In the early 1980’s, Disney was gearing up for a new company venture.
Pay television was still in its relative infancy and Disney was willing to bet big on themselves
with the idea that they had enough quality content to make a premium subscription channel work.
It’d be The Disney Channel, and among its many original programs would be a show called
EPCOT Magazine.
For the creation of the Disney Channel, Disney initially partnered with Westinghouse Broadcasting
in a 50/50 venture.
However before the channel even launched the partnership fell apart.
It was reported that Disney was too demanding when it came to creative control.
They were Disney after all, and they had a history of being very careful with their brand.
So while the channel began development with the help of Westinghouse, Disney would eventually
buy out their stake and move forward as a solo venture.
Disney had plenty of older content that would be perfect for Disney Channel programming.
Old films, old animations, and even old television shows.
However, like any other new channel, a large part of the draw had to be new original programming.
So with an investment that was reported to reach one-hundred million dollars, forty-four
of which was dedicated to original programming, Disney got to work producing new content for
the Disney Channel.
Some of the early programs included You and Me, Kid, an educational show, Welcome to Pooh’s
Corner, Mousercise, Mouseterpiece Theater, and DTV, an MTV clone where music
was mashed up with Disney animation.
With EPCOT Center only a few months old at that point, Disney decided to dedicate three
programs on the channel to the new theme park.
While the shows and the park were both still new, the concept itself here wasn’t.
Back in the 1950’s Walt Disney hosted the Disneyland television show, which acted not
only as a way to pay for the construction of Disneyland, but as a means of promoting the new theme
park to the television-viewing public.
The hope was that these 3 shows, centered in some way around EPCOT, would help sell the
park to the public or at the very least keep it in the forefront of their minds.
The first program was going to be a weekly hour-long show starring the Dreamfinder and
Figment called Dreamfinders.
It was unfortunately never produced and most the public ever got to see of it was a magazine ad.
The second program was called EPCOT America! America!
It was an hour-long weekly show that utilized man-on-the-street style interviews across
the country on various topics in order to give viewers an idea of how other Americans
felt about those issues.
It only ran for four months.
Then there was EPCOT Magazine.
Voice Over: “Journey into the world of tomorrow everyday on Epcot Magazine.
Learn what the future has in store, and discover how it shapes the world today.
From EPCOT Center and beyond, we’ll look at how these amazing advances will change
the way we all live.
Plus, you’ll get the latest tips on fashion, beauty, and health all designed to enhance
your changing lifestyle.
You’ll find it all everyday on EPCOT Magazine, the program of tomorrow, today!
EPCOT Magazine was the creation of one Bill Hillier who, for Westinghouse, had created
a television show called Evening Magazine which would later get renamed to PM Magazine.
The premise of EPCOT Magazine was pretty much the same as PM Magazine.
It was a half-hour-long variety program that focused on interest stories from across the
country.
While the stories on the show had little to do with EPCOT Center itself, the overall theme
of the program was to focus on stories about progress and the future.
On Monday, April 18th, 1983 the Disney Channel went live for the first time and along with
it EPCOT Magazine.
The seasons ran for 13 weeks at a time, and the show aired every evening, along with a half-hour-long
weekend editions that summarized the top stories of the week.
The host, Michael Young, and his rotating cast of co-hosts, would introduce the stories
from EPCOT Center, and each episode usually featured a segment from the park itself.
Young, an actor and host who had multiple projects going at once, fell into a weekly
routine of flying out to Orlando every Saturday, golfing on Sunday, and recording intros for
the show on Monday and Tuesday before flying back out to California, just to repeat the
process again a few days later.
EPCOT Magazine employed 218 people, including over a dozen freelance reporters from all
across the country who were tasked with digging up, writing, and recording segments for the
show every day.
While Disney never offered a definitive number, the budget for the show was said to be comparable
to that of the average network nightly news program.
EPCOT Magazine ran for three seasons, during what was seemingly a prosperous launch period
for the Disney Channel.
Exceeding all of their internal expectations, the Disney Channel had over half a million
subscribers within the first year.
Disney certainly wasn’t in the lead when it came to pay television, but it was a very strong start.
But in 1984 there was a major shift in leadership at the Walt Disney Company, with Michael Eisner
stepping in as CEO and Frank Wells as COO.
As is usually the case with changes that drastic, it meant leadership changes elsewhere in the
company too.
Jim Jimirro, who had been running the Disney Channel up until that point, stepped
down and a new executive named John Cooke took over.
What Cooke quickly discovered was that behind the impressive numbers of the Disney Channel
was a problem.
In subscription based services there’s something called a churn rate.
It’s essentially the rate at which your customers stop paying for the service you’re selling.
At that point in time the normal churn rate in the industry was around 5%, however Cooke
learned that the churn rate of the Disney Channel was closer to 80%.
It meant that most of the people subscribing to the Disney Channel were just trying it
out for a month or two and then cancelling.
This was a problem.
While they were still growing overall, it would only be a matter of time before that
growth slowed down and that churn caught up to them.
The Disney Channel programming, including EPCOT Magazine, just wasn’t clicking with viewers.
So 1985 would see a shift in programming at the Disney Channel, and with it EPCOT Magazine
would say goodbye.
The show ran for the last time in May of 1985.
Disney started to put more of an emphasis on filling out their channel with outside
programming, upping their acquisition budget from $5 million to nearly $50 million.
They also ramped up the production of their original films for the channel, known as Disney
Channel Premiere Films, from two per year to four per year, and then to as many as 6
or 7 by the end of the 1980’s.
Today the Disney Channel is over 35 years old and still going, making EPCOT Magazine’s
three season run a small footnote in its history.
It was an attempt to take an old concept and pull it into the future, and it was ultimately
a lesson in how changing times and changing audiences can affect those concepts.
A lesson that still rings true today.