Interview With Geraldine Laybourne

L.G.: Is that the Disney that Robert Iger is now presiding over?

G.L.: I have no idea. My guess is it's changed, because Bob was bristling with it just the way I was.

L.G.: Because your frustration was, you had these great ideas and they'd never be implemented.

G.L.: The first thing that Bob did was disband strategic planning. I think he put it in the divisions. So I would say that's pretty good proof that he's doing things a different way. And by the way, Michael Eisner's gut was very good about things. I wish he had been more comfortable with that route, instead of feeling the need for all this analysis. But my point about Disney was, I was hired to go and start some new things there—to start ABC News, to start an educational channel for kids, and to help Lifetime and get Lifetime on an original programming track.

L.G.: Was that always a joint venture with Hearst?

G.L.: Yes, and to get the Disney Channel into being a television channel, because it was really a repository for odd things. You walked into that scheduling room the first day and just scratched your head. It was like, "Whoa!" In all fairness, it was a pay channel. The philosophy of a pay channel is, Make sure that you're satisfying some of your customers some of the time so that they don't churn you. And so it's different from a basic cable channel, where you're trying to actually get ratings and viewers on a consistent basis. So scheduling things was loopy. But look at the Disney Channel now. They did a terrific job of rebuilding that into a very, very, very impressive performer. So, anyway, inside this company, I must have come up with eight to 10 different business plans. And it was literally impossible to get a brand-new franchise built within one of these big companies, because they had lost quarterly earnings. The investment was anywhere from $600 million to a billion for ABC News—I can't remember what it was, but it was on the top end—and you just couldn't make that kind of investment inside a big entertainment company. So I always found it ironic that it was easier to raise money on the outside of a big entertainment company, even though I'd had a perfect track record and my team had a perfect track record. It was easier to do it outside with investors, because you could do different things. You could offer warrants to cable operators. We had things to play with.

L.G.: Why was the culture at Viacom different? Was it Sumner Redstone?

G.L.: The culture at Viacom was different. Remember that the Disney company really began as a brand—as a one-brand company—and that it had a spectacular brand and a spectacular track record. Viacom was a portfolio company that really was just a series of acquisitions. It was a beautiful series of acquisitions, but it wasn't one person's vision. There was no Walt Disney at Viacom.

L.G.: So each unit had its own culture?

G.L.: Each unit had its own culture. [Chairwoman of ClubMom ] Sara Levinson—who was at the time the president of MTV—joked that she had gotten sick one day and she actually threw up on the elevator. And when it stopped on the MTV floor, everybody ran and went, "Ewwww!" When it stopped on the Nickelodeon floor, everybody ran to help her. You know, it's just that different kind of culture.

L.G.: At MTV, they ran away. And at Nickelodeon, they ran to help her.

G.L.: Yeah, there were distinct cultures within VH1, MTV-

L.G.:So basically, you established the culture there, where people cleaned up elevator vomit.

G.L.: That's right, and we slimed people too.

L.G.: You had this substance called Gak?

G.L.: Gak was a beautiful invention. Gak was a radical invention, because we had a joint venture with Mattel toys. And the toy industry has always treated girl toys and boy toys completely differently. In the toy industry, if you think about what toys there are, it's a pretty sexist world. So Gak was the first time there was a toy marketed to boys and girls. And it was the centerpiece of an activity, our "activity set" of toys.

L.G.: Well, there used to be something called Silly Putty. Was that marketed to boys?

G.L.: Silly Putty, honestly, is a novelty item. It still exists. I'm sure you can find 20 other examples too, with my claim about "first." But, honestly, it was hard to even have a conversation with a toy company. Because they just said, "Oh, we have to put you in the girls' toys," or "We have to put you in the boys' toys." But we really developed something that was a very successful business.

L.G.: Gak.

G.L.: Gak.

L.G.: And what was the theory behind getting people to sort of handle this stuff in meetings? People fiddling with Gak while they're having business meetings. Was that a novelty or was that serious?