“Who did what for who?” was my detailed and articulate question I posed to my wife as she began to inform me, via her father, that Comcast had made a bid for a “merger” of their company with the Walt Disney Company. Like everyone else, the news blindsided me for coming at this time…a time when former Disney Board Members Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold were trying to wage a public campaigning to oust Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner (i.e. the SaveDisney.com movement).

I had heard rumors in the past about Comcast possibly merging or taking over Disney, but I dismissed that possibility as improbable at best and impossible at worst. I mean, who could take over DISNEY? That powerhouse of media… and…um… and um, oh yeah, entertainment! Sorry, I was so caught up in all of the excitement of the ABC network, ABC Radio, ESPN, ESPN Radio, ABC Family Channel, SOAPnet, Touchstone, Miramax, and all of the other wonderful media channels that the Walt Disney Company owns that I forgot they were in the entertainment business.

Was that sarcasm you ask? Yes, yes it was.

This brings me to what I consider one of the major problems with the Walt Disney Company today, and possibly what created a chain of events that led to the “merger” bid of Comcast to Disney.

Back in the pre-Capital Cities/ABC days, it was obvious what business the Walt Disney Company was in: entertainment. When I say entertainment, I don’t mean your standard definition of the word; I’m talking about the leader in entertainment when it came to animation and destination resorts, and basically all-around FAMILY entertainment. Did you ever see a parent discipline their kids for looking at the cover of a Disney movie at your local movie rental store? Compare that to the same child looking at the cover of some of the recent movies that have come out under the PG rating and I think you would get a very different reaction from that same parent.

That’s called branding, and Disney is King at it with a capital “K.” But the fact of the matter is that they should be. Your brand is what you sell, especially as you become an older and older company. If there were two identical products for your car and one was made by Turtle Wax and other by Pete’s Pretty-Good-Wash, I’d be willing to bet you’d buy the Turtle Wax brand. I know I would, because I’ve used their products in the past and I was satisfied with their results.

That’s how Disney is. If you hear about a new Disney animated movie coming out to theaters and you’d like to take your kids, have you ever stopped to think and ask what rating the movie has? Probably not, because you expect the movie to be held to a certain standard…the Disney Standard. You knew that the animation was going to be great, you as an adult would enjoy the movie, and your kids would love every minute of it. On top of that, you wouldn’t have to worry about any awkward situations in the film because it was made by Disney. Disney would never produce something to be offensive to family values.

Then came Capital Cities/ABC. The general thought was (and still is) that this would be great. The content power of the Walt Disney Company would now have a channel to deliver their content in-house, rather than relying on other networks and studios to deliver their content in new ways. Of course, the golden nugget would turn out to be ESPN, as it is the clear dominator in sports television in the United States and ever-increasingly worldwide.

Does this sound eerily similar to something you may have heard lately? Comcast would be a great partner to Disney, since it would give content to Comcast, and allow Disney to reach new audiences through Comcast’s wide range of distribution. They would be “natural partners.”

What did we say the Walt Disney Company’s business was? I forgot already. Oh yeah, entertainment! Wait, what about media? Does this mean that everything on ESPN is family friendly? How about Miramax or Touchstone, surely we can take our kids to watch any movie they produce, right? After all, they are wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company!

Sure, there are those that could argue that the Walt Disney Company is still very protective with their name and what it gets attached to. I would agree with you there, but the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC complicated a situation that really didn’t have too much complication in it to begin with. Disney was Disney… there was hardly ever a meeting as to whether or not to attach the Disney name to something or not, because in the end it was Disney, and there was no getting around that. Either it was up to the Disney Standard or it wasn’t made, pure and simple.

Herein lays the first emergence of current problems within the Walt Disney Company. With the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, you had what initially looked liked the beginning of a beautiful thing: content merging with distribution. However, that created and still creates problems for Disney, and not just on the brand image side.

In the next part of this series on the current Disney situation, we will start to see how the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC changed the Walt Disney Company from the inside out, and not just in branding issues. Make sure to tune in next week for a glimpse of the financial side of business at the Mouse House, and possibly some finger pointing!