Word: katzenberg
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...that Disney executives may finally be coming to grips with the succession problem: a Disney board member said it was "under active consideration," and according to one source, the company may solicit a list of outside candidates as early as this week. At the same time, friends of Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of the highly successful Walt Disney Studios and in many ways the logical choice for the job, were busy making Katzenberg's case to anyone who would listen...
Those who argue that Katzenberg, 43, should ascend to help Eisner make these decisions point to his track record. As chairman of the company's flourishing studio enterprises, which account for 43% of its gross revenue, he finds himself atop the hottest movie of the year and perhaps the most profitable in history (The Lion King), the No. 1 television show (Home Improvement) and the No. 1 Broadway production (Beauty and the Beast). "Pick up the recent edition of the annual report," says a Katzenberg friend. "You'll see Michael Eisner's picture on page 2. Where's Jeffrey...
...joined abc in 1966. This was a young man in a hurry. Diller was soon developing two important formats: the mini-series (QB VII) and the made-for-TV movie (such as Duel, Steven Spielberg's debut feature). In 1974 he moved to Paramount, where he, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Frank Mancuso and some other sharp people spurred a renaissance of the studio, with such hits as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flashdance and Terms of Endearment...
...Diller tangled with Martin Davis, chairman of Gulf & Western, which owned Paramount, and left the studio to become chairman of Fox. (The same year, Eisner and Katzenberg went to Disney; Mancuso stayed to run Paramount.) Murdoch, who bought the studio a year later, gave Diller the mandate to create a fourth prime-time network. That he did, with his patented management style: creative listening. "What Barry does," says Garth Ancier, Fox's TV programming chief under Diller, "is assemble teams of people and then bring them into the room to debate different ideas. He obviously ran the whole thing...
Eisner might have cited Katzenberg as the one man -- the modern Walt, who does not create the story or draw the pictures but whose imprint is indelible in a million questions and suggestions, in his noodging and kibitzing, in refusing to be quickly pleased. Yet Katzenberg denies authorial status. "This is not me having a humility attack," he says. "It's just that the characterization isn't true. If you want, you can call me the coach. When Pat Riley coaches a basketball team, they do pretty good. Yet the absolute reality is that Riley did not put one ball...