Disney Opens Portal to Internet

Walt Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner remembers how movie companies in the 1950s used theater marquees to urge the public, “Don’t watch TV.” He remembers also how, 20 years later--as a young television executive--he advised his father not to invest in cable. “I said, ‘Dad, I know--cable is not gonna work.’ ”

Eisner recalled those episodes here Tuesday as he officially launched the Go Network, a new cyberspace portal. “We are hellbent on not being a railroad car as jets fly over us,” Eisner said.

Like other portals, the Go Network (https://www.go.com) is a home base from which computer users can navigate the World Wide Web by topic, while being offered online shopping, financial services and localized information ranging from weather reports--keyed to the user’s ZIP Code--to show times at neighborhood movie theaters.

But Disney is a latecomer to an already crowded pack of portal sites headed by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Yahoo, a 4-year-old company that claims more than 40 million users a month. Other challengers include Netscape, Lycos, Excite, Microsoft’s MSN and the NBC-backed Snap.

Disney’s approach illustrates the complex decisions facing the major entertainment companies, which are known for their daunting marketing power and well-known brand names even as more-nimble companies have pioneered Internet applications.

Another entertainment mogul, Rupert Murdoch, acknowledged as much in an appearance Tuesday in Singapore during which he said News Corp. will move cautiously into cyberspace enterprises.

“I don’t think other media companies are doing anything much more than we are,” Murdoch said. “We don’t see any need to hurry this. The big stars of the Internet like AOL or Amazon.com or Yahoo were not the creation of old media companies at all.”

Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp., said the potential of the Internet is huge and poses great challenges to traditional media businesses.

“The Internet will destroy more businesses than it will create in the sense that it will wipe out the middlemen. . . . We will all have to adapt and learn to live with it and use it too.”

But Murdoch said he is confident that the traditional media of newspapers, television and cinema--all of which News Corp. has substantial interests in--will withstand the competition.

Disney’s portal venture is being run by Infoseek, an Internet search firm in which the Burbank-based media giant acquired a 43% stake last June. The Go Network actually has been in operation a month, in a test mode, to prepare for Tuesday’s official launch, which was carried out with pure Disney pomp, from the voice-of-God announcer to Paul Bunyan-sized keyboard that exploded in fireworks.

Disney also announced a massive promotion effort for the Go Network--and the green-light GO logo--through its TV properties, including ABC and ESPN, along with its theme parks, magazines and cruise lines. GO will even get star treatment on the scoreboard at the games of Disney’s hockey team, the Mighty Ducks.

“I think this will be the test for our company,” Eisner said, “. . . whether we deserve the praise we often get for being synergistic.”

The home page for the network prominently offers easy links to existing Web sites in the Disney empire, such as ABC.Com, Disney.Com, ABCNews.com, ESPN.com and Blast Online. But Eisner said the service, like other portals, will also offer easy access to competing sites and “anything you want” on the Internet, except for sexually oriented links--which Infoseek had to drop as part of its deal with Disney.

Sexually oriented materials, of course, have fueled the growth of the Internet, just as they dominated the early video market. Eisner said Disney is banking on a growing mainstream (“the next 50 million”) who will be comforted by the familiar Disney brand names.

Jake Winebaum, chairman of Disney’s Buena Vista Internet Group, which oversees the network, said the venture’s revenue will come primarily from having at least one shopping tab at “every single page,” so someone getting an update on the San Francisco 49ers football team, for example, would be able to quickly buy a team T-shirt.

The Go Network home page offers links to buy a car, book, video or home. And a move to the Family page produces an invitation to “click here” for Disney Travel.

Yet even if the site achieves optimistic projections of 20 million users a month, Eisner and others leading the venture admitted they do not know how or when it will be profitable.

“I don’t know if there will be two revenue streams or one,” Eisner said. “I don’t know if it will be an advertiser-only-supported revenue stream or if there will be a subscription stream.”

Despite such uncertainties, the venture got one quick endorsement, from Wall Street. Disney shares jumped $2.75 to close at $38 on the New York Stock Exchange, where it was the most actively traded stock.

Eisner, in an interview after the formal announcement, described himself as an avid Internet user.

For all Disney’s promotional might, Eisner is concerned about having to compete with portals that--unlike the Disney service--are the direct phone-in point for computer users entering the Internet.

“That’s the big question,” Eisner said. “Can I convince you to make GO your home page on whatever [call-in] service you have? . . . Or do we have to have that first initial contact with you, that you use our telephone number?”

Eisner said he accepts the uncertainty and doesn’t even try to answer the big question: Where is this all headed?

“I really don’t know,” he said. “And I think that’s an asset. Because if I knew and I demanded we go in a certain direction and was wrong, it would be pretty arrogant and stupid. I think we have to be open to the change. Right now, we think it’s the portal.”

Still, the Internet “is not the end of the world,” Eisner said. “Everybody is not going to be tied to the chair with a computer. They’re still going to go to the movies. They’re still going to go to theme parks. They’re still going to watch ‘The Practice’ or ‘ER.’ But this is an amazing piece of the new world.”

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Times staff writer Greg Miller in Los Angeles and Times wire services contributed to this report.