Disney, Baby Bells Plan Interactive Video Deal : Technology: The entertainment giant and its partners plan to offer home shopping and movies on demand.

Walt Disney Co., the entertainment firm famous for its isolationist approach to the digital revolution, said Monday that it plans to team with three big regional phone companies to deliver new video services to the home.

Disney and its partners, Ameritech Corp., BellSouth Corp. and Southwestern Bell Corp., said they hope to offer such interactive services as movies on demand, home shopping and a “navigator” that consumers would use to sort through the plethora of programming.

Though Monday’s agreement is limited to the development of a business plan, the deal signals a major shift for Disney.

The company’s chairman, Michael D. Eisner, has been stubbornly skeptical of the frenzied alliance-making between entertainment and technology companies in recent years: “I am not in the technology business,” Eisner insisted during January’s Superhighway Summit at UCLA.

As the first Hollywood giant to join forces with the telephone industry, Disney is reflecting a perception that the Baby Bells are gaining the upper hand in the race to rewire the nation and allow consumers to shop, learn, play games and watch movies without leaving their living rooms.

“The new technologies will make new forms of entertainment available to consumers as well as provide better ways to deliver traditional entertainment,” Eisner said Monday. But he added that the “essence of entertainment will not change. What has always counted is the story and the skill with which it is told, and that is what Disney is all about.”

No financial details were disclosed. Disney shares crept up 25 cents to $42.625 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Disney’s long-deliberated decision to build a bridge to the information superhighway could give a boost to the futuristic network, which has hit regulatory and technical snags in recent months, analysts said.

“Eisner has been the one who has been the biggest curmudgeon about this stuff,” said Jonathan Seybold, a Malibu-based new-media analyst. “This is exactly the kind of thing he said Disney would never do. But clearly there is some thinking on their part now that this makes sense.”

The planned venture would link a cultural icon, whose credits range from Mickey Mouse to “The Lion King,” with three companies that boast 50 million-plus telephone lines crisscrossing 19 states.

“The idea is that you can create a critical mass,” said Thomas Staggs, Disney’s vice president for corporate development and acquisitions, who helped orchestrate the deal. Staggs said other phone companies might join the venture as it evolves. “Through a long series of discussions we’ve decided it makes sense. Phone companies are going to play a role in providing video in the future.”

Disney, the logic goes, would provide the creative input and expertise in buying programming. The phone companies would supply the technical know-how, experience with customer service and billing.

As competition between regional phone companies and cable operators sharpens, both sides are looking for ways to differentiate their futuristic services.

And while the phone companies currently appear able to build interactive networks more cheaply than their cable rivals, they lack the programming experience that has been part of the cable business for years.

“The regional telcos are all very hungry right now for any content alliances that they can make, because that is one area where they have little or no experience,” said John Aronsohn, an analyst with the Yankee Group in Boston. “Technology is great, but without unique programming, you have nothing.”

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While Disney does not plan to commit its programming exclusively to the venture, the deal could also help the three phone companies compete effectively with other regional Bell companies that own cable systems in their service areas.

For example, US West recently announced plans to purchase two cable franchises in the Atlanta area. “We would certainly not want to make this programming package available to them,” said Bill Reddersen, senior vice president at BellSouth.

Of course, the three phone partners may someday find themselves competing against each other as well. But they’ve thought of that. Said former Columbia executive W. Patrick Campbell, now executive vice president of business development at Ameritech:

“This is the new age of partnering. The magnitude of the task and the venture ahead of us sort of dictates the need for partnering, and we’re just going to have to work through the cross-competitive alliances.”