Tourism: Mickey Mouse

Last Thursday,  Albuquerque hosted an unusual corporate event—the annual meeting of The Walt Disney Company. Yes, that Walt Disney, the company that has Mickey Mouse as its symbol, is a Dow 30 company, had sales of more than $35.5 billion in the most recent fiscal year and a market capitalization of nearly $80 billion on March 5, the day before the Albuquerque meeting. Right in River City in the Kiva auditorium at the convention. (Dow 30 is jargon for being one of the 30 companies whose stock makes up the Down Jones Industrial Average.)

But if you didn't go, you didn't know about it, at least if you got news from somewhere other than KOAT. KOAT did have an interview with Disney CEO Robert Iger. One would figure that KOAT would have a report, given that KOAT is an ABC affiliate and Disney owns ABC.

About 500 attended the Disney show. There were even annual meeting groupies, people who attend every year, whatever the location. Disney changes the meeting location every year. People came from New York and LA, as one would expect. People also came from Salt Lake City, Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, Amarillo, Austin, Placitas and Clovis.

Iger, who got flack from questioners about his $29 million earnings, provided the essence of the Disney approach. "Quality content is at the heart of everything we do. Great stories never go out of style." Later, answering a question about technology, he said, "The world today is incredible for a company such as ours."

The question period was about an hour. Iger and Chairman John E. Pepper, Jr., took all topics and most of the time gave a straight answer. 

Iger danced a bit when asked if "Song of the South," the lovely 1946 film about the Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit stories, would be released on DVD. "It's kind of complicated," Iger said, adding that the move was "made in a different time," which is a way of saying that the movie portrays stereotypes that would be considered hugely stereotyped today if not rampantly racist. 

Asked why Disney wasn't selling a DVD of "Path to 9/11," a tv miniseries, Iger only said that it was "not in the business interest" of Disney. The show was considered especially unkind to the policies of the Clinton administration. Iger did elaborate was to why not making money selling the DVD was in the company's interest. The questioner got a tad testy.

An Amarillo teenager asked if there would be a movie of "Peter and the Star Catcher?" A Californian suggested selling a world-wide pass to Disney facilities. Such a move would be a logical next step to the nation-level passes now sold. "That's an interesting idea," Iger said, one which had never come up.

The business part of a corporate annual meeting is necessarily lame Seldom is there excitement in the election of board members or ratifying the choice of accountant. That part of the Disney meeting was indeed dull. However, the video that began the meeting was everything one would expect of Disney tooting its own horn. There was a bonus, unveiling of the trailer for the upcoming movie, "Wall-E," which looks like a fascinating combo of a Disney cartoon love story set in a Philip Dick science fiction apocalypse.