Originally Posted By vbdad55 In 1955 , Lady and the Tramp was released, the Mickey Mouse club was the new rage, and Davey Crockett couldn't get enough screen time.... the studios were not neglected for the sake of building the park. Did he roll the dice some for the future..you bet. But in the meantime they remained the best at what they did.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj <<< He should have had the company firing on all cylinders so Disney wasn't in a position to even attract a sniff of a takeover proposal. >>> When internet companies with only one tenth of your revenues have stock valuations 5 times greater than you, there is no way to make the cylinders fire to overcome that difference. That was the climate of the late 1990s. It made no sense. It was a bubble. The bubble burst. Unfortunately, companies like Time Warner didn't make the right moves to avoid the takeovers before the dot.coms lost all of their stock value.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <Well considering that all the established "expertise" at the time got overran by an upstart called Google, I'm not sure the experts would have been any good at making Go.com succeed either.< would have given it a fighting chance at least...it has no chance to succeed the way it was run. and if we're going to play what if.....what is Sun Microsystems had been an IT partner of Disney at the time. They were a major financial backer early on for Page and Brin...maybe they start Google under a Disney banner ? Long shot - sure...but no shot when you have no IT professionals running your IT venture at the time.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 AOL's 'merger' with Time-Warner was not a hostile takeover...this was more than agreed to by the Time Warner exec team at the time....
Originally Posted By mrichmondj I doubt a Disney takeover would have been considered hostile either. What shareholders would vote no to a stock swap with a highly valued dot.com that gives them a premium to their shares? The board isn't going to fight that.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 My last word on this topic for the night/early a.m. is that the AOL/TimeWarner deal should have resulted in jail time for the folks behind it. No wonder why this country is so screwed up when paper giants cost real companies billions. And, I am a bit bitter myself, as I worked for a dot.com company that had no business for being (in business) and went bust in 2001 owing myself (and many others) money we will never see. So I have a bit of first-hand experience in this. It's a joke. It really is. As was the folly of Go.losebillions.com.
Originally Posted By danyoung >But if you'd like to discuss your Toyota and Comfort Inn experiences, I am all ears ... go ahead < Hey, Mr. Snooty McSnootsville - I just moved up to the Comfort Inn level from my previous Super 8/Red Roof/Day's Inn level, and am digging the hell out of it, thank you very much!!!
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom In terms of Disney. I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet that in the past year the Disney Company has been selling off lots of land in WDW. That is not a good sign.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>compared to driving Bimmers and Benz's without stifling import taxes -- who's to blame them. Ask them about Fords and Chevy's, and when the laughter dies down.............<< Oh please. Like everyone in Europe drives a BMW or a Mercedes. My point was they think brands like SEAT and Skoda are superior to Toyota. And I agree with them that most Japanese cars are tinny and have poor handling. FWIW, Consumer Reports doesn't think all that highly of Mercedes for that matter.
Originally Posted By fkurucz Also, IIRC, Chevy beat Mercedes in CR's latest brand ranking. I also recall seeing lots of American cars in Sweden (don't remember seeing any Toyotas however).
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>compared to driving Bimmers and Benz's without stifling import taxes<< I seem to recall davewasbaloo telling us how those cars cost more in Europe than in the US!
Originally Posted By leemac <<I think Disney lost about $2B on the deal -- about as third as much as Time Warner lost by being bought by AOL.>> Your number is way off on TW there. As late as early this year TW's value as a company was entirely (I mean 100%) generated by the Time Warner side of the business (when compared to the pre-merger value). Wall Street effectively valued AOL at nil. Not a penny. That is a true loss in the tens of billions.
