself about the whole Long Tail thing.

Yes, what will happen is a huge spread of producers, actors, etc. We already know far more people are going to be involved. TV/movies/media in general are some of the toughest spaces for individuals to make it big. A few lonelygirl’s will emerge, but most will be massive failures. Isn’t that what American Idol teaches us?

Moreover, the problem of video-based advertising on the internet is that one will only tolerate so much. NBC has been smart to break up shows into 7 segments and have a short 15 - 30 second spot in between. AOL In TV has shows with 3-4 30 second spots in between. That is the most TV online can sustain. Furthermore, I think online video ads are even more likely to be ignored than ads on regular TV - you can just tab over to another window to view other content and basically get an audio ad at that point - the value of an audio ad versus a video ad with audio is significantly lower. TiVo like things will pop-up for online advertising and the penetration/rate of ignoring ads will be higher than it is with regular TV.

As it is, most regular web browsers don’t pay attention to ads. Tell me, what is the last time you actually clicked on an ad and bought something? Never perhaps? Do you actually care about any of the ads on TechCrunch? And this is a very targeted blog.

The production model for shows/content on online video is going to be very hard to make profitable. One would probably have to launch 1000 mini-shows to get to one mega hit (e.g. 10 MM subs watching once a week).

@ 15 Frank - don’t overestimate the power of things like Second Life. The average person thinks Second Life is a waste of life, energy, bandwidth, and electricity. Ever thought about getting a First Life? SecondLife has a lot of users who don’t really do anything. Just like all these other sites that claim 20 MM users. More like 1 MM!

All of these things are novel now, but only truly unique and high-quality content will get us anywhere. If you have a site driven by user generated content, chances are 95%+ is total crap and advertisers don’t want to be associated with that.

Most of us already ignore online ads and with crap content, we’ll ignore them even more.

WAKE UP TechCrunch readers. Quality content is valuable. Crap content is not.

What the SILL?

Users want this form of entertainment where and when they want it. For example, we have users that bring in video from all over the internet, then download it all to the PC and watch it on the plane, or on their video iPod while on the subway, or in SecondLife. The power of new media. Beautiful.

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625230

This increases the advertising : content ratio even higher. Even if the content is good, I don’t think people are going to go for this.