On Monday afternoon, after Ritter’s emotional funeral, attended only by family and close friends, Lyne and Braun sat down to discuss the show’s fate. Both had been struck by the reaction of the cast to Ritter’s death, as if he were their real father. “Should we be listening?” Lyne asked. “Is there something here?”
Braun was thinking along the same lines. “Are we crazy? Or should we think about addressing this directly in the show? What happens when a young father dies? How do you pick up the pieces?”
So Braun and Lyne floated the notion to Suarez, Widdoes, and executive producer Tom Shaydac. Nobody really wanted to talk about it, but no one vetoed the idea, either. Amy Yasbeck and Bob Myman seemed supportive. Amy, in particular, knew how important the jobs were to the cast and crew, and felt Ritter would have wanted the show to continue without him. Obviously, ABC had to tread a fine line between empathy and exploitation. On Tuesday, ABC announced that the production would go into “hiatus,” but was careful not to say that the show was being shut down permanently.
Two days later, Eisner weighed in with an email to Braun and Lyne. Not only did he want to continue the series, but he proposed that Cate, Ritter’s wife in the show, played by Katey Sagal, be pregnant (she’d had a pregnancy scare in an earlier episode). Then she could give birth for the May sweeps week. Iger weighed in with an email: “This is a great idea. Let’s discuss.”
“Oh my God,” Braun told Lyne. They were both appalled. It had been hard enough to approach Amy about continuing the show at all, but to suggest that Ritter’s character would be leaving a baby behind was going too far. It seemed unspeakably exploitative to capitalize on Ritter’s death by making his wife pregnant and having her give birth during the May sweeps.
At first they said nothing, hoping Eisner’s idea would die the natural death they felt it deserved. They didn’t want to reject it immediately, knowing that would provoke Eisner. But he brought it up again. So did Iger. Finally Braun said he thought it was tasteless. “Audiences will love it,” Eisner insisted. “Who cares what the critics say?”
More calls and emails ensued, with Iger continuing to weigh in on behalf of Eisner’s idea. Finally Braun wrote, “I cannot endorse this.” This prompted Iger to accuse Braun of being “insubordinate” in an email that was copied to numerous people involved in the show.
Eisner himself was also furious, and summoned Braun and Lyne to his office to confront the matter. Iger was out of town, so he participated by phone. Both Braun and Lyne were feeling emotionally drained from Ritter’s death and its aftermath. Lyne took the lead, trying to sidestep the issue of whether the idea was exploitative of a tragic situation. Eisner had already told them he thought that objection was “ridiculous.” She pointed out that if Cate were pregnant, she’d be getting bigger and bigger during the season. The writers couldn’t introduce another love interest; they couldn’t have a pregnant mother dating. And it would shift the focus of the show away from the teenage girls to the mother and baby, which was a totally different show.
But the more she talked, the angrier Eisner became. “You just don’t get it!” he yelled. He was scathing, attacking Braun and Lyne as elitists, saying both lacked the common touch. “You’re not TV people,” he said contemptuously. Braun shot back, saying pregnancy was a “terrible idea” and in “terrible taste.”
Finally Eisner screamed at Braun, “You’re a creative wimp.”
“Oh really?” Braun shouted back. “Why is that? Is it because I have the guts to disagree with you? What if I’m right? Maybe I’m saving your ass.”
Suddenly there was silence. Eisner looked like he might explode, his eyes bulging. Lyne and Braun had heard reports of Eisner’s explosive temper, but they’d never experienced it firsthand, and had discounted them as exaggerations, until now. Finally Braun got up and put on his jacket.
Eisner collected himself, but there was no point in continuing the meeting. As they walked out into the corridor, Braun confided in Lyne, “Let me tell you, I am not going to do something that I find morally reprehensible to keep this job. If this means I’m gone, then I’m gone.”
