“They need a good old American guy," one source said. "A face, a guy who can deal with bankers and convince them that he can get the company out of trouble"

Mr. Eisner ran Disney from 1984 until 2005, when he started a media investment company. He's grown bored with creating content for the internet, according to one source speaking with Adweek.

Mr. Eisner has not said anything on the record about the job, but he told Variety last week during an interview about his forthcoming bok that he was buying debt in Tribune Co. Mr. Eisner is close friends with John Angelo, one of the senior creditors in the bankruptcy.

Tuesday: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Three cheers for what amounts to just about the nicest movie we’ve seen in a long while. Almost everything about Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is sweet, tender, totally adorable or all three at the same time. Michael Cera (at the pinnacle of his awkward charms) and Kat Dennings (giving such a real performance that we’re not sure it can qualify as acting) play the titular couple and their infinite playlist is chock filled with justright indie music cues. It’s all great and fairly harmless; however, our absolute favorite moments occur anytime Ari Graynor—as the drunken best friend—appears onscreen. Get Ms. Graynor her own movie, stat! [Starz, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: Hard Knocks: The Cincinnati Bengals
Are you ready for some football? HBO’s acclaimed sports reality show, Hard Knocks, returned last week, and to all of our good fortune, this season will follow the laughingstock Cincinnati Bengals. If you’re not familiar with the Bengals, just know that there’s a Web site devoted to chronicling how many player arrests they’ve had over the last few years and that their No. 1 wide receiver legally changed his last name to OchoCinco. Hard Knocks plays like a combination of The Real World and Friday Night Lights, but without any of the latter’s gravitas. This team needs Coach Taylor to teach them how to be men. Clear eyes, full hearts, the Bengals will probably still lose. [HBO, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: Project Runway
In reality television: One day you’re in, the next day you’re out. After nearly a year of legal battles and a network change (auf wiedersehen, Bravo, guten tag, Lifetime!), Project Runway returns with Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn and a host of hopeful (and hopefully wacky) fashion designers. The sixth season premiere features a guest appearance by Lindsay Lohan, which just goes to show you how long this thing has been sitting on the shelf. [Lifetime, 10 p.m.]

Friday: Mean Girls
Speaking of LiLo! While Ms. Lohan has seen her career burst into flames following the surprise success of the Tina Fey–scripted comedy in 2004, the rest of the ladies in the cast—Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lizzy Caplan and the aforementioned Ms. Fey—have gone on to bigger and better things. We’d like to say there is some hope left for Ms. Lohan, but having seen her direct-to-television disaster Labor Pains, we have a feeling that ship has sailed. At least she’ll always have Mean Girls. [TBS, 8 p.m.]

"[Hulu is] not an end game. It's a middle game, maybe," Mr. Eisner said, according to Wired."It makes NBC and FOX think they’re in the new media. It makes them feel like their doing something. But I’m not sure it’s the right thing.”

So what does work? 

Apparently, stories about himself also seem to work. His company, Vuguru, produced an online show called Back on Topps, a comedy about bumbling executives trying to reinvent a baseball-card company. Hmm, sounds familiar, since Mr. Eisner bought Topps last year for $380 million. Andrew Wallenstein of the Hollywood Reporter reviews the show:

Thirty-odd years ago, it would have been, I was summoned to the office of Frederick L. Ehrman, chief executive of Lehman Brothers, the firm of which I was then a partner, and informed that I had been accused by Darryl F. Zanuck, C.E.O. of 20th Century Fox (of whose board of directors I had been a member for a couple of years), of conspiring with David Merrick to take over the company. According to Ehrman, Zanuck had informed Lehman Brothers that unless I resigned from the board and Lehman substituted another partner, Zanuck would take his investment-banking business elsewhere.

I replied that the accusation was patently false and a straw man: My real crime, in Zanuck's eyes, had been to question the propriety, at a recent board meeting, of awarding him a 40 percent raise just as the company was about to announce the largest loss in its history. Zanuck had been furious at the time and had clearly not forgiven me.

My argument cut no mustard; I was shortly gone from 20th's board and Ehrman himself took my place. Sic semper virtutis.

Now fast-forward three decades, to November 2003, to the opening scene of James B. Stewart's engrossing if ultimately exhausting DisneyWar, which will surely be the most talked-about book of the season among those people-many of whom are numbered among the readership of this paper-for whom a masthead change at Condé Nast is of more poignant human import and graver cosmic significance than, say, a genocide in subequatorial Africa. (Who knows? They may be right.)

Anyway, in the scene as painted by Mr. Stewart, Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, a 50-year veteran and important stockholder, upholder of the company's great tradition of animation and a longtime Disney director, arrives at a Pasadena restaurant for a meeting with another member of the board. Roy Disney is apprehensive and troubled. He thinks the company is being run into the ground by its longtime C.E.O., Michael Eisner; he has spoken up against Mr. Eisner's compensation at a time when the company is doing badly; and he's afraid Mr. Eisner is moving to stifle dissent.

His fears prove well grounded. He is advised by his fellow director, a man whose wife is employed by Disney at a salary of over $1 million a year, that it has been "concluded that you shouldn't run for reelection."

"Roy … was speechless," Mr. Stewart writes. "He felt like a knife had been stuck into his heart …. It wasn't just that he was still one of the company's largest shareholders. He had given fifty years of his life to Disney. He was the only direