DISNEY - NBC PULLS RABBIT OUT OF ITS HAT FOR MICHAELS

One of the concessions that NBC made to Disney's ESPN in order to sign Al Michaels to do play-by-ply announcing for NBC's new Sunday Night NFL Football was to turn over a package of early cartoons created by Walt Disney to the Disney company. Rights to the original silent cartoons, featuring a character called Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit -- generally regarded as the forerunner to Mickey Mouse -- were owned by Universal Pictures. While Walt Disney produced the original 26 cartoons, cartoonist Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpecker, took over after they were released and continued to churn them out at a prodigious rate through 1943. Disney President Robert Iger said Thursday that he wanted the cartoons included in the NBC concessions package because they represented "an important part of Walt Disney's creative legacy." ABC Sports/ESPN chief Dick Ebersol indicated Thursday that the company was happy to oblige since the cartoons had "no value" in the U.S. ESPN will also get an expanded package of video highlights of the Winter Olympics starting immediately, as well as highlights from future NBC Olympics coverage. Once again, NBC said that it readily agreed to the deal because the clips would serve to promote its own telecasts. The deal will reunite Michaels with John Madden, his ABC Monday Night Football analyst, and Fred Gaudelli, who was executive producer of MNF.

10/02/2006