JimHillMedia Person of the Year, 2003

First published December 31, 2003

By C. W. Oberleitner

As the last minutes of 2003 tick away, JHM West Coast Correspondent C. W. Oberleitner submits his final column of the year. Once again, with Jim away for a well-deserved holiday with the family, Chuck surveyed the pop culture landscape and has come up with the name of the one person he thinks had the greatest impact, in 2003, on American Pop Culture.

History of JHM Person of the Year

Last year at this time I set off a firestorm on our discussion boards and e-mail in-boxes. Christmas week had arrived and Jim and I were exchanging holiday greetings via telephone. During that conversation he asked what the topic of my final 2002 column would be. The question caught me completely off guard. Up until that time I had been thinking that JimHillMedia would be closed from Christmas through New Year's. We weren't.

When cornered by my editor, I do what any good writer would do, I lie. I told Jim I was working on a great story and that he should just go enjoy Christmas with his family. I promised to have the copy to him the Sunday after Christmas. Following our conversation, I stared blankly at the computer and said, "What the bloody ho, ho, ho, am I going to write about?"

After three cups of eggnog and six cups of coffee, I finally came upon what I thought was a brilliant idea. I would write a spoof of the whole "editor demands year-end copy while heading out the door for vacation" thing. It would be a satirical send up of all those seemingly self-important end of the year stories done by newspapers and magazines. And, there was no better target for this type of satire than Time Magazine's annual Person of the Year issue. I had a topic and a theme, now all I needed was a suitable candidate for Person of The Year.

While my intent was to satirize, I decided that it would be best if I did have some criteria for choosing someone to be JimHillMedia Person of the Year for 2002. I went to Time's website and looked up their definition of Person of the Year.

Person of the Year should be the man or woman who, for better or for worse, most affected events during the year…

Last year at this time, JimHillMedia was almost exclusively an unofficial Disney fan site. We had only just begun to branch out into other areas of animation, comics, and pop culture. I took Time's definition and adapted it to the then known JimHillMedia universe.

"Person of the Year should go to the person in our little corner of themed entertainment who generated both great notoriety during the past year, while at the same time having a lasting effect on the way we perceive the people, places, and events within this industry."

With a definition for Person of the Year in hand, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I wrote out a list of people who I thought best fit this criteria. By the time I got to the end of the list there was only one person who seemed to fill the bill. I choose well known—from within the Disney fan site world—Disney maven and critic Al Lutz.

Judging by the direct response Jim and I received, and the raging debate that took place on the JimHillMedia discussion boards, you would have thought I had just nominated Saddam Hussein for the Nobel Peace prize. Apparently my skills as a satirist weren't quite as well honed as I had thought. Thousands of our readers quite literally took the meaning of my story to be the bestowing of high honors upon Mr. Lutz. And, they took me to task for so honoring the one person they felt least deserving of being so honored.

For what it's worth, it's my understanding that throughout its history, Time has experienced a similar problem with its readers whenever they have chosen an individual who for the "worse" most affected events during the preceding year.

Even now, nearly a year later, I still occasionally hear from some of our reader's about the questionable state of my mental faculties while preparing that column. These communiqués most often end by asking who I think the 2003 Person of the Year should be. So, with that type of reader interest in mind, I told Jim I wanted to finish out 2003 with a "real" Person of the Year story. I suggested that we get the whole JHM staff involved, make our choice, set up interviews with all our candidates, and hire a photographer to photograph each potential Person of the Year. He shuddered, muttered something about changing his e-mail address, and said he'd get back to me. The last time I heard from him he was on his way to the hills of North Georgia.

Undaunted, and with no budget for interviews or photo shoots, I decided to go forward with the idea of writing a column about who, or what, I thought the Person of the Year, for 2003 should be.

The Selection Process

To be fair, and to give Mr. Hill a bit of cover, while the title of this story is JimHillMedia Person of the Year, 2003, the selection of the 2003 Person of the Year has been entirely my own. Jim did ask for two weeks prior notice of my selection, and we did discuss the relative merits of several of the candidates, but he in no way tried to influence my selection. And there is no truth to the rumor that he's asked for entry into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

For 2003, I've modified the definition of JimHillMedia Person of the Year a bit to reflect our expansion into other areas of popular culture. The definition used to guide this year's selection is as follows:

The JimHillMedia Person of the Year should be the man or woman, or group of men and/or women, who, for better or worse, most affected events in American popular culture during the year.

The process for selecting this year's candidates had begun. In 2003, the twenty-first century continued to struggle to establish its identity and break free from the norms and ideas that characterized the twentieth century. It would be this trend toward establishing a new identity for the new century that would guide the process.

