MouseFruit

I honestly don't know what to think about it. I love Disney. I love Pixar. I think Steve Jobs is cool. Every geek in cyberspace has an opinion about the deal. Casey told me to blog about it (I think he hates it when I blog about politics, so he sources non-threatening articles for me). Jason posts about it with his usual cut-to-the-chase take.

I am admittedly a full-out Disney geek. Patrick and Lydia have taken to referring to Orlando as "Mecca" when talking to Tim & me. They are not wrong. Whenever Extreme Makeover:HE sends a family to WDW, I have to fanatically pause the TiVo to get glimpses of the park in the background. People talk about going to Disney World and I'm half jealous, half excited. I about hunted Roger Abramson down for more anecdotes about his vacation. But since he's retiring I'll let it go.

And of course, how I feel about Apple is no secret.

For me, though, the thought of analysing this deal is similar to picturing my parents in the act of conceiving one of my siblings. You love them, you know there are necessary precursors to their arrival, but like sausages and laws the actual making is kinda unseemly.

I hope this particular mating ritual is a success. Disney badly needs the creative infusion that Pixar will provide and I imagine Jobs will be an ideal majority shareholder. He understands the primacy of a cult brand, and the need to maintain the brand's vibrancy and cache.

By the middle of last year I was betting that would acquire TiVo by the 3rd quarter of this fiscal year. The release of the video iPod clinched it in my mind, because I could clearly envision the holistic product lines resulting. It would be a great expansion for the video iPod and it just might save the TiVo brand. I can see, though, with Jobs as a majority shareholder in Disney, that there may be a potential conflict of interest. Entertainment rights creators have an uneasy truce with TiVo, because it breaks down their distribution model. I dream that both mergers happen and that the end result leaves all three brands stronger yet still distinct.

I still don't think I want to see Cars. But whatever.