Okay. You know the drill. The banner at the top of this page shows that I still solidly support Roy Disney and Stanley Gold’s efforts to oust Michael Eisner. But — that said — I am growing very concerned that “SaveDisney.com” may soon need some saving of its own.
Why for? Well, let’s start with the lack of press coverage for last week’s big announcement from Roy and Stanley’s camp. That Disney CEO Michael Eisner hadn’t actually received a 43.4% “No Confidence” vote from company shareholders back on March 3rd. But — rather — the official final tally was 45.37%.
The media treated this item like the non-story that it was. And — if it was covered at all — the “43.4% vs. 45.37%” story was buried in the backmost part of the business section.
A similar lack of enthusiasm greeted Monday’s broadside from SaveDisney.com. In which Disney and Gold’s people tried to snag the spotlight by loudly proclaiming that 72.5 % of the 28.6 million shares held in the Walt Disney Company’s 401k employee retirement plan had been voted in a way which withheld support for Michael Eisner’s re-election as head of the Walt Disney Company.
In an effort to sell this story to the press, Roy Disney and Stanley Gold really came out swinging late Monday afternoon. Insisting that the 401k vote was “… a meaningful barometer of employee dissatisfaction.” Which caused Roy and Stan to call Michael “a lame duck” and then question “… how Mr. Eisner can do what needs to be done at this company without the support of the company’s employees.”
As you might expect, the PR folks over at the Walt Disney Company tried to put a whole different spin on the 401k vote results. In telephone conversations that they had with leading reporters on Monday, the Mouse House’s media handlers would accuse the SaveDisney people of “… blatant distortion and manipulation of data in an attempt to continue to mislead Disney shareholders.” Then — in an effort to totally throw reporters off Michael Eisner’s trail — they’d close by saying: “Have you seen Michael Wolff’s article in the latest issue of ‘Vanity Fair’? Man, that story doesn’t make Roy and Stan look very good.”
Yeah, Michael Wolff’s feature — “Michael Eisner’s Mouse Trap” — in the May 2004 issue of “Vanity Fair” is one very entertaining read. To put it bluntly, Michael doesn’t much like anyone who’s involved in this whole messy situation. Not Michael Eisner (who Wolff describes as being “… an intractable, mean, nasty, stubborn, cheap S.O.B.”) or Brian Roberts at Comcast (a company that Michael says is “… frequently reviled for its bad service, steady price increases, and unresponsiveness to the communities its system dominates around the county”). But Wolff saves the bulk of his scorn for Disney and Gold, who he compares to those “… curmudgeonly Statler and Waldorf Muppet characters, always heckling from the audience.”
Wolff’s article (Which was gleefully passed around the Team Disney Burbank building on Monday morning. Not just because it made fun of the Save Disney folks, but because the article attacks Eisner with equal fervor) attempts to portray Disney and Gold as two guys who are desperately trying to relive their 1984 triumph. When Roy and Stan orchestrated that incredibly successful campaign to remove then-Disney CEO Ron Miller. In a particular damning section of the story, Michael says:
“I can’t quite decide if this is uplifting — the same guys back doing the same thing, dusting off their old 80s playbook, insisting, once again, on their day in the sun — or depressing. Or comic. That’s surely the movie: “Grumpy Old Men.” But almost nobody has acknowledged the schtick, or the nostalgia, or the foot stamping of these old guys. Not many people seem to even remember that they’ve done this exact same thing before — that this is a behavior pattern.”
You see what I’m saying? Based on the media’s tepid response to the “43.3% vs 45.37%” story, the 72.5% vote announcement as well as Michael Wolff’s “Vanity Fair” article, it’s clear that Roy and Stanley are no longer the media’s darlings. And there’s also some strong evidence that the online Disneyana community may be losing its enthusiasm for the SaveDisney effort as well.
Want proof? Okay, let’s start with SaveDisney.com’s first reader poll which was held in early March. Over 6400 people took part in that on-line poll, revealing that Disneyland’s submarine voyage was the West Coast theme park attraction that Disneyana fans would most like to see put back into service.
By the end of March, the numbers of people taking part in SaveDisney.com’s reader polls had fallen off by more than half. With only 2522 Disneyana fans saying that they thought traditional animation and computer animation should be able to co-exist.
And — as March gave way to April — the reader erosion continued. With only 1854 Disneyana fans indicating that Tokyo DisneySea is the overseas Disney theme park that they’d most like to visit.