On September 11, 2003, the same day as Ritter’s death, it fell to Angela Shapiro and the Family channel’s new head of finance, Reinaldo Del Valle, to present the financial numbers for the channel, which were little short of disastrous. Shapiro did her best to emphasize the good news, and there was genuine progress to report. By the upfront presentations to advertisers that spring, she and her staff had been able to introduce a total of three hundred hours of original programming. Despite the “Family” name, she had been gradually skewing the programming toward women aged eighteen to thirty-four with more romantic comedies. The channel was actually getting better ratings than MTV with an afternoon block aimed at teenage girls. But it was awkward. During the presentations, a reporter had asked how the new programming fit the “Family” label. “Well, I call it kind of family, but not the traditional family, if you know what I mean,” Shapiro said. What else could she say? Not the truth—that it made no sense but she was carrying out orders.
Despite mounting uncertainty over the future of the channel and her own status, Shapiro had continued to acquire new programming. At the September 11 meeting, Iger suggested yet another name change for the channel, this time to the US Network. Disney owned a half-interest in US magazine with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, and the magazine already had a strong brand identity and appealed to the target eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old women’s audience. Anne Sweeney said nothing, but Shapiro loved the idea.
The next day, Iger asked Shapiro to come to his office. He asked her to sit down, and joined her in the comfortable seating area across from his desk. According to reports of the meeting from members of Shapiro’s staff, Iger said, “Let me explain something. The board hates me. I may lose my job. I’m connected to the network and to ABC Family, and they’re both losers. So I’m going to say something that you’re going to hate. I have to put ABC Family under the cable group.”
Staff members were incredulous, since they all knew Shapiro had been explicitly promised she would not report to Anne Sweeney. Iger had given her his word. When they asked her what happened, she reported that Iger had said that “things change and I need to save my job,” adding that “You don’t understand how important Michael’s job is to me and now I feel I may not get it.”
Shapiro kept lobbying Iger to change his mind about having the Family channel report to the cable division and to keep it tied to the network, much as NBC was successfully linking the Bravo channel to NBC. Though conceding the idea made operational sense, he stressed that the underperforming Family was doing nothing to help ABC’s bottom line. Family’s embarrassing shortfall could be buried in the successful cable division. Family executives concluded the decision was being driven by accounting issues, not what was best for the channel.
When I asked about this, Iger conceded that the move may have breached Shapiro’s contract, but said he had an obligation to do what was best for Disney and for the channel. He had always argued that Family belonged in the cable group. The ABC Network had too many management problems of its own to oversee another channel. And there were economic efficiencies in terms of allocating overhead and other costs. Despite perceptions of some Family executives, he said the move had nothing to do with covering up a mistake, burying Family’s results, or concealing anything from the board. Eisner added that the channel was moved because the “repurposing” strategy wasn’t working, so it made no sense to keep Family with ABC.
Finally Shapiro told Iger she didn’t see how she could stay at the company, so he asked Eisner to intervene. Eisner, too, tried to talk her into staying, but Shapiro countered that it wasn’t even the breach of contract, but the breach of trust when Iger broke his word.
Eisner suggested that maybe she’d misunderstood Iger. Maybe Iger hadn’t really promised, but had used some variation of the “elastic go” that Eisner himself employed. Shapiro insisted there had bee
n no misunderstanding.
In the midst of these discussions, word reached Tom Murphy that Shapiro might leave the company. Concerned, he spoke to Iger. “She’s the most creative person I know. Why would you try to push her out?”
“She and Anne don’t get along,” Iger replied.
Next Murphy called Shapiro, who he knew from her time at ABC. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Shapiro filled him in on her contract provision, Iger’s promise, and the decision to move the channel under Sweeney, as well as Iger’s ambition to succeed Eisner. She was incensed when Murphy told her Iger had characterized the problem as a “girl thing.” She said it was nothing of the sort.
“Angela, I’ve known Bob Iger forever,” Murphy said after hearing Shapiro’s explanation. “I have to tell you, he’s lost his soul.”
