The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management Team Revived an Entertainment Empire [Hardcover]

Ron Grover (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1991

Few companies in American history have enjoyed the kind of turnaround the Walt Disney company managed in the last five years. Complex and compelling, this is a story full of lessons and strategies from which the rest of corporate America can learn.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After Walt Disney's death in 1966, his family-entertainment empire faltered and eventually became a prime takeover target. Business Week 's L.A. bureau chief Grover here describes the dazzling rescue effort sustained by Michael Eisner's management team, whose previous individual credits included the TV shows Cheers and Family Ties , and the films ET and Star Wars. After five years and an 800% profit rise, the Disney firm encompassed, among other ventures, two subsidiary movie studios; a TV, videocassette and theater licensing network; an international string of theme parks from Tokyo to Paris; a catalogue and retail-shop sales operation for Disney merchandise linked to such hit characters as "Little Mermaid; and a worldwide publishing enterprise for books and magazines. This comprehensive, sometimes sprawling account also covers the fierce copyright protection of Disney characters; environmental, political and contractual controversies; multimillion-dollar promotion drives; and, importantly, the stretching of the Disney image to include a 1990 movie about a prostitute, Pretty Woman , which became "the biggest-selling film in Disney history." 25,000 first printing; Fortune Book Club selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Grover, the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of Business Week magazine, chronicles Walt Disney Productions's Cinderella turnaround after its close escape from corporate raiders in 1984 (a cliffhanger described in John Taylor's Storming the Magic Kingdom , LJ 6/1/87). To the rescue came new CEO Michael Eisner and President Frank Wells, who reshaped a somnolent and loss-ridden studio into a global media/entertainment conglomerate. Grover describes how the chiefs squeezed more revenue out of the crown-jewel film library, exploited new outlets like videocassettes and cable TV, and revamped the theme parks. He skillfully relates Eisner's reaching out to mainstream Hollywood (Coppola, Spielberg) for creative allies and to Wall Street and Japan for financial partners, resulting in boffo box office hits like "Pretty Woman." General readers will enjoy this intriguing saga, which is recommended for business and entertainment collections.
- Michael Stevenson, Baker Lib., Harvard Bus iness Sch.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 315 pages
• Publisher: Business One Irwin, Homewood, IL 60430; 1St Edition edition (April 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155623385X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556233852
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars not worth it, May 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management Team Revived an Entertainment Empire (Hardcover)

Written horribly.....researched sloppily.....out of date (isn't great that Disney bought ABC?) and above all with no real perspective or anything new to say about the company. Almost everything in this book was culled from other articles (Time, the New Yorker, etc....) and sound bites. There is no focus or thesis of any kind--"Disney...powerful....money".....is about as close as it comes. I know Ron Grover writes for Business 2.0 so I expected better from him but....oh well.
It would be wonderful if one of these media writers actually did some real research on the Walt Disney company--not "What have they done over the past twenty years" the same old story which is so boring--but: What does Disney mean as a company? How does it fit into American life? (Radio Disney, the Disney stores, etc...) Or if you are focusing on Eisner, maybe try to portray him as a PERSON rather than a cut-out 2dimensional character with less depth than Mickey Mouse. Eisner may be "imperial" but he's also a human being--how do the things that have been written about him compare with what he perceives himself as, the early, more positive portraits of him as a "huggable CEO" or perhaps the friendly if airbrushed annual reports he writes every year? What does Eisner's 20-year relationship with Jeffrey Katzenberg and its subsuquent self-destruction say about him as a person? (And more importantly: WHAT WAS EISNER'S REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH JEFFREY KATZENBERG LIKE? Were they simply like colleagues, friends, rivals, father/son or brother/brother? Why did they stay together for so long? How did Frank Wells "keep them working together"? How does Jeffrey Katzenberg's impressions of his experiences at Disney ( reflected in flms like Prince of Egypt, Shrek) compare with "what really happened"? Why did Disney (or why DOES Disney) continue to censor Katzenberg from their records as well as all books and DVDs? Oh, and one more thing: Michael Eisner may have been partially responsible for Katzenberg's expulsion but there was a whole board of directors (including a certain man named Roy Disney) who were against Katzenberg from the start because Katzenberg did not bother to "form ties" with them. Why did Stanley Gold and Roy Disney so vigorously oppose Katzenberg? What Don't their efforts to "save Disney" at this present time reek of HYPOCRICY?

Well, these are just some questions that a media writer could tackle--but these are hard questions and no writer does. Out of all these books I though Joe Flower's Prince of the Magic Kingdom was the best-written and best-researched....except its even more out of date. I'd like to see Joe take another crack at it, and Ron too.