This Year's Candidates

The Metrosexual

2003 could easily have been called the year of the Metrosexual. Television's Will and Grace continued to enjoy great success and the NBC owned cable/satellite network Bravo had two breakaway hits with the gay themed reality dating show Boy Meets Boy and the wildly popular—"make-better" not "make-over"—show Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Despite continued sluggishness in tourist travel, both Walt Disney World in Orlando and the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim played host to two of the largest Gay Days celebrations in either resorts' history.

Early in the year, openly gay animator and author Allan Neuwirth published Makin' Toons, a detailed behind the scenes inside story of some of the most popular animated TV shows and movies of recent years. Later in 2003, he and co-creator Glen Hanson released Chelsea Boys, an anthology of some of the funniest panels from the first five years of their nationally syndicated comic strip of the same name.

The Brawny Paper Towel guy lost his seventies' hairdo and undercover cop moustache and now shows more bod and a sensitive side. Male bonding is back with Russell Crowe in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. And even Homer Simpson got in touch with his feelings, sort of, as he moved into Springfield's gay ghetto and kissed another man.

Bob Wright

General Electric's (GE) National Broadcasting Company (NBC) finally closed a deal for control of most, if not all, of Vivendi Universal—now known as NBC Universal—which includes Universal Studios, Universal Theme Parks and Resorts, and even more cable outlets, the USA Network and SciFi Channel among them. At first it appeared as though NBC president Bob Wright might be the central figure in this story; however, so far in typical GE management style, no one person—with the possible exception of Jeff Zucker—has emerged from this drama-less melodrama as a major player.

Jeff Zucker

On December 15, as part of its preparation to merge with Vivendi Universal, NBC promoted Jeff Zucker from president of its entertainment division to President, Entertainment, News and Cable Group. Prior to being entertainment division president, Zucker had been the executive producer of NBC's very successful Today Show.

Stay tuned to this story in 2004. It is well known in theme park circles that Universal has major international expansion plans on its drawing boards. The theme parks and resorts people have just been waiting to see who their new owners would be and what emphasis those owners would place on themed entertainment. If the Universal parks folks can convince NBC/GE that there's money to be made in theme parks, watch them leave the House of Mouse to continue to play follow-the-leader in themed entertainment.

Roy E. Disney and Stanly P. Gold

Speaking of the House of Mouse, Walt Disney Company CEO, Michael Eisner, falls short, for the second year in a row, of being named Person of the Year. While in 2003, for better or for worse, Eisner continued to make headlines, he did not significantly affect the pop culture landscape. If anything, Eisner, more than any of his contemporaries, continues to cling to the same management style and techniques he used in the nineties. The closest he ever comes to being accused of being innovative or creative is when his elaborate schemes for spying on or shutting out his perceived enemies are revealed.

In November, former Disney board member Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, and his lieutenant and fellow board member Stanly P. Gold became candidates for Persons of the Year. In their respective letters of resignation from the Disney board of directors, both men made official what Internet and business media Disney watchers have been saying for the past ten years. The Walt Disney Company is a bloated media conglomerate trading on its reputation as the world leader in imaginative, high quality entertainment for the sake of short-term gains.

While Mr. Disney and Mr. Gold's pronouncements are welcome news to legions of Disney fans around the globe, the effectiveness of their campaign to remove Eisner remains to be seen. The bulk of this story will take place in 2004.

The Jacksons

Other candidates for JimHillMedia Person of the Year, 2003, included a pair of Jacksons. First there was writer, director Peter Jackson, who's third and final installment of the Lord of The Rings trilogy, The Return of The King, is currently piling up accolades nearly as fast as it is setting box office records. Then, of course, there was the self-proclaimed King of Pop, Michael Jackson; however, considering the luck I had last year choosing a figure of controversy, let's just say this story too will have its greatest impact in 2004.

The Person of the Year

This year's JimHillMedia Person of the Year began 2003 doing what he does best, taking center stage at a major media event. A little after 9 AM on the morning of January 7, 2003, at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center, Steven P. Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, Inc., took the stage to deliver the keynote address at this year's MacWorld Expo. He wowed his audience, of mostly wide-eyed Mac enthusiasts, with the announcement of two new Macintosh laptops, several new software products for the Mac, and a performance boost of Apple's popular WiFi (wireless networking) implementation, Airport, now dubbed Airport Extreme.

As he often does during one of his many MacWorld keynote addresses, Jobs spoke of Apple's continuing commitment to what he calls the "digital lifestyle". One of the products he announced was the iLife suite of digital applications, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, that work with today's most popular digital still and video cameras. Included in the bundle was version 3 of Apple's very popular digital music "jukebox" software, iTunes.

First announced in early 2001, iTunes was initially intended to give Mac users an easy and Mac-like way of cataloging and storing music for mixing and burning to CDs. Later that same year, it was partnered with Apple's answer to the burgeoning MP3 player market, the iPod. With a capacity of nearly 10,000 songs and equipped with Apple's version of high speed data transfer, FireWire, the iPod was an instant hit with Mac owners. The following year, the iPod was beefed up with greater capacity and Windows-compatible versions were introduced.

