‘Full Power’ of Disney on Net Project, Eisner Says

Michael Eisner featured a mouse--as opposed to The Mouse--at Walt Disney Co.’s annual meeting Tuesday, giving shareholders a simulated online demonstration of its new Go Network and telling them that Disney “is putting the full power of our company” behind the Internet venture.

The Disney chief executive wielded the mouse to show how people can make custom home pages, retrieve news, call up information about Disney movies and other entertainment offerings as well as show how parents can block smut from the site.

Still, the computer Eisner was using wasn’t even hooked to the Internet site in real time. And Eisner seemed temporarily stumped when an 8-year-old took the microphone and asked “What are your plans to make the Internet fun?”

After a pause, Eisner said: “Go to Disney.com. You can see hours of things to do.”

Disney started Go in January after buying 43% of Internet portal Infoseek Corp. In addition to further boosting the Disney brand, the company hopes Go, which is being heavily promoted by the company, will link millions of Internet users to content produced through Disney’s film studio, the ABC network, ESPN and its theme parks.

Eisner said that the significance of the Internet can’t be understated.

“For us, the primary thing isn’t the technology but how to use it,” he said.

Disney’s meeting was in downtown Seattle, at the ornate 5th Avenue Theater, a restored 1926 vaudeville house now used for musical productions. Starting with a preview of its upcoming animated film, “Tarzan,” Disney showed segments from other upcoming projects such as “Fantasia 2000,” “Toy Story 2” and “Dinosaur.”

The meeting was one of the least controversial in years, as opposed to past meetings in which shareholders spent hours criticizing everything from the composition of Disney’s board to the huge severance package awarded former Disney President Michael Ovitz.

A shareholder did ask about two recent deaths at Disney theme parks, one in which a worker was killed in Florida earlier this month and another when a Seattle tourist was killed at Disneyland in December after being struck by a metal piece that was ripped loose by a mooring line from a sailing ship.

“We had the first death in 15 years. It was a freak accident,” Eisner said. “We can’t do anything without getting a lot of publicity.”

Shareholders also expressed concern about the company’s sluggish earnings growth last year. Disney is counting on new ventures, such as the opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a new cruise line and some ESPN ventures, to be major profit contributors in the future.

Three shareholder proposals went down to defeat. One called for reports on the Y2K computer problem, one called for more scrutiny of overseas labor used to make Disney products, and another involved a shareholder rights plan.

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Helm reported from Seattle. Bates reported from Los Angeles.