Related Stories“I'm not sure this is legal."
Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at
"I'm not sure you can write this up," he says. "I'm not kidding." With a mischievous grin, Cheng, 36, resumes the wiki tour on the computer in his corner office in Burbank, California, the heart of TV land.
His team didn't ask permission to create the internal Web site, with staff profiles and a section called "Cool Stuff We've Done This Year." They just did it. And truth be told, Cheng is rather proud of that. The project captures what his 20-month-old incarnation of the digital-media department is all about. Speed. Collaboration. Gumption. "I see us as a Silicon Valley startup within a big company," he says.
A very big, very established company. The Walt Disney Co. has more than 133,000 employees around the world and 84 years of tradition. It has rules. But with digital technology changing the way the once-untouchable media giants create, distribute, and profit from their content, Disney needs people to break some rules and blaze new paths into the future.
Cheng scrolls through the profiles: Bernie from ABC News, who's wearing a purple wig (long story); Darcy, a senior designer at abc.com, who has posted a cartoon of herself as a South Park character; David, one of the resident tech gurus, who holds a monocle fashioned out of blue computer cable and whose profile consists of a single line: "Dave doesn't like to talk about himself." Cheng admits his own page is "pretty corporate." There's a straitlaced portrait, a shot of his wife and his pug, some personal tidbits ("Born and raised in Hawaii.... Favorite team: 49ers.... What I do in my spare time:
The wiki isn't an act of defiance directed at the Big Mouse, and it isn't a goof. Rather, it's a nifty tool for a fast-growing 150- person virtual department. The digital-media crew is spread across the company's television units--ABC, ABC News, Disney Channel, ABC Family, and a handful of its other cable channels. The members work in three cities, five buildings in L.A. alone, and four locations in this particular high-rise on West Alameda, about a mile from ABC headquarters. The Web site allows team members to review new social- networking applications, compare vendors, and share their latest projects.
"If HR tells us we can't do this," Cheng says, "we'll apologize later."
Since Bob Iger replaced the brainy but embattled Michael Eisner as CEO in October 2005, Disney has managed to keep the theatrics on TV and movie screens and out of the boardroom and the headlines. The crushing financials, the no-confidence board vote that booted Eisner off the throne, the threat of a shareholder suit--they seem like ancient history now that the company is "firing on all cylinders," as David Miller, an analyst with Sanders Morris Harris, puts it.
The stock price has climbed more than 50% since Iger took over. Analysts are quick to split the credit: Eisner invested wisely; Iger has a more effective management style. Last year, Disney generated a record $34 billion in revenue (up 7% from the previous year) from an impressive string of hits including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (the year's top-grossing film and DVD); Cars (the year's top-grossing animated film); three of the top-10 prime-time shows; and Disney Channel's High School Musical, which produced the best-selling album and a lucrative franchise.
One key to the turnaround is Pixar Animation Studios, acquired a year ago in a $7.4 billion stock swap. The deal made Pixar founder and
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