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Michael Eisner

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Michael Eisner
OccupationEntertainment executive
SpouseJane Breckenridge (1967 - present)

Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) was CEO of The Walt Disney Company from September 22, 1984 to September 30, 2005.

Early life

Michael Eisner was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Mt. Kisco, New York and raised on Park Avenue in Manhattan. He attended the Lawrenceville School and graduated from Denison University in 1964 with a B.A. in English. He is a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. His grandfather was one of the first uniform suppliers to the Boy Scouts of America.

ABC and Paramount

After two brief stints at NBC and CBS, Barry Diller at ABC hired Eisner as Assistant to the National Programming Director. Eisner moved up the ranks, eventually becoming a senior vice president in charge of programming and development. In 1976, Diller, who had by then moved on to become chairman of Paramount Pictures, recruited Eisner from ABC and made him president and COO of the movie studio. During his tenure at Paramount, the studio turned out such hit films as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, the Star Trek film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Beverly Hills Cop, and hit TV shows such as Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Cheers and Family Ties.

Diller left Paramount in 1984, and, as his protege, Eisner expected to assume Diller's position as studio chief. When he was passed over for the job, though, he left to look for work elsewhere and lobbied for the position of CEO of The Walt Disney Company.

Disney

Walt Disney Productions had been struggling since its founder's death in 1966 and had narrowly survived takeover attempts by corporate raiders when its shareholders Sid Bass and Roy E. Disney brought on Eisner and former Warner Brothers chief Frank Wells to turn the company's situation around.

During the second half of the 1980s and 1990s, the studio revitalised, and the division had a "golden age" with annual box office hits with such regularity that even their creative structure started to be known as the "Disney formula." Disney also broadened its adult offerings in film when then Disney Studio Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg acquired Miramax Films in 1993. Disney acquired many other media sources, including ABC and ESPN.

During the early part of the 1990s, Eisner and his partners set out to plan "The Disney Decade" which was to feature new parks around the world, existing park expansions, new films, and new media investments. While some of the proposals did follow through, most did not. These include WestCOT, Disney's America, Disney-MGM Studios Paris, and among film projects, sequels for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Wells died in a helicopter crash in 1994, ending the longstanding feud between the two men. (The Lion King, which is the most successful hand-drawn animated picture, was released over two months later in his memory). Shortly thereafter, Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned and formed Dreamworks SKG with partners Steven Spielberg and David Geffen because Eisner would not appoint Katzenberg to Wells' now available post.

The Save Disney war and Eisner's ouster

In 2003, Roy Edward Disney, also the son of co-founder Roy Oliver Disney, resigned from his positions as Disney vice chairman and chairman of Walt Disney Feature Animation, accusing Eisner of micro-management, failures with the ABC television network, timidity in the theme park business, turning the Walt Disney Company into a "rapacious, soul-less" company, and refusing to establish a clear succession plan, as well as a string of box-office movie failures starting in the year 2000.

On March 3 2004, at Disney's annual shareholders' meeting, a surprising and unprecedented 43% of Disney's shareholders, predominantly rallied by former board members Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, withheld their votes to re-elect Eisner to the corporate board of directors. This vigorous opposition, unusual in major public corporations, convinced Disney's board to strip him of his chairmanship and give that position to former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. However, the board would not immediately remove Eisner as chief executive.

As criticism of Eisner intensified in the wake of the shareholder meeting, Eisner's position became more and more tenuous, and on March 13 2005, Eisner announced that he would step down as CEO one year before his contract expired. On September 30 Eisner resigned both as an executive and as a member of the board of directors, and, severing all formal ties with the company, he waived his contractual rights to perks such as the use of a corporate jet and an office at the company's Burbank headquarters. Eisner's replacement was his longtime lieutenant, Bob Iger.

Eisner's struggle to maintain control of the legendary entertainment company was the subject of journalist James B. Stewart's bestselling book DisneyWar.

Post-Disney

On October 7 2005, Eisner hosted The Charlie Rose Show. His guests were John Travolta and his ex-boss-turned-rival, Barry Diller. Months later, on January 10, 2006, CNBC announced that Eisner would be given his own hour-long, prime-time interview show, Conversations with Michael Eisner.

Eisner has recently invested in an Internet video distribution network named Veoh Networks ([1]).

In March 2007 it was reported that Eisner's investment firm launched a studio, Vuguru, that will produce and distribute videos fo the Internet, portable media devices and cell phones. "The entire concept here is content is king," Eisner said in a phone interview. "What will drive traffic is interest in the subject matter." [2]

Books

Work In Progress (1998)- ISBN 0-375-50071-5

Camp (2005)

Portrayals in film and television

Eisner has been parodied in several films and television shows:

  • Eisner is also shown as a recurring character in the adult cartoon series, Family Guy. He is is voiced by Gary Cole.

Personal life

His sons are Breck, Eric, and Anders Eisner.

Preceded by Disney Chairmen
1984–2004 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Disney CEOs
1984–2005 		Succeeded by

Quotes

  • "I always went into an area that was in last place, with a philosophy, 'You can't fall off the floor.' And I was lucky, was at the right time and the right place, with the right ideas, and each one of these areas became number one."
  • "You can't succeed unless you've got failure, especially creatively."
  • "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only obligation."

Further Reading

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