Walt Disney Co. is about to lay out $4 billion to add Marvel Comics to its family – uniting Spider-Man and Mickey Mouse under the same banner. The purpose of the acquisition is to enable Disney to reconnect with the young, male audience it has been losing over the last several years.
While the timing of the deal may seem odd, taking place as it does in a time when the media business is coping with shrinking audiences and declining advertisers, Disney will be acquiring a stable of very popular characters to use in virtually arm of its business interests. Movies, television, comic books, theme parks; live action, animation – for Disney – and Marvel, too – this could be a match made in financial heaven.

As Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs told Reuters on Monday, “(Marvel’s) audience is surprisingly broad. It transcends gender and age and has real potential worldwide. They skew a little more toward boys than many of our properties.”

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Brought over from England with smashing success, American Idol: The Search for a Superstar is a talent contest that scours the country coast-to-coast in search of the undiscovered singer who can get the most votes. After the weirdoes and weaklings are weeded out by hosts Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul, the winning warblers go on to compete in a weekly sing-off …

Since MTV’s The Real World routinely generates low-level celebrities, The Surreal Life borrows its predecessor’s premise and operates in reverse--stocking a swank mansion with personalities who are already famous. Or were. Or sort of. Or something. The Surreal Life began on the WB network but didn’t really take off until leaping to VH-1, where a season featuring the bizarre love affair between Flava …

The Beverly Hillbillies were never like this. As hot as Donna Douglas’s Elly Mays are, her hillbillies never got moonshined as much as Paris Hilton’s and Nichole Richie’s do on the Fox reality hit The Simple Life. The two girls of privilege--Paris heir to the Hilton hotel fortune, and Nicole progeny of hit-maker Lionel Richie--slum it on the farm with a family of …

Angela Trimbur Angela Trimbur is one of those aspiring actresses who are spoofed on Entourage, the hit HBO series. Ironically that popular program gave Angela one of her earliest credits. And it’s a credit in more ways than one. Angela is seen in a hot tub with …

MTV’s Reality TV series Paris Hilton's My New BFF has contestants competing against one another to be Paris’s new best friend forever. The elimination tasks include makeovers, picking up guys in Las Vegas, and partying. One episode features Paris and the rest of the girls lounging around a pool in their bikinis, and that will give you a BFB— a Big Fat Boner! …

Genres Documentary, Reality TV Premiere Date August 19th, 2003 Network MTV Country USA The national craze for celebrity worship and reality TV meets at the hot point that is Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica. Jessica, for those men out there without penises, is Jessica Simpson. No, she’s not an animated distant cousin from the Fox comedy champ, but rather the teen pop sensation who made her mark on MTV, not with sexy music videos, but with this …