Company Town : Disney’s Frank Denies He’s Leaving

Is Team Disney, which has seen a major reshuffling of its lineup over the past year, about to produce another free agent?

The latest talk circulating at the Burbank entertainment giant is that Disney Television & Telecommunications Chairman Richard H. Frank is considering leaving after his contract expires shortly.

Frank, saying he is annoyed by the rumors, went out of his way to quash them, declaring in a brief interview that they have no foundation.

“I have no plans of leaving Disney,” he said. “I don’t know how to kill this story. It keeps feeding on itself.”

Frank wouldn’t say much more, or comment on the status of his contract.

Still, sources inside Disney and industry executives close to the company say the tension has been growing between Frank and Chairman Michael D. Eisner, with Frank under increasing pressure to boost results. As a result, they say, Frank has been toying with going elsewhere, possibly into independent TV and movie production.

Eisner could not be reached for comment, but his spokesman said rumors of stormy relations between Frank and Eisner are untrue.

“These two guys talk on the phone any time of day or night to each other about creative issues. There is no tension and there is no problem,” he said.

Some friends of Frank say the 52-year-old executive has been going through a “lifestyle” assessment.

One factor may be the soaring price of Disney stock, which closed at $54 a share Thursday. It’s made a lot of Disney executives--at least on paper--much richer than they were when the stock was trading in the 30s not long ago.

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The likable Frank is respected within the TV industry, serving as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ president. He also organized the high-profile “superhighway” summit in Los Angeles last year attended by Vice President Al Gore.

Disney has been undergoing a wide-ranging reshuffling of its executives over the past year, which began after the April helicopter crash that killed President Frank G. Wells. In September, Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg left in a bitter dispute with Eisner.

Katzenberg’s departure triggered a reorganization that left Frank with a huge chunk of the studio responsibilities, including television, new technology and the company’s highly lucrative home video operation.

The Frank rumors this week overshadowed a Disney coup. The company confirmed that it has reached a film and television agreement with Wind Dancer Production Group, the company responsible for the hugely successful “Home Improvement” TV series starring Tim Allen.

Wind Dancer is led by Matt Williams, David McFadzean and Carmen Finestra. Williams was courted earlier by Katzenberg to help jump-start the TV operations of DreamWorks SKG, his new venture with filmmaker Steven Spielberg and music mogul David Geffen.

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Where, at the Wherehouse? Maverick retailer Scott Young’s departure this week as head of Wherehouse Entertainment due to what the company said was a “difference of opinion” comes after some wrenching times. The debt-laden firm has been slashing costs amid growing competition from video rental outlets such as Blockbuster and discount stores that sell compact discs, such as Target and Kmart.

Young is probably best known for successfully resisting intense pressure in 1993 from record companies upset that he was selling used CDs. More recently, he had been slashing costs at the Torrance-based company, including laying off a number of longtime executives at the company, which is controlled by Merrill Lynch Capital Markets.

According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, lower costs and improved CD sales resulted in the company narrowing its losses from operations to $163,000 in the third quarter, from $4.8 million a year earlier, and posting $1.8 million in income from operations in the first nine months, contrasted with a $7.5-million loss a year earlier.

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Times movie editor Claudia Eller contributed to this column.