Pat Robertson and the Disney Corporation may appear to make for somewhat strange bedfellows, but like a parasitic twin, Robertson remains an awkward presence in Disney's corporate world. Yet, both sides to this relationship share the ability to exploit the ideals of "family" for cold, hard cash. Disney - with its bland, banal products is an expression of what Adorno and Horkheimer call the culture industry, and Robertson, with his evangelical empire, along with Disney, helps to contribute to - borrowing some of the language of Marxian sociology - a reactionary infrastructure built upon capital in the form of the infotainment/media distortion industry.
Note: some of the information derived for this diary comes from the website o-meon.com, which describes itself as a pro-Disney geek site. Like most well thought out specialized fan sites, it's interesting and somewhat quirky.
Specifically, though this diary derives from a column from August 2005, in the aftermath of the incident in which televangelist and right winger Pat Robertson used his national soapbox, The 700 Club, to call for the assassination of President Hugo Chavez. No punishment or sanctions were directed toward Robertson; by way of contrast, calling for the assassination of President Bush would surely get an American broadcaster fired, at the very least.
The 700 Club, Robertson's platform for proclaiming his Christofascistic views and conspiratorial interpretations, is a program produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), and is shown three times a day by the ABC Family Channel. The Family Channel is owned by Disney/ABC and is meant to offer family oriented and children's programming.
Some background: The Family Channel was started as a cable channel by Robertson in 1977, and the word "Family" was later added to the name of the channel in 1988, the same year the Robertson ran for the Republican nomination for the presidency (while he obviously didn't win the nomination, he was nevertheless rewarded with a prime speaking slot at the GOP Convention and thus with a higher media profile). Robertson then sold the Family Channel to Fox in the late 1990s for nearly 2 billion dollars, with some of the profits from the sale going into Robertson's investing in the Liberian diamond trade and the brutal regime of dictator Charles Taylor. Fox then sold it to Disney a few years later, earning a 3 billion dollar profit along the way. Both sales were contingent on an agreement by the purchaser to continue carrying the 700 Club and to refrain from interfering with its content. This is a rather unusual arrangement but this is what both Fox/Rupert Murdoch and Disney/Michael Eisner had agreed to.
Pat Robertson has long mixed religion, politics, and his own business interests. While in some ways he thus embodies the spirit of capitalism that the sociologist Max Weber so well described, and seeks to impose a puritanical value set on America, he also acts in such a shameless, self-serving manner as to destroy his own moral credibility, other than in the eyes of his gullible followers or his fellow cynics, particularly those in the pro-corporate wing of the GOP.
Back to Disney: Following the Chavez assassination call, Disney/ABC Family tried to disassociate itself from Robertson, issuing a press release in which it said that it "strongly rejects" Robertson's call for the assassination of Chavez.
That, though, was about as far as Disney - which claimed a "contractual obligation" to carry the 700 Club - was willing to go. In the face of calls to cancel the 700 Club, Disney referred to the contract (or as Newsweek's Jonathan Alter put it, they went "hiding behind a legalism") and referred all further calls to the CBN, where they were promptly ignored.
Discussing this on Air America with Al Franken, Alter and Franken noted that networks generally retain the right to cancel a program. That Disney would agree to Robertson's demands while being willing to invest 5 billion dollars on the Family Channel appears puzzling.
O-Meon provides some analysis here:
Prior to the sale of Fox Family, programmers often complained about The 700 Club. Robertson's stipulation that Fox Family, and any subsequent owner, run his show made establishing a coherent programming strategy a virtual impossibility.
"Fox Family was doomed from the start because it's very hard to be [programmed for] kids all day and have The 700 Club in the middle of your daytime lineup, and then in prime time at 11 p.m.," a former executive said. It was fair to say that the audience for The 700 Club differed dramatically from the one sought by Fox Family programmers.
Fox Family executives tried repeatedly but failed to buy out the commitment to air Robertson's show.
The Disney Company passed on a 1997 opportunity to acquire Fox Family when then CEO Michael Eisner objected to the channel's ongoing commitment to carry the religious/political talk show The 700 Club. At the time, Robertson was a supporter of a boycott of all things Disney, called for by evangelical and fundamentalist Christian leaders.
Among other things, conservative Christian leaders objected to the Disney Company's policy of granting domestic partner benefits to unmarried employees, and its refusal to bar Gay and Lesbian groups from holding Gay Day mix-in events at Disney theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando. Robertson was still a critic of Disney Company practices when Eisner and company completed the purchase of Fox Family. Through a spokesman, the CBN said it was optimistic about the acquisition of Fox Family by Disney. "Disney has a tremendous library of family programs, which will help the viewership of the new ABC Family channel and ultimately benefit The 700 Club."
The statement added that the change in ownership would not affect the airing of The 700 Club.
During a press conference following the announcement of the completion of its acquisition of Fox Family, Eisner said Disney would continue to honor the commitment to air The 700 Club and brushed off the notion that a relationship with Robertson was inconsistent with the company's values. He also said Robertson had not been a part of the religious right's largely "ineffective efforts" to protest Disney.
The Disney Company, like Fox Family before it, initially had problems programming the new ABC Family channel, not, however, for the same reasons.
Eisner and Peter Murphy, Disney's strategic planning division head, justified the acquisition of Fox Family based on a plan to use the channel's already-established distribution network to repeat or "repurpose" programming from the Disney-owned ABC television network. There was just one problem. Rebroadcast and syndication rights for most of ABC's evening lineup belonged to each program's production company. Neither Disney nor ABC had secured the right to repurpose the alphabet network's line up of shows prior to acquiring Fox Family.
The lessons here: Disney - big, powerful, inherently conservative and generally successful - may have, like most big corporations, occasionally made some questionable business decisions, as it appears that they are not making a return on their 5 billion dollar investment. Meanwhile, the mammon loving Pat Robertson - who, bizarrely, is seen as a business partner by Disney and thus not a troublemaker - i.e., (a part of the religious right's largely "ineffective efforts" to protest Disney - perhaps they were thinking of James Dobson) - is laughing all the way to the bank. Michael Eisner and Robert Iger - individually - may have made political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, but when it has come to their role in the culture industry, it is noteworthy that they have done some very reactionary things such as trying to stop the distribution of Fahrenheit 911 out of a self-interested concern with their Florida business holdings and thus with incurring the wrath of Jeb Bush. Both Disney and Pat Robertson pay lip service to family values, but what they really value is money and thus the families of oligarchy. Yet, because Disney is a corporate entity, it's pretty susceptible to public pressure. Progressives such as us can potentially use Disney's associations with a right wing ideologue like Pat Robertson against Disney, as Disney knows quite well that not all of its consumers are red state rightists or want to see us going around assassinating foreign heads of state.