Angela Shapiro told Iger on Friday, October 3, that her decision to leave was final. Her lawyer would work out the details with Alan Braverman, Disney’s general counsel. Shapiro didn’t want to sue Disney; she was hoping to leave on amicable terms. After all, she’d been there for eight years, and until she was assigned to the Family acquisition, she had loved working at ABC. They agreed that Shapiro would stay until she negotiated her severance, and they’d announced the change to the staff the following Tuesday.
When Shapiro arrived at the office on Tuesday morning, everyone on her staff had already gotten a voice message summoning each at a specific time for meetings with Sweeney. She faced a barrage of questions about what was going on. Shapiro was irritated that she hadn’t been able to make the announcement before the calls, but she called the staff together, told them the channel was moving to the cable group, and that she would be leaving. Still, she tried to reassure them that there wouldn’t be any drastic changes and their jobs were secure.
When Shapiro returned from her meeting with Sweeney, she was visibly shaken. She reported that she had offered Sweeney her help and support, but had been brushed aside. In short order, Sweeney had vetoed the “US” name, dispensed with the strategy for reaching teen girls and women, and declared that the channel would be “gender neutral.” Romantic comedies already in development would be marketed to men.
Shapiro’s assurances to her staff that everything would be all right were largely undermined by their individual meetings with Sweeney, especially since someone from human resources was present at all of them. Sweeney told them all variations of the same message: that the channel should always have been in the cable group, and there would be a series of meetings to “see where you fit in.” Sweeney added that she’d be reviewing their program development efforts, and repeated what she’d told Shapiro, that the channel would now be “gender neutral.”
The following Monday, Sweeney and Iger met with Shapiro’s staff. According to several people present at the meeting, Sweeney said, “Angela and I have worked closely from the beginning. It was her idea that we meet with each of you separately. Let me repeat what I told each of you in those meetings. We’ll be reviewing the programs in development. As I said, I’m so proud to take over this channel. You’ve done a remarkable job and I’m so proud of all your hard work. You’re going to be part of an even stronger team.”
The Walt Disney Concert Hall finally opened to the public in October 2003 with a series of three gala benefit concerts, culminating in a star-studded musical tribute to Hollywood and a dinner outside the hall under a huge tent. After the project was nearly abandoned for lack of funds and interest, the new concert hall managed to garner rave reviews both for the stunning architecture by Frank Gehry and the acoustics: “Its silvery cascades are one of the most beautiful sights anywhere in the U.S. (Time); “Disney Hall is a defining masterwork” (Newsweek); “A serene, enobling building” (The New Yorker). Though she didn’t live to see its completion, Lillian Disney would surely have been proud that a fitting memorial to Walt’s genius had risen in downtown Los Angeles. “Walt and Frank [Gehry] are the perfect match, an artistic marriage made in heaven,” Steven Spielberg told the opening-night crowd. Lillian’s own love of flowers was reflected in the bold floral-print carpeting laid throughout the hall and in a sculpture of a rose made from broken Delft tiles.
Walt Disney Hall was a source of pride to just about everyone connected to it: Diane Disney Miller, who had worked so hard and given so generously to preserve Gehry’s vision; Roy, whose gift helped build the RedCat Theater; Eisner, who agreed that Disney would give $25 million; and Andrea Van de Kamp, the Music Center chairwoman, who had rescued the project from the brink of financial collapse. It fell to Van de Kamp to organize the gala and oversee the seating chart for the dinner. Then, the following Monday, the hall was hosting another glittering event, the premiere of Matrix 3, the latest in the action-adventure-science-fiction series from Warner Bros.
Three days before the hall’s opening, Eisner called Diane to complain that Disney Hall was going to premiere a film from a rival studio. “We need to fix that,” Eisner told her. “Can you do something about it?”
Diane dutifully called the hall, where she learned that Matrix producer Joel Silver was a close friend of Gehry, and, more to the point, Warner Bros. was underwriting the event with a generous gift. Diane decided the premiere was a good idea, and a good deal for the hall. In any event, Walt Disney Hall was a memorial to Walt, and not to the Disney Company. It was meant to encourage artistic expression from whatever source. Gehry had specifically banned the kind of Disney corporate trademarks that were planted all over the architecture at the theme parks and at Disney’s headquarters. The Matrix premiere stayed on the schedule.
