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January 19, 2006
What Big Ears You Have, Mr. Disney
According to the Wall Street Journal (sub required), "Walt Disney Co. is in serious discussions to buy Pixar Animation Studios after months in which the two animation giants have been exploring ways to continue their lucrative partnership, according to people familiar with the matter.
"In the deal under discussion, Disney would pay a nominal premium to Pixar's current market value of $6.7 billion in a stock transaction that would make Pixar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder in Disney."
So here's my question: If Jobs becomes, in essence, Mr. Disney, will the Mickey Mouse TV be tweaked to transmit program selection info back to the mother ship? I ask only because Apple was happy to do the same with the latest version of iTunes, at least until privacy fans got their knickers in a knot and the company backtracked. Which was only appropriate.
In any case, I prefer Target's 13-inch Hello Kitty TV/DVD player combo to the Mickey Mouse TV or the Disney Princess model. Even though all three of them are deeply twisted products. They're designed for 6 to 10 year olds. Because little kids need, deserve, and want to own personal TVs in the sick world we live in today, and their parents let them.
And that, dear reader, is even more depressing than Apple's slimy, utimately successful strategy for marketing stuff to us by monitoring the songs we click in iTunes.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at January 19, 2006 03:08 PM