The revolution in digital music technology was taking place before a background of virtual open warfare between the music industry and its own customers. The digital music revolution had brought more than convenience and portability to music lovers. Combined with the Internet, it had made music piracy, as the music industry refers to it, as easy as making tea. Internet-based music downloading services like Napster were targets for lawsuits, as were the people who used them. Children and grandparents across the country found themselves being served with cease-and-desist orders and facing thousands of dollars in court ordered fines.

Steve Jobs and Apple Computer rode right into the middle of this mess. In April of 2003, Jobs announced the opening of the iTunes Music Store. It featured thousands of songs by well-known artists, all legally available for downloading at a cost of just 99¢ a song. It was an instant hit, selling well over a million songs in just one week. In October of 2003, Apple expanded the service to include PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. By December 15, 2003, Apple announced that the iTunes Music Store had sold over 25 million songs. By the time Jobs takes the stage at the 2004 MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in early January, the service is expected to have racked up over 30 million individual music sales.

Jobs and company had figured, and rightly so, that what music companies do best is find and develop talent. By their very nature they were not technologically savvy, and that, like most people set in their ways, the industry was resistant to change. It took months of persistent meetings with music company executives, but finally they began to convince them that protection schemes were not going to work and that the Internet was here to stay. Then they had to convince them that they (Apple) had a better way of using technology to distribute music.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Jobs said they told record company executives that subscription music services, advocated by the industry, would fail.

Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent your music—and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music goes away.

Again, Jobs and his iTunes Music Store team had come to a realization that the music industry had not. Music is a very personal thing. Everyone wants the ability to set the musical score of their own lives.

Jobs' ability to satisfy the emotional needs of people through the marriage of technology and art goes well beyond the successes he's now enjoying at Apple Computer. Steve Jobs is also a major shareholder in and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios. And, in 2003 Jobs and Pixar also made headlines and broke records.

On May 30, 2003, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios released Finding Nemo, the fifth film in a series of collaborations between the two studios. To date, with a domestic box office totaling $339,714,367, Finding Nemo is the highest grossing film of 2003. It is the single highest-grossing animated film in history and the eighth highest-grossing film of all time. Two weeks after its November 2003 release, Finding Nemo became the best-selling DVD of all time. At the same time, it took in nearly $60 million more in video sales than it did in domestic box office.

Finding Nemo was the latest in a string of very popular and extremely successful films created by Pixar. Short of Peter Jackson, Steve Jobs, and the team he has assembled at Pixar, appear to have a better understanding of story telling and what contemporary audiences want to see than any other production company in the film industry. And, that includes their Burbank-based partner Disney.

The development and distribution agreement between Pixar and Disney came up for renewal during 2003. Both studios have said that they would like to see the partnership continue. For his part, however, Steve Jobs has made it clear he no longer wants to share as big a piece of the pie with Disney. He would rather just pay Disney a distribution fee. An arrangement similar to the one George Lucas has with 20^th Century Fox. Under such an arrangement, Pixar would retain all the profits from its films.

The talks have progressed for weeks and both parties expect them to continue well into 2004. For his part, during a conference call, Steve Jobs told a group of investment analysts, "we thought the best and ... most straightforward approach to take was to see if we can strike a deal with Disney or not. And if we can, then we will. And if we can't, then we won't.''

Jobs name has come up several times in news stories surrounding the growing controversy between Roy Disney and Michael Eisner. Roy Disney has been very outspoken in his criticism of Eisner for his failure to cultivate constructive relationships with both Pixar and Jobs. An increasing number of publications are reporting that even though he doesn't really care for Steve Jobs, Eisner has been considering appointing him to Disney's board of directors in an effort to ease negotiations between the two companies. Still, other news organizations suggest that Roy Disney, while still a member of the WDC board of directors, floated Jobs name as a possible replacement for Eisner.

No rumor ignites fervor in the hearts of the Apple faithful and Disney fanatics more than one that's been around ever since Toy Story 2 proved that Pixar was more than just an industry fluke. Published by everyone from the Wall Street Journal to The Drudge Report, this story has Pixar merging with Apple and the combined company either a) being acquired by Disney, or b) merging with and assuming control of WDC. Both versions of this tale have Jobs emerging as Michael Eisner's successor.

Whatever the future may hold for Steve Jobs, it is interesting to note that whenever analysts discuss the future of The Walt Disney Company and Michael Eisner's eventual successor, they often site many of Jobs' accomplishments and views on the future of business, technology, and entertainment as qualities the next Disney CEO should possess.

Steven P. Jobs is the JimHillMedia Person of the Year for 2003, and someone to watch in 2004.

C'ya real soon!