After Disney, Eisner Profits on Web Shows

International Herald Tribune

When Michael Eisner left Walt Disney Co. in 2005 and set about remaking himself in new media, investing in a video-sharing Web site and starting a digital studio, a lot of people in Hollywood snickered. Here we go, the whispers went, another fading star who doesn't know when to leave the stage.

Could Eisner get the last laugh?

Among the swarm of Hollywood developers scrambling to come up with original Web programs, Eisner, 65, is one of the very few who can legitimately claim to have succeeded. "Prom Queen," an Internet- only murder-mystery series, has been viewed by almost 20 million people since its debut last spring. He sold a dubbed version in France, hawked remake rights in Japan and made a sequel, "Prom Queen: Summer Heat." He even turned a profit along the way.

Now, Eisner is back at bat. His second series, "The All-For- Nots," a comedy that documents the travails of a fictional indie rock band, will debut next week on the Internet, mobile devices and the cable television network HDNet. The project reflects lessons he has learned. This time, for instance, he is protecting broad foreign syndication sales by restricting Web access to the series outside the United States.

With "The All-For-Nots," which is sponsored by Chrysler and Expedia, Eisner is out to prove there is real money to be made in the space between user-generated content and traditional television production.

"I would like to say I have a McKinsey study of a strategy to follow," he said during an interview. "It doesn't work that way. You just take your history and your education and your instincts and you put them all into a melting pot and out comes something." Still, Eisner has not won over everyone.

"Just because Eisner is behind this, it doesn't mean it is going to be a success," said Darren Aftahi, a digital media analyst at ThinkEquity Partners in Minneapolis.

But the manner in which Eisner signed up Chrysler goes a long way toward explaining how he has become a leader of the digital media pack.

Most of his rivals - and that includes his former employer, which announced the creation of a digital production studio last week called Stage 9 - have to labor to woo big-name advertisers to their untested Web content. Stage 9, part of the Disney-ABC Television Group, spent months working to line up advertisers before Toyota signed on as the inaugural sponsor.

Eisner just flips through his Rolodex. When you spend 21 years running Disney, your pals are people like Robert Nardelli, the chairman of Chrysler. "I needed a car for the show so I called Bob," Eisner said nonchalantly.

Vuguru, Eisner's Web studio, is just one of dozens of players trying to make a business out of scripted Web shows. Some popped up in the last few months, as producers idled by the 100-day writers' strike dipped their toes into the medium. Others, like the people behind Lonelygirl15, have been tinkering in the area for a few years.

The big studios, meanwhile, have been trying to muscle into the medium. Warner Brothers, CBS, NBC Universal and Sony, among others, have committed resources to developing scripted Web series. While there have been pockets of modest success, no studio has proven that it has a workable business model, said Michael Pond, a media analyst at Nielsen Online.

"The big studios have a lot of resources, but fast for them is pretty slow for the Web," he said. "They are focusing harder on creating Web programs, but others are already there."

Like Eisner, Vuguru is part of a constellation of new media plays he is making from his modest offices here. Through Tornante, the venture-capital firm he founded after leaving Disney, Eisner owns Vuguru; a large stake in Veoh, a site that allows users to download video with the quality of high-definition television; Team Baby Entertainment, and a production company that makes college sports- themed DVDs for infants and toddlers.

Most recently, Tornante, which is Italian for hairpin turn, paid $385 million for Topps, the maker of baseball trading cards, stickers and Bazooka bubble gum. Eisner has been keeping the ultimate contents of his playbook to himself, but drops a few hints.

"With Topps, I was interested in a company that could be a far bigger sports and entertainment media company," he said. Among his ideas: the digital delivery of trading cards and the creation of Topps-branded sports movies or sports-cable channels. As for Bazooka Joe, the bubble-gum mascot, he recently told a trade magazine that "it would be foolish of me not to try and build that character into something as much as or more than he ever was."

In some ways, "The All-For-Nots" is very comfortable territory for Eisner. While working at ABC in 1970, he helped develop "The Partridge Family," the series about a musical family that unexpectedly hit it big. "The new show is not that different from that experience of marrying music to story," he said.

"The All-For-Nots" got started last spring when Eisner saw "The Burg," a Web comedy that mocks the hipper-than-thou vibe of the Williamsburg neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. "It had real flair," he said. "It was funny." He sought out the creator, a company called Dinosaur Diorama. "I just asked what else they were thinking about," Eisner said.

He passed on "The Burg 2," but an idea about a send-up of the hubristic futility of trying to conquer the nation with indie rock sounded fun.

Bebo, the large social networking site based in Britain, signed on as a distribution partner, along with a half-dozen other sites. "The All-For-Nots" cast members will have Bebo profiles that link to a channel where users can watch the series. David Aufhauser, Bebo's business development director, said that the site's features would allow users to distribute "All-For-Nots" content among themselves.

Verizon Wireless became the mobile video partner and Eisner got HDNet on board. Mark Cuban, the HDNet founder, had been a guest on Eisner's talk show on the CNBC cable network. "Michael and I talk ideas all the time," Cuban wrote in an e-mail message. "The approach we have taken with 'All-For-Nots' gives us three shots at consumers, any of which could take off singularly or in combination. Web exclusivity is too limited."

Along with Chrysler, Expedia paid to be woven into the story. As it travels to 24 cities in search of fame, the fictional band books hotel rooms in every city using the online travel agency. Sarah Pynchon, Expedia's vice president of brand marketing, said the company has been looking for product-placement opportunities, but has been reluctant because the Internet audience "is going to be much more skeptical" of advertiser integration than television viewers.

"We liked this because we are integral to the story line," she said.

Pond of Nielsen said Eisner was smart to focus on music-driven stories, pointing to the smash success of television shows like "Hannah Montana." The concept also provides additional marketing angles. For instance, cast members of "The All-For-Nots" will perform a concert on March 11 at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.

Eisner is the first one to caution that, despite his early success, he has not found the Web video Rosetta Stone. Indeed, the slogan for "The All-For-Nots" could double as his own. "The band that will conquer the World Wide Web," the show's Web site reads, "unless they run out of gas."

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