Michael Eisner became a major player in the entertainment business in the 1970s when, as program director at ABC, he was instrumental in launching such hit shows as Barney Miller and Happy Days, and the epic miniseries, Roots, whose final program is still on the record books with more than 69 million viewers. During his tenure as president of Paramount from 1976 to 1984, the studio produced such blockbusters as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the first three Star Trek movies.

Eisner left Paramount in September 1984 to assume the post of CEO of The Walt Disney Co., a giant that many felt had lost direction in the years since Walt Disney's death in 1966. Eisner would be credited with turning the corporation around. He presided over Disney's return to animation supremacy with profit machines like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. The company also acquired ABC, Miramax and diversified to create Walt Disney Theatrical, which mounted lucrative Broadway-stage productions such as The Lion King.

But Eisner's decisions also included the launch of Go.com, a search engine/portal that aggregated all of Disney's enterprises, which lost more than $1 billion in fiscal 1999, according to The New York Times. A scaled-down version still exists.

Sinking ratings at ABC and limited box-office success for several Disney movies also darkened the horizon for Eisner. He had public feuds with former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney, Walt Disney's nephew. The latter quit his vp post in 2003 to take up the cause of personally ousting Eisner. In 2004 Disney's board of directors removed Eisner as chairman; in 2005 he stepped down as CEO.

If Eisner's ego was bruised, his landing was relatively soft by all accounts. A 2004 story in the Orlando Sentinel ballparked his severance package at no less than $90 million. Eisner could easily have retired. He didn't—and hasn't.

In 2005 Eisner founded Tornante, Los Angeles, a privately held company that invests and develops companies in the media and entertainment categories, including Topps, Team Baby and Veoh Networks. In 2006 Tornante launched Vuguru, a Web studio that produced the murder-mystery series Prom Queen, whose Webisodes drew 20 million viewers, and The All-for-Nots, an e-comedy that documented the road life of a fictional indie-rock band.

On Oct. 1, Vuguru will debut Back on Topps, a series of 24, five-minute Webisodes described as "the first epic sports comedy series on the Web." It will follow the adventures of real-life brothers Randy and Jason Sklar (former hosts of ESPN's Cheap Seats who also have appeared on such shows as Grey's Anatomy and who here play the fictional nephews of the former owner of Topps seeking to reclaim their executive status). It's being teased at www.MSNfoxsports.com until the Webisodes launch at www.Backontopps.com

With Eisner as its new owner, iconic trading-card company Topps has launched ToppsTown—an online community where visitors can collect and trade cards while also interacting with other collectors—and this month signed a deal with Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed-marshal-arts association that not only has captured the attention (and significant dollars) of the 18-34 male demography, but, to many analysts, has sent boxing down for the count.

Meanwhile, back in that old-fashioned medium known as TV, Eisner's Tornante Animation has come up with its first series, Glenn Martin, DDS, which will chronicle the adventures of a masochistic dentist who looks suspiciously like Eisner. The first of 20 episodes will begin airing next summer on Nick at Night. While the series is being compared to The Simpsons and Family Guy, it promises to be far nastier. Its creator is Eric Fogel, best known for MTV's guts-spewing Celebrity Deathmatch.

Given his take-no-prisoners reputation as a media exec, "death match" might also describe Eisner's competitive posture. Taking time out from his many projects, the 66-year-old exec spoke with Brandweek executive editor Barry Janoff. Eisner was driving his car in Los Angeles at the time.


Brandweek: Tornante has a number of irons in the fire. What is the company's focus at the moment?
Michael Eisner: Our main focuses now are Topps; Team Baby Entertainment, which produces officially licensed sports themed children's DVDs; Vuguru, an independent studio that produces and distributes content for the Internet, which already has done Prom Queen, The All-For-Nots and Foreign Body and has [upcoming] Sam Has 7 Friends, The Cream and Back on Topps; and Tornante Animation, which is creating 20 episodes of Glenn Martin DDS, an animated series in the Family Guy/Simpsons tradition that will run on Nick at Night [next summer].

BW: In developing Topps and your various other media ventures through Tornante, how instrumental was your entertainment-industry background?
ME: I have a long relationship with most of the sports franchises through ESPN [a division of Disney] so I certainly know the David Sterns [NBA commissioner] of the world. That's helpful. I've been in business a while. . .  So my experience at least is not a detriment. We have attracted good [marketing partners] for our Vuguru projects to sponsor or integrate their products in the storylines: Verizon, Dodge, POM, Expedia, Victoria's Secret . . . [But] I'm more [in] my strong suit when I'm reading scripts, which is something I started doing when I was with ABC in the 1960s. So I know animation, I know story, I know comedy at least peripherally. I use that background whenever I can.

BW: Tornante bought Topps last year when the company was having financial problems. What motivated that investment?
ME: Topps [which was founded in 1938] has an illustrious history and a strong brand portfolio in sports, of course, but also entertainment. There's a big male demo that has grown up [collecting Topps cards] and also a growing female consumer [via some of the entertainment products]. So we felt we could take what Topps has always been and build it into a media company that could create entertainment projects. What happened was we made a deal with the management of Topps to take it private. [Rival card company] Upper Deck came in and made an offer that was a dollar more than our offer. Then, for whatever reasons, they couldn't close the deal and walked away. So they weren't really involved. They were just competing to buy the company. But Tornante and Madison Dearborn Partners [Chicago] closed the deal [for $385 million] and now own the company.



