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PredictionVideo · 175:37 — 177:07

Television is a way to go directly to the public, bypassing the middleman, rather than a threat to the movie business that Hollywood should fight or ignore.

While the rest of Hollywood viewed television as an existential threat to movie theaters, Walt Disney saw it as a powerful direct-to-consumer channel — a bet that let Disney build unprecedented audience reach via ABC and helped finance Disneyland. ✦ AI generated

Walt Disney · Acquired · 2026-06-23 · original ↗

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starts at this moment · 175:37

I said television is going to be my way of going direct to the public, bypassing the middleman. I said, Roy, this television thing can be the greatest thing because we will be going direct to the public.

verbatim transcript · starts at 175:37

Transcript · around this moment

175:37some darn thing. I said television is going to be my way of going direct to the public, bypassing the middleman. I said, Roy, this television thing can be the greatest thing because we will be going direct to the public. And he also thinks it might be his ticket to financing the park. [laughter] So ABC had been wanting to do something with Walt. I mean, lobbying over and

176:01over and over again. Uh because Walt did this one special a few years before. I think it was on NBC, not ABC. And it it was great. Like there is something very compelling about Walt Disney and Disney stuff in a television special. >> Yes. Yes. AUNCular Walt Disney [laughter] beaming into living rooms around America. >> But ABC is the third place network. They don't have as many affiliates. They

176:31don't have as much reach. If you're going to get a partner for something that you really want to take advantage of the full reach of a television network, it's not ABC. >> You really want CBS or NBC. >> Yes. And so Walt actually goes to CBS at NBC with this pitch. I think it might be Roy actually flying to New York and doing this, but they're not interested

176:52at least for the whole package that Walt is proposing. >> Yes. They both say, "Hey, Walt, we would gladly do a regular television series with you, but uh I don't know about this park thing. >> You're asking for the better part of $5 million so that we can build a theme park with you and that's a bundled deal with a doing a TV show. This is really

177:14weird." >> Yep. ABC though, Ben, as you were saying, they're the newest of the networks and they're struggling to catch on. They need something like Disney and Disneyland to break out. So they say, "Yes, Walt's line on this was that ABC needed the show so badly that they bought the amusement park with it." [laughter] Do you know the structural thing with the television industry that was going

▦ ABC✳ Disneyland◉ Roy Disney
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