MICHAEL EISNER'S "INVENTIVENESS"

Who says television is a wasteland? If you're sick of getting 500 channels and still finding nothing to watch, get ready for the exciting debut of the Michael Eisner Show!

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Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
MICHAEL EISNER'S "INVENTIVENESS"
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Who says television is a wasteland? If you’re sick of getting 500 channels and still finding nothing to watch, get ready for the exciting debut of the Michael Eisner Show!

The who? Eisner – the guy who was CEO of Disney Inc. for years. He stepped down last year and… well, now Mike needs something to keep him busy, so he’s getting his own hour-long interview show on CNBC. He says he’ll feature prominent guests from the worlds of business, politics, entertainment, and such – “people I think are inventive, so to speak.”

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Eisner definitely knows “inventive.” He managed to invent a myriad of ways to pay himself astronomical sums of money as honcho of Disney, even when he was ranked as one of America’s worst-performing CEOs. In 1998, for example, Eisner took executive excess into the stratosphere when he pocketed $250,000 in pay – not for the year, or for a month, or even a day’s worth of work; he got $280,000 an hour!

Last year, even though he only worked nine months, Mike sacked up a cool million dollars in salary, and then he added a nice $9.1 million bonus on top of that. Even better, however, is the retirement package he invented for himself. He’ll draw $297,779 in pension every year for the rest of his life. Plus, over the next three years, he’s to receive more than $22 million in “bonus pay” for doing… well, what, exactly? Presumably for agreeing not to show up at the office and making a mess of things.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Eisner is the same guy who tried to cut back the health care benefits for some low-paid workers at Disneyland and who used child labor sweatshops in Haiti and China to produce Disney merchandise. Maybe he’ll have some of these workers on his TV show to highlight his own “inventiveness.”

Sources:

“Disney Paid Eisner $10.1 Million in ’05,” The New York Times, January 12, 2006.

“Iger, Eisner get Bigger Payouts in ’05,” The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2006.

“Eisner’s Media Reincarnation: CNBC Talk-Show Host,” The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2006.

I’m making moves!

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