Channel 9: Seed for a Network? : Disney hints it will buy a number of stations--if the price is right

While acknowledging that obtaining a TV station in the home market of their Burbank-based corporation was an important incentive for shelling out $320 million for KCAL Channel 9, top Disney executives also hint that the company is not about to stop there.

“We are not looking to develop another network, but television stations purchased at the right price are good investments,” said Richard Frank, president of the Walt Disney Studios and former general manager of KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles. “The price of stations has stabilized. Now we need them to do a click or two down. We look at every (station) group that comes up for sale, and I believe that the time will come when we will buy a group.”

Frank said that Disney is interested primarily in station groups that include outlets in the top 20 or 30 markets in the country, preferably independents rather than network affiliates.

Aside from simply being big money makers, television stations, especially those in heavily populated areas, would give a multi-tentacled company like Disney what studio executives like to call “synergistic” benefits.

Disney has already cross-promoted Disneyland on KCAL by hosting the station’s afternoon children’s block of programming from the amusement park. Programs that the studio syndicates, such as “Siskel & Ebert” and reruns of “The Golden Girls,” could be distributed to stations it owns. And a station group can also be used to develop programs that can then be syndicated across the country. Fox, for example, first tested “A Current Affair” and “America’s Most Wanted” on its own stations before distributing them nationwide.

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner calls KCAL a “slight insurance policy” for the distribution of Disney programming.

“We don’t believe in buying motion picture theaters because anyone can build a movie theater on any corner in the country, so there is no prohibition in getting your product played,” he said. “That’s not quite true in government-regulated broadcasting. We felt that it was a good idea to at least have a presence to help us understand what was going on.”

Eisner would not comment on ongoing rumors that Disney is about to get its own network in one fell swoop by buying CBS. But Randy Reiss, executive vice president of Walt Disney Studios, said, “Since that’s our business, I’m sure there’s interest.” Disney would have to sell KCAL if it bought CBS, because CBS owns KCBS Channel 2, and federal regulations prohibit the ownership of more than one television station in the same city.

No matter how many stations it eventually buys, Disney is unlikely to put the company name on any of them. When Disney was renaming KHJ, Reiss said that station executives wanted to call it KDIS or K-WALT because they thought the Disney name and reputation would attract viewers. But just as Disney calls its adult-oriented movie unit Touchstone, it chose to call its TV station KCAL.

“We would’ve loved to call it Disney, but there are too many restrictions,” Reiss said. “Many people look at Disney as a baby sitter. There’s a certain comfort level and you can’t abuse that. Could your news be as appropriate as it should? Could you run ‘A-Team’? Who knows the programs that we couldn’t do. It was too much of a burden. Our feeling was we’d like it now, but we’d regret it later.”