Today Disneyland, along with all of the other parks around the world, represent a significant
portion of Disney’s annual revenue.
The theme park industry is massive and the success of Disneyland is, well, kind of a
no brainer.
That wasn’t always the case though, and at a time where Walt Disney needed to find
funding to make the dream of Disneyland a reality, he found help in television.
So first, why would he even need help funding the park?
Well, by the early 1950s Disney Productions would have shareholders and the company would
finally be pulling itself out of some hard times that World War 2 brought on.
Walt had this idea for a theme park, but as far as the shareholders were concerned, Disney
was in the film industry, not the amusement park industry.
So in order to regain some control, Walt established a separate company that was originally called
Walt Disney Inc.
To avoid confusing it with Disney Productions it would eventually get renamed to WED Enterprises,
with the WED standing for Walter Elias Disney.
He would transfer his name and likeness rights to the company and then turn around and charge
Disney Productions for the use of them.
It diverted money to Walt who could then use it to work on Disneyland development without
having to worry about what shareholders thought since they didn’t have any ownership over
WED Enterprises.
It was a complex situation, it ultimately lead to a long lasting rift between Walt and
his brother Roy, and it’s definitely a good topic for it’s own future video.
For now, back to Disneyland.
Walt Disney was in the film business.
The company’s main products in the 1950s were short and feature films that ran in theaters.
So it was odd to some that Walt would embrace the medium of television when it’s popularity
began to rise.
Most studios at the time instead chose to shun the new industry.
They perceived television as a threat to film, one that would steal away their audience and
their profits.
Where others saw a threat to avoid however, Walt saw a tool to take advantage of.
Television networks at the time were eager to work with Disney, and Walt realized that
he could use this opportunity to kill three birds with one stone.
The idea was to create a Disneyland television show.
The weekly series would consist of stories and segments that aligned with the theme of
the various lands in the Disneyland theme park.
Additionally it would be a show in which Walt would be able to show audiences previews of
what the theme park would be like.
Lastly, part of the business deal behind the show would be seeking funding for Disneyland's
construction.
Walt shopped around this idea to the three major networks.
CBS and NBC both declined the deal, mainly due to the focus put on funding the theme park.
Remember, theme parks weren’t really a thing at this point, and so the networks found it
strange that it was even part of the deal to begin with.
The third network, ABC was desperate at the time for quality content and were looking
to establish themselves against their competitors, so on March 29th, 1954, they signed the deal
for the Disneyland TV series.
As part of the deal, ABC invested $500,000 into the Disneyland Inc. investment pool and
would guarantee up to $4.5 million in bank loans.
In return ABC owned 34.4% of Disneyland and would receive all profits from the park’s
concessions for a decade.
With the deal in place Disney began to produce the weekly Disneyland television series that
helped keep Disney in the forefront of the public’s mind.
More importantly though, it served as a nearly year long means of selling the public on the
idea of Disneyland and promoting it to families.
With over 30 million Americans tuning into the very first episode on October 27th, 1954,
it was a hit.
The culmination of everything would come during Disneyland’s opening on July 17th 1955 when
ABC aired a live broadcast of the park’s opening day on Dateline: Disneyland.
Hosted by Art Linkletter, viewers at home were treated to a look inside of Walt’s
dream come to life.
While the opening day of Disneyland was actually quite a nightmare for guests, another good
topic for another video, the broadcast managed to hide it.
While the live program, which was a novel concept at the time, had it’s own hiccups,
it succeeded in making Disneyland look like the idyllic magical land it was supposed to be.
The Disneyland show would continue after the park’s opening, eventually getting renamed
to Walt Disney Presents.
Disney would also work on two other shows with ABC, The Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro.
However over time the partnership between ABC and Disney began to sour.
Disney wasn’t pleased with the terms of their deal and felt that ABCs inferior technology
was holding them back from advancements such as color broadcasts.
On the flipside ABC felt that Disney was putting too much focus on the theme park and that
the deal wasn’t going to be as beneficial for them in the long run.
Disney tried to get courts to dismiss their contracts with ABC, and in a decision to settle
out of court ABC agreed to sell off it’s 34% of Disneyland back to Disney for $7.5 million.
The deal closed in 1960, and by 1961 Disney Productions fully owned Disneyland.
As far as television, Disney would eventually move over to NBC where Walt Disney Presents
would be again renamed after getting the color broadcasts he wanted, this time to Walt Disney’s
Wonderful World of Color.
Today Disney is just as involved in television as anything else.
Disney would start their own channel in 1983 and in 1996, coming full circle, Disney would
purchase Capital Cities-ABC for $19 billion.
It would include networks like A&E and ESPN on top of ABC.
The Disneyland TV series was an unconventional idea used to promote an unconventional park
dreamed up by an unconventional man.
Today we don’t think of it much, but television helped make Disneyland possible.