Noon UPDATE:
Iger wrapped up his testimony before the lunchbreak Wednesday and has left the building. The remainder of his testimony was much like the beginning -- straightforward, savvy and corporate.
More to come ...
EARLIER:
If ever a man looked like he didn’t need to phone a friend to get his final answer, it was Disney CEO Bob Iger on the stand Wednesday morning at the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” trial in Riverside.
Deftly avoiding any slips of the tongue and giving no quarter, Iger detailed what he knew about how “Millionaire” came to be on ABC, what he didn’t know, to whom he spoke and what “details” of meetings “some 11 years later” he did not recall.
It was a consistent corporate performance that Michael Eisner could only have hoped to emulate – though it’s unlikely now that the former Disney CEO will have that chance. Eisner is out of the country and won’t make it back in time to testify, according to what his representatives told Celador International lawyer Roman Silberfeld late Tuesday evening.
That leaves Iger as the biggest fish Celador will have in the witness box for its $270 million claim against Disney and its TV partners.
Celador alleges in the case, first filed in 2004, that it was denied significant revenue and profits from “Millionaire” by a series of secret arrangements, shell-game accounting and sweetheart heart deals concocted by ABC and fellow Disney subsidiaries Buena Vista Television and Valleycrest Productions when the British hit was brought to the U.S. in the late 1990s.
In that context, Iger, when asked if he set standards of corporate and business conduct for all Disney “team members,” as they are called, knew exactly what he was agreeing to when he emphatically asserted “I do.”
Dressed in the corporate armor of streamlined spectacles, blue blazer, blue tie, and gray slacks – with an iPad for a sidearm and various Disney underlings in tow – Iger’s aura of authority was obvious as took the stand around 9:40AM and stated his credentials and pedigree. Lead through his career history and corporate best ethical practices by Silberfeld, Iger displayed none of the hesitancy, foggy memory or flabby glibness of past witnesses.
“The concept was described and pitched to me by an executive from ABC, Michael Davies,” Iger said when asked when he first heard about “Millionaire.” Davies, in videotaped deposition from 2006 played for the jury last week, detailed executive meetings in late 1998 and early 1999 in which he enthusiastically informed both Eisner and Iger, then respectively Disney CEO and the then head of ABC Inc., of how impressed he had been with the original UK version “Millionaire.” Laying out the corporate hierarchy in action, Davies also stressed how vital the direct approval of Eisner, which Iger was clearly aware of, was to spurring on the effort to acquire an American version.
