Here’s my take on the top 5 benefits of a Disney-Marvel combination:

1) Access to capital. In today’s strained economic times, Marvel was being forced to self-fund a chunk of its movie slate, leaving it with less cash to develop its products on other platforms. Disney is cash-rich.

2) Merchandising. Disney is the entertainment industry’s best merchandiser. Marvel’s characters are made to merchandise.

3) Spinoffs. The possibilities for spinning off Marvel characters on other platforms — games, Internet, theme parks, mobile phones — is endless.

4) Boys. Disney’s much better known with girls. This gives the Mouse House greater strength in its core demographic.

5) Untapped characters. Thor, Captain America and the Sub-Mariner and other Marvel staples haven’t been exploited for TV, movies and games — at least not in the 21st Century.

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Hard to believe that 10 years or so ago, Marvel was a mess. Spider-Man was caught in a web of lawsuits, and seemed destined for the scrap heap. Stan Lee, his inventor, was frustrated and isolated. Marvel’s few ventures onto the movie screen were less than successful.

Now Disney’s willing to pay $4 billion for the assets — “a full price but a fair price”, according to CEO Bob Iger.

Now, the question is whether Disney knows how to manage its acquisition. A big measure will be how much independence it gives Marvel. The charm of its characters has always been their idiosyncracies. When you think of Disney’s home-grown characters in recent years, the first word that comes to mind is “bland”.

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Amid mounting advertising pain in the TV business, CBS took a $12.5 billion third-quarter loss yesterday, and Disney is reportedly preparing cost-cutting measures that could include job cuts.

CBS’ loss came after it took a $14.1 billion charge to reflect the lower value of advertising-supported media assets.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Disney executives have been meeting this week to prepare belt-tightening measures.

The news comes two weeks after NBC Universal said it would cut $500 million in spending, or 3% of its budget, because of “unprecedented economic challenges.”

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If “content is king” then why can’t it run a wireless kingdom?

If Mickey Mouse can’t do it, and sports content can’t do, and even hip and edgy youth-oriented media can’t do it, then who can make the content-driven MVNO model work? This morning Disney Mobile users visiting the Web site were greeted by a notice of closure that reminds us of the days of crashing dotcoms. "Disney Mobile has announced that it will cease its wireless operations as of December 31, 2007," sayeth the Magic Kingdom. "It has been our privilege to serve as your wireless service provider and we want to thank you for your support of Disney Mobile."

According to its press release, the wireless service’s Family Center cluster of family monitoring and location services may end up at another carrier. A reimbursement program is being offered.

Bye Mickey. But we have to wonder what this means for the mobile content industry in general. With the end of Disney Mobile, we now have three media-fueled MVNOs (Amp’d and Mobile ESPN) to bite the dust in less than a year, how powerful is media in drawing people to a wireless service? Granted, Disney tried a smarter route by focusing on its unique kid tracking service. But still, MocoNews reports that part of the problem for Disney was simply getting retail distribution. This was an issue for Amp’d as well.

It may be hard to recall now that just a few years ago the media MVNO was all the rage. I was reporting on up to twenty in the wings. The thinking then was that the major carriers just didn’t know how to market to the niches like young and hip and sport fans. The MVNO let companies ride on the Sprint or Verizon networks but create wholly seprate services and plans. Everyone pointed to Virgin Mobile as the classic success story, but apparently no one successfuly repeated it.   

But getting people to switch is tough. Ultimately, the phone is about convenience and reliable one-to-one communication. People don’t like to fuss with that just to get some cool videos on a handset or even sports scores. The lesson here for digital media is that in most cases our product is nice-to-have, not must-have.   

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Disney and Highbeam launch good new content, but who will visit it?

Remember, “build it and they will come?” I have to wonder if we are seeing a resurgence of that discredited approach to dotcom media. Two new and very good digital content features launched this week, but how will people find them? Disney-ABC’s “At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper” site released hundreds of hours and 5,000 clips of archival reviews from Ebert, Roeper, and the late Gene Siskel that any media fan will love. Watching Roger and Martin Scorcese compare notes on air over best films of the 90s is delicious. The new archive is well-indexed, and it is a perfect adjunct to our DVD culture, where the entire library of film is open for our immediate review. But you have to remember to go to the “At the Movies” site to get this trove of goodness. The Disney press release made no mention of how this excellent material would be distributed where people most need it, when they hunt for video rentals. I checked Disney’s other big film property, Movies.com, for some sign of linkage, but I came up empty. We are still at that nascent stage of online video where putting footage online seems to be enough. What we need next is video syndication strategies that plant this kind of great, branded information more closely to the thoroughfares of task-driven traffic.

Likewise, the new and very compelling Newser.com is a fascinating project. It presents aggregated news in a grid of nine main stories, which pop up synopses and images with a mouse-over. It is well-written (by humans), offers about half a dozen main sections to explore, and the option to expand the grid to 24 items. This is like Google News with a good editor and a better interface, and it should be seen. Designed by Michael Wolff (yes, of Vanity Fair and Burnrate fame) and launched by Highbeam Research, I can’t see how this good idea gets traction without a clearer distribution plan than I see here. Which raises an interesting problem. When a new site brings novel and interesting content online, like the new The Politico site, it gets re-distributed by blogs and others. But how do you re-distribute a re-distributor like this news aggregator? Unless it strikes a deal to become an adjunct to a major portal or existing news source, I worry that no one will see a very good content idea.

It is not just a good-content game. It is also a real-estate game. Location, location, location.

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