BW: What makes you believe consumers will spend money on Topps and your other products at a time when the economy's in pretty bad shape?
ME: A down market, a recession, if you will, is not good for anybody. But the entertainment business generally has been at least recession-resistant—unless you just are only in the advertising support part of it. One of the reasons that I still like content, ventures like Glenn Martin DDS, Back on Topps, is that there is [always] going to be an appetite [from consumers] for entertainment and for escapist entertainment. Of course it's better during a bold economy. But it doesn't follow the economy all the way into the doldrums, either. So we're optimistic about Topps and our investments. When people have less disposable income it doesn't help anybody. But we think [we] will do well. Frankly, I think Back on Topps is going to be a cultural phenomenon.

BW: In June ,Topps launched ToppsTown, an online community where users can trade cards, interact and play games. But the basic premise of card-collecting is holding the product in your hand. Why have you chosen to develop the online aspect and grow Topps this way?
ME: Certainly we are trying to turn Topps into a digital company, and we've had a lot of success with ToppsTown. It's working. In [the first] three months we had about 350,000-400,000 visitors, with a lot of people coming back. Something like 40% of the people have gone back at least nine times, and we haven't done any advertising yet. So it's pretty impressive. We wanted to introduce it in a slow way, no advertising, mainly through the cards to get it working well before we go out and make a big deal of it. Virtually, we're very happy with what it's doing.

BW: Tell me about the deal you signed with Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is a major player in the MMA community and also, to many people, as big as boxing ever was.
ME: The most important relationships Topps has are with Major League Baseball, the NFL and the NBA. UFC is an up-and-coming, event-oriented [organization] with great visuals and great artifacts. We have a deal with WWE [World Wrestling Entertainment], which is gigantic for Topps, especially internationally. When I met with Dana White [president at UFC], I thought he was very charismatic and had great vision. Topps had been considering doing something with UFC, so between that and meeting him and learning more about UFC and its audience and potential, we thought that was a good venture for Topps. Initially there will be cards and stickers. Then they will go online like everything else. So this can be a [big] venture for Topps.

BW: Topps had a deal with the International Fight League, another MMA enterprise that just folded. Topps is seeing the power of the demography that supports the category, but will those fans also collect cards and stickers?
ME: The UFC is the biggest of the MMA leagues. They tower over the rest. They have the big stars and certainly have the excitement, intensity and drawing power of the WWE . . . The sport has become bigger than prize fighting, so it's a male-oriented demo. They do really well on Spike-TV. [UFC stars] Randy Couture, Chuck Liddel, Matt Hughes and others are pretty big stars in their own right. So cards associated with them could work. It won't be football or baseball for a while. It's just a new initiative for Topps. [Editor's note: Mark Sapir, director of marketing at Topps, New York, said marketing support will “leverage UFC assets [including their] Web site, TV programming and UFC fight events.”]

BW: Card collecting has gone from about $1.2 billion in sales in the mid-1990s to about $300 million today. Is using the Internet and going digital about the only way it can still grow?
ME: The category has been cyclical. The major leagues overlicensed in the heyday of the 1990s and now have pulled back somewhat to reduce the number of licenses and companies. There was too much product, which hurt the business. Now we're back to the growth period. So the combination of creating an online destination like ToppsTown and getting a code by buying a real card [to open up more trading and playing areas at the Web site], that inversely helps sell the cards so kids can get the code. Similar to what we are doing with the Message in a Bottle social- networking site for Topps' [confectionary line] Baby Bottle Pops. These communities are working. Kids are on the Internet. But there is still an affection for the real-world role of cards.
The key here is that it became a collector's medium and we want to bring it back to make it a kid's medium. It's great to have collectors and honor the products we put out but they have to appeal first and foremost to kids who collect for the sake of collecting, not as an investment for their college tuition.

BW: You talked about Topps' strong sports alliances, but the company also has a solid entertainment portfolio, including Pokémon and such Disney entities as Hannah Montana. How is this category faring in the current economy?
ME: The relationships with [Disney] and George Lucas [Star Wars] and Indiana Jones and other nonsports properties are doing well. In the heyday of Pokémon, that category alone was making $100 million a year. So just by getting yourself into the entertainment business you can have a blockbuster.

BW: Topps a few years ago signed an exclusive deal with Barry Bonds, who has become the poster guy for steroids and other negative issues associated with baseball. Is part of what you were talking about regarding the return of collecting restoring the image of what baseball used to be?
ME: For good, bad or indifferent, kids love to emulate [pro sports] players. The players are their heroes, their idols. So the more the players get their act together to become positive role models, the better it is for Topps and other marketers aligned with the sport. But there's been no differentiation of kids and people respecting the abilities of great basketball players or great hockey players. That's not going away.

BW: Thanks for your time. I'm relieved that you didn't have an accident while you were talking and driving at the same time.
ME: Actually, I've been more careful because I'm on the phone.