Pettiness in the Mouse House: A Short Review of Disney Wars
This is an older book, released in 2005 at the end of Michael Eisner’s twenty year run as CEO of Disney. I picked up Disney Wars, by James B. Stewart (side note: why do so many non-fiction writers include their middle initial or name on their books? Is there some obscure Author’s Guild rule mandating that there can Ony Be One James Stewart?) on the recommendation of the It Was A Shit Show podcast -- an excellent show about how hard it is to make even good movies. The book has two main takeaways for modern audiences, one historical and one likely an ongoing insight into the top of corporate governance.
Since this book was written in the early 2000s, the action largely happens before the massive upset of social media and its effects on fandom, before the death of cable (though that was beginning to be seen), and before streaming services first blew apart and then tried to stitch back together the cable bundle. You can see the beginning of the new word in the concerns of these execs, but they were still largely focused on TV and movie theaters. It is interesting how these experienced people did and did not prepare for the future they only dimly grasped.
What stood out to me more, however, and might be more relevant to modern readers, is just how compromised, petty, and incompetent these executives were. Disney executives made mistake after mistake, turning down shows like CSI and Survivor for what can only be described as the pettiest of office politics. Entire networks were purchased without the most basic of due diligence and so plans for these networks had to be thrown away and billions of dollars were lost. People who supported those decisions thrived while others who made successful moves that ran counter to the biases of the wrong executives were fired. Other executives conducted themselves abysmally in the workplace and yet no one could bring themselves to fire them for actions that you or I would be cashiered for in a hot minute. Confusing and counterproductive chains of command were established in order to ensure no one could threaten top executives’ positions.
Needless to say, this level of incompetence had a deleterious effect on Disney’s bottom line. But because the Disney board was controlled by Eisner’s allies, nothing was ever done. In fact, when pressure did begin to mount, Eisner purged the board of people who he considered disloyal to him. It was only after his staunchest ally lost money in the dotcom crash and had to sell off his Disney stake and the Disney family came out against him did Eisner finally face repercussions for more than a decade of poor performance.
There is precious little to suggest boards have become anymore independent. The Boeing board approved another bean counter as CEO despite the manifest problems such a route has created for Boeing. Warner Brothers Discover board has done nothing to reign in the pay of Daid Zaslav, despite his terribly unprofitable stewardship of the company and the long-term damage he has done to their reputation. The list goes on and it pretty clear shows that companies are run not for the shareholders, not for the employees, not for the communities, but only for the top executives. Disney Wars shows an up close and detailed look at how and why that happens, and how it can damage the lives of the people who work for the company in question.
I recommend Disney Wars despite its age. It still has lessons for today and it is just soaked in insider pettiness that is the literary equivalent of watching a car wreck. As long as no one is seriously injured, you cannot help but be at least a little bit amused.