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The Walt Disney Company (also known as Disney Enterprises, Inc., or simply "Disney") was founded in 1923 by Walt Disney and is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. It is the number two U.S. media company. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Burbank, California. Disney had revenues of 22 billion USD in 2002. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange within DJIA under the symbol 'DIS'. The company was originally named Walt Disney Productions; the name was changed on February 6, 1986.
Its movie studios include Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, and Dimension Films. Disney also owns the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network (since 1996), The Disney Channel, and ESPNESPN which stood for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network was founded as an American cable TV network dedicated to sports 24 hours a day, by Scott Rasmussen and his father Bill Rasmussen. It launched on September 7, 1979. Its signature telecast, S's family of cable television networks. Disney's music division includes Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records , Lyric Street Records , and Hollywood RecordsHollywood Records is a record label located in Hollywood, California. It is owned by Disney. Artists on its roster include Queen, The Suicide Machines, and Los Lobos. It also releases many film soundtracks. External links Walt Disney Company subsidiaries.. The company operates the Disney Vacation ClubThe Disney Vacation Club is the common name for the timeshares in the Walt Disney World Resort and elsewhere owned and operated by Disney Vacation Development, Incorporated, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. External links (warning, mu resorts and ESPN ZoneESPN Zone is a small chain of very large restaurants that include arcades, TV studios, and radio studios. The first ESPN Zone opened in Baltimore, Maryland. There are ESPN Zones located in: Anaheim, California at Downtown Disney at the Disneyland Resort A restaurants. It owns Hyperion Books , Disney Publishing Worldwide and the Walt Disney Cruise Lines.
Disney operates many resortA resort is a place for holidaying or vacationing. A resort can commonly refer to two specific but similar places: Towns in which tourism or vacationing is a major part of the local activity but are usually not run by a single company (for example Aspen,s and theme parks at Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort Paris, and Tokyo Disney Resort. Hong Kong Disneyland is under construction and set to open in 2005. Disney uses its own terminology at its theme parks: park customers are called guests, Disney employees are called cast members, any area which can be reached or seen by a customer is onstage, and employees-only areas are backstage. Newly-hired cast members go through a course named Traditions in which the four "keys" of the theme parks - Safety, Courtesy, Efficiency, and Show - are taught, along with instructions such as "When pointing out something to a guest, always use two fingers or your entire hand, never a single finger."
The company also owns the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team and owned the Anaheim Angels baseball team, which was later sold to businessman Arturo Moreno. It also handles licensing of Disney products and sales through the Disney Store, Disney Publishing, and Disney Interactive.
Associations of librarians have objected to Disney's lobbying of the world's major legislative bodies into passing repeated retroactive copyright term extensions, calling it "manipulative" and "absurd". As well as the general limitation on the public domain that this implies, critics are quick to point out that Disney has made much of its fortune from stories that have passed out of copyright, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.
After witnessing the box office failures of some of its recent animated films and the stellar successes of computer-animated films from Pixar, Disney has decided to shift its production from "traditional" hand-drawn animated films (which in recent years have incorporated much work done on computer) entirely to computer-animated films. The last traditionally-animated film produced by Disney was Home on the Range. Its first computer-animated film will be Chicken Little. Disney has fallen under much criticism for this change in direction, especially as fans see the strength of a movie as its plot and its characters and not as the technology used to make it. Additionally, by laying off all of its hand-drawn animation staff, Disney has released into the job market a large number of skilled artists who have a grudge against their former company and who could be very attractive to Disney's competitors. Disney is becoming a direct competitor to Pixar in a market dominated by the latter. Disney has failed to renew its contract with Pixar to release Pixar's films under the Disney name, an arrangement which had been extremely profitable to Disney and whose termination means that Pixar is now free to pair up with a competing studio.
Walt Disney Studios, the company's main film and television production facility in Burbank, California, is the only major Hollywood film studio that has never offered tours to the public.