Sure, keeping track of the number of people who are regularly voting in SaveDisney.com’s on-line readers polls may not be the most scientific way to keep track of what’s going on, traffic-wise, at that web site. But this info — coupled with what I’ve been hearing from various merchandise sites that are linked directly to SaveDisney.com (One merchant recently told me that his SaveDisney related sales have fallen off to a tenth of what they were back in March) — makes me think that we should all be very concerned with what’s going on with that website specifically and what’s happening with SaveDisney.com in general.
(To be fair, I guess I should point out that — according to Alexa.com [an internet traffic tracking site] — SaveDisney.com is still pulling in some pretty decent numbers. With a ranking of 51,694 out of the Web’s top 100,000 sites. To put this in perspective, the top ranked Disneyana website on the Net — MousePlanet.com — currently has a ranking of 46,675 out of 100,000.
JimHillMedia.com? Sadly, we’re ‘way back in the pack. Barely making it into the top 100,000 at all with a ranking of 98,957. But — then again — when you take into consideration that Alexa.com keeps track of over 3.5 billion websites, I guess the fact that JHM has managed to claw its way in the Internet’s top 100,000 is nothing to sneeze at.
Okay. Enough with the blatant self promotion. Let’s get back to the story, shall we?)
I know, I know. I can hear the pro-Roy-and-Stanley people, the really rabid “Save Disney” fans saying: “Okay, Jim. You’re so smart. What would you do to try and turn this situation around?”
Well — for starters — I’d really simplify what’s going on with the SaveDisney.com home page. Have you taken a look at that thing lately? In the right column alone, there are — at last count — 65 different stories listed. The folks over there need to do some serious weeding. Cut back on that ridiculous backlog of articles.
And — if you guys really want the business press to start taking you seriously again — you have to stop with all the silly Disney pseudonyms you use for people who are writing articles for the site. Jim Douglas AKA Dean Jones from “The Love Bug”? Merlin Jones AKA Tommy Kirk from “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.” That’s amateur night stuff.
And — speaking of amateur night stuff — Disneyana fans may have found that “Practically Perfect CEO” song parody that SaveDisney.com recently ran funny. But the really-for-real reporters that I speak with regularly just didn’t get that joke. They found that piece really confusing. So much so that I had to explain the whole point of the story (I.E. that it was a parody of a song from “Mary Poppins”) to at least five of them.
Silly pseudonyms and song parodies aren’t really the sorts of things that make people take a website seriously. And — given that the whole reason that SaveDisney.com actually exists is that Roy and Stanley are hoping to unseat one of the most powerful CEOs working in the entertainment industry today — I would have to assume that these two guys would LIKE to be taken seriously. Not just have their efforts be dismissed by the press because … well, SaveDisney.com’s recent efforts seem to have lacked direction and focus.
That’s what (I think) SaveDisney.com’s whole current problem comes down to. Disney and Gold’s website — as well as their last few weeks worth of efforts — seem to be lacking direction and focus. These two really need to decide ASAP what sort of message that they should be getting out to the public as well as the media.
I mean, for weeks now, we’ve been hearing “Welcome to Round Two.” Well, isn’t it high time that someone from SaveDisney.com finally told us all what “Round Two” actually entails?
Again … my apologies if this story comes across as far too downbeat for some of you. I know that a lot of people within the Walt Disney Company — particularly that handful of longtime staffers at WDFA and WDI who are hanging on by their fingertips, hoping and praying that a Mouse House management change is just around the corner — are really counting on Roy and Stanley to come through here. But unless the “Save Disney” folks really get their act together — and fast — it’s looking more and more likely that Michael Eisner will stay on as head of the Walt Disney Company for as long as he’d like to keep that job.
And Disney and Gold … unless these guys have something really big up their sleeve, maybe Michael Wolff’s earlier comparison is appropriate. Maybe Roy and Stanley really are 2004’s equivalent of Statler and Waldorf. Two very amusing and entertaining characters, that’s for sure. But — when you come right down to it — these two aren’t really having all that much effect on what’s actually happening onstage.
Maybe back in March Disney and Gold were having a real impact on things. But now … meh.
Again, as I said at the start, folks … I remain a Roy and Stanley supporter. But I have to admit that I am starting to lose heart here. And I’m also beginning to doubt that Disney and Gold really have what it takes to Save Disney.
Sooo … do you folks have any idea how Save Disney can go about saving itself? Get back on the right track?