Originally Posted By leemac <<Go.com was a disaster. Period. There's no good justification for it. Disney didn't have to lose BILLIONS (you know, enough to build a TDS quality theme park in the USA) in a business it had no business being in -- OH and if you think Disney has learned its lesson you obviously forgot about ESPN Mobile and Disney Mobile.>> There is so much in this one paragraph. I'll caveat this whole response from me by saying that I don't view the GO.com deal as a success but it is also far from the TOTAL failure that some people will have you believe. That enabling technology enabled Disney to get into the .com game without having to build up its own division. The Online team feed every division from Studios Entertainment to Media Networks to Parks & Resorts to MY Team Disney portals. Disney have a great IT infrastructure both internally and externally thanks in no small part to the GO.com. And why does a pure content player have no reason to be part of online content? Absolute nonsense. They were behind the curve and overpayed (and using the terms "losing billions" shows exactly how poorly you understand how transactions work particularly those involving stock and SPA covenants) that is for sure. But the Company has (and still does) have every right to be in that game even if it is predominantly a marketing tool. Also it shows how little you understand the Company's business when you have to refer to a park project when the Company wasn't necessarily diverting cash from WDP&R to fund that development. ESPN Mobile was a genius concept. Executed to perfection. Anywhere else in the world (and it is being rolled out globally as a virtual network) and it would have been a huge success. The menus were user-friendly and the content was amazing. The US is just too far behind the cell-phone technology curve to be able to adopt it properly. It is too early to tell about Disney Mobile but I'm told it is doing reasonably well. Again it also feeds content to other networks with ringtones, screensavers etc. Spirit that one paragraph is so black-and-white that it renders your argument moot. It reads like something I'd expect from Murdoch's NY Post.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I don't think Disney needs to be at the frontier of new platforms. I think Disney needs to be at the forefront of providing amazing, compelling creative content be it theme park attractions, animated features or TV shows.>> I totally disagree. Disney doesn't need to be boxed into being a pure content player and that old definition of content vs distribution just doesn't fit any more. Disney needs to be at the cutting edge of distribution. You only need to look at their success with iTunes to see that. You make it sound like it should have PBS's brief. Quality content on its own isn't going to work. You only have to look at how shows like The Nine (which was critically lauded by just about every critic) don't latch on. You need a hook and if you can get that through other methods of communication so be it.
Originally Posted By leemac <<Unfortunately, companies like Time Warner didn't make the right moves to avoid the takeovers before the dot.coms lost all of their stock value.>> I'm not convinced that it wasn't the right move for TW. The issue was more how do you convert those dial-up customers to DSL. That is where they missed the trick and actually they did the cable and telephony giants a favour. AOL bleeds customers (and continues to see a shrinkage even if the numbers are stabilising) but if the merger had worked AOL Time Warner would dominate both content and distribution. A frightening prospect for any media company. Thankfully Case and Levin screwed it up royally. Ultimately they may have been better going for a portal rather than an ISP.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <Oh please. Like everyone in Europe drives a BMW or a Mercedes< no, but a higher % as they are more affordable there without the import taxes slapped on...
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <Also, IIRC, Chevy beat Mercedes in CR's latest brand ranking< dependent upon people actually taking the time to report issues-- and as I mentioned earlier -- 'issues' are things like " I don't understand I drive" -- what the heck is this DSC ? -- more than quality issues --
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet that in the past year the Disney Company has been selling off lots of land in WDW. That is not a good sign.< while some have scoffed it off as small pieces - I agree with you and it does concern me....
Originally Posted By mrichmondj For what it's worth, GM and Ford sell twice the number of vehicles as BMW or Daimler in Europe.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <>>compared to driving Bimmers and Benz's without stifling import taxes<< I seem to recall davewasbaloo telling us how those cars cost more in Europe than in the US< my experience is they do not cost more to buy them in Germany....two cars ago my neighbor and I both did the travel to Germany and get your car in a northern ' suburb' of Munich. It is right off the A9 autobahn...and even after some tack on road usage tax...it is a flat 7% off MSRP - or about $2700 on the car I chose, which is about double the 3% or so they will allow you on new models here. Now I cannot tell you if they are marked up with any sort of taxes in the UK...just don't know
