“The decision by Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios, to walk away from his partnership with Michael D. Eisner and the Walt Disney Company is the clearest indication yet that Mr. Jobs is becoming the personification of the digital media mogul,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times.
“The collapse last Thursday of the Disney- Pixarnegotiations over a new distribution agreement appears to have been a clash of egos and business interests. But it was also very much a sign of the changing balance of power between the conventional media giants and the entrepreneurs wielding digital technologies that are rapidly changing the way media content is made and distributed,” Markoff reports. “Compared with the ambitious but often unfocused visions of executives in the dot-com boom, like the largely failed strategy behind the merger of AOL and Time Warner, Mr. Jobs is familiar enough with digital technology to see not only its capabilities but also to recognize its limitations.”
“Some industry executives have wondered whether Mr. Jobs’s breaking off the Disney negotiations was partly a prelude to efforts to take the top job at a Hollywood company – maybe even Mr. Eisner’s job,” Markoff reports. “But others note that Mr. Jobs has always done best when he has stayed close to the technology. And they predict that this new media mogul will have no need to go Hollywood.”
Full article here.
“Digital Media Mogul” is more like it. There are many media moguls that do well but they are more corporate than Jobs is. We have Turner, Diller, Murdoch, etc. they are respective in the media industry but not in such a way that Jobs has done it.
People keep making mention of the possibility of Steve heading up Disney. Why would he want to? He’s got what I’d consider the two best jobs in the world right now? Why would he leave those to take over a dinosaur that’s sinking into a tar pit? I just can’t see the appeal.
just goes to show Eisner doesn’t know how to be a good follower. Did Disney and Eisner really think they brought anything to the table? And the fact they wouldn’t budge on certain terms made this all the more inevitable. Pixar deserves better, Disney was the equivalent of FedEx, merely delivering the product and not adding anything to it.