Faced with making the dinner seating arrangements, Van de Kamp had a delicate task. Apart from her own feelings about Eisner, he and Roy were barely speaking, and there was always the danger that lingering tensions between the Roy and Walt sides of the family might flare up. Eisner had asked Roy to accompany him to the premiere, but Roy had declined, saying he and Patty were going to be sitting at Van de Kamp’s table. So Van de Kamp carefully placed her table, Diane’s three tables, and Eisner’s two tables at distant points under the tent.
The price for a table was high—$25,000 to more than $100,000 for tickets that included all three gala events. Despite his recent disparagement of her performance on the board, Eisner called Van de Kamp to complain that he didn’t see why he had to pay for a table when he had been responsible for a $25 million gift. Though she felt she had been grossly mistreated, Van de Kamp decided not to argue with him, or point out that no other major donor asked for or received a free table. So Van de Kamp arranged for a second table at no additional cost. (Eisner paid for the first.)
Somehow it all came off. The Philharmonic played excerpts from classic film scores and the audience applauded the splendid acoustics. Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones were gracious co-hosts. And at the dinner, none of the three warring factions—Eisner, Roy, and Diane—even saw each other.
A few weeks later, on November 4, Eisner was scheduled to speak at what was shaping up to be the East Coast equivalent of Herb Allen’s Sun Valley conference, a media conference co-hosted by investment bankers the Quadrangle Group, management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., and accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers. When I show up at the Wall Street Regent Hotel in Manhattan, I learn that the conference is ostensibly off the record and closed to journalists, but a number of prominent journalists are already there—Tina Brown, founder of the defunct, Miramax-financed Talk, who has resurfaced with a talk show on CNBC; my New Yorker colleague Ken Auletta; Norman Pearlstine, my former editor at The Wall Street Journal, now editor in chief of Time Inc.; and PBS talk-show host Charlie Rose, who is serving as a moderator. The gatekeepers don’t seem to mind after I explain I’m working on a book and that Eisner knows I’m in the audience.
Right away, I bump into Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment, who reminds me that he produced Splash, Touchstone’s first live-action hit, for Ron Miller. Then Richard Snyder, former CEO of Simon & Schuster, who, like Eisner, detested th
eir mutual boss Marty Davis at Paramount, recalls the day Davis fired Eisner. Everyone there, it seems, has an Eisner story.
Eisner and Rose take the stage. Eisner begins by lauding the ABC acquisition to this deal-oriented audience, praises the “momentum” in Disney’s media networks, and predicts “substantial” growth at the theme parks due to pent-up, post–September 11 demand.
“Wouldn’t Comcast and Disney be the perfect merger?” Rose asks, referring to the giant Philadelphia-based cable company where ex-Disney executive Steve Burke has been named president.
Eisner rolled his eyes. “That’s a terrible idea,” he retorts. People laugh.
“Why?” Rose asks.
“I don’t think content and distribution belong in the same company,” Eisner says, repeating his oft-stated conclusion on the subject. “Content is evergreen…distribution is replaced by better technology. Content people come from a different planet. They don’t get along well.”
Rose asks about the just-announced deal in which General Electric is acquiring Universal’s entertainment assets.
“I like it,” Eisner says. “A competitor with a smart owner. I want to see GE planning in Ronnie Meyer’s office,” referring to Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer, Ovitz’s former partner. “That’s a joke,” he adds. “But you don’t want stupid competitors.”
“What about Miramax?” Rose continues.
“It’s fabulous,” Eisner says. “Harvey [Weinstein] is staying. He’s bigger than life. He’s delivered incredible material to our library.”
“Is he happy?”
“I think so. He says he is.”
“Pixar?” Rose asks. Wall Street has been eagerly awaiting the results of the Disney-Pixar negotiations, especially after the enormous success of Nemo, which had grossed $865 million worldwide by the end of 2004.
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