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Disney Press Disney Press is a department of Disney Publishing Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, that publishes books based on classic Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and characters from other popular Disney franchises including The Muppets and Disney Channel series and films such as Hannah Montana, Rocketeer, and Davey Crockett. Disney Press is just one small piece of the media conglomerate that Disney has become. The convergences within its multiple properties was a business strategy started by Walt Disney shortly after producing the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon.

 History 

Walt and Roy Disney moved to California from Kansas in 1922 after their Kansas City cartoon company, Laugh-O-Grahm, went bankrupt. Their first project in California was a series titled “The Alice Comedies” was quickly picked up by a distributor which lead to the founding of The Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in 1923. Shortly thereafter, at the suggesting of Roy, the studio was renamed as The Walt Disney Studio.

After four years of producing “The Alice Commedies” Disney created a new series based around a character named Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. This series too was picked up by a distributor and together they released 26 episodes in the first year. When it became time to start work on the next season of episodes Walt discovered he had signed a bad deal with his distributor. The deal he signed gave the rights to Oswald The Lucky Rabbit to the distributor, not Disney. The distributor had already hired Walt’s animators and was planning to make more Oswald cartoons without Walt. This proved to be an important business lesson for Walt and from then-on he made sure he owned everything he created.

After the loss of Oswald, Disney set out to create his next cartoon character. Along with animator Ub Iweeks, Disney created the iconic Mickey Mouse character in 1928. They created two Mickey Mouse cartoons but were unable to sell them because they were silent films and movie audiences were now demanding sound. They eventually released the Mickey Mouse film “Steamboat Willy” with synchronized sound to rave reviews.

Following the success of Mickey Mouse, Disney released “The Silly Symphonies” which introduced more characters to go along with the mega successful Mickey Mouse character. With the Symphonies series, Disney began to experiment with storytelling that dealt deeper themes of emotion. After several years developing a new style of storytelling Disney released the first full color cartoon, Flowers and Trees, which would go on to win the 1932 Academy Award for Best Cartoon. Disney would go on to win the next 7 Best Cartoon Oscars.

Sensing an opportunity to expand his audience further Disney set his sights on creating full-length feature film. In 1934 Disney dispatched his animators to begin work on what would become Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. After 3 years of work Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs was released and would go on to become the highest grossing film of all time. A distinction it would hold until it was eventually surpassed by Gone With The Wind.

Building upon the success of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs Disney immediately began work on two more full-length animated features, Fantasia and Pinocchio. Both films would go on to gross over $40 million and become the highest grossing films of 1940. However the tremendous expense, time and manpower required to create such films left Disney barely turning a profit.

After the World War II Disney found itself in a different market where demand for cartoons had begun to wane. Attune to the market and always the innovator, Disney expanded into other genres of film. The 1950s saw the release of the company's first live action full-length featured film, Treasure Island, as well as the opening of Disneyland, which would take the idea of media convergence and cross promotion into the stratosphere.

Walt Disney created the concept of Disneyland when he realized there weren’t parks with rides he could enjoy along with his daughters. Amusement parks at that time were more small traveling fairs with rides that didn’t accommodate adults and most likely dirty and unsafe. Disney turned the amusement park into a “theme park” by “integrating his rides with stories which had become famous in his blockbuster movies.” The result was a global hit that created a seemingly endless marketing loop between the parks and the Disney media empire. For instance the DVDs and merchandise sold in the gift shops promote Disney’s TV shows just as the rides themselves promote the feature films they are based on. In China, where foreign ownership of television stations is prohibited, Disney uses theme parks as its primary method of market penetration instead of the Disney Channel it favors in other markets.

Media Convergence The first examples of convergences within Disney date back to the 1930s and creation of the iconic Mickey Mouse character. The first Mickey Mouse book was published in 1930, as was the first Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip. Since then, Disney has become a multi-media behemoth with ventures in television, digital and publishing. The breadth of Disney’s media offerings is best demonstrated by the success of their recent smash hits, Frozen and Hannah Montanna.

Frozen As of May 2014 Frozen had grossed $1.2 Billion dollars at the box-office. However, that number has been eclipsed by the merchandise additional releases that accompanied the film. Disney estimates that “Frozen” brought in more than $1 billion in retail revenue over the last year” from items like $28 plastic magic wands, $1200 Frozen wedding dresses, food and beverages and $5000 tours of the Norwegian sites that inspired the film. To keep the sales going, Disney has released DVD versions of the film with “bonus features”, Frozen short films, video games, and sing-along versions. To promote these new offerings, Disney expanded the Frozen empire on to the the web by releasing 100 videos on YouTube including including videos showing how to create Princess Elsa’s French braids.

Frozen is an extension of Disney’s Princess empire. In 2000, executives, while attending the Disney on Ice Tour, realized that girls were coming to the performances dressed like princesses, often times in costumes they created themselves. Fast forward 15 years and the Disney Princess lines generate $4 Billion in revenue alone.

Hannah Montanna Since it’s debut in 2006 as a TV show on The Disney Channel, The Hannah Montanna franchise has produced “two chart-topping CDs, Hannah Montana and Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (more than 8 million copies sold worldwide); four bestselling DVDs (more than 2.5 million copies sold); a series of young adult novels (3.7 million copies and counting); video games (1.7 million sold); and a sold-out national tour that has been expanded to 70 dates (and has already generated more than $24 million).” Miley Syrus, the star of the hit show became the first Disney star to be fully converge across all of  the companies media with deals in TV, film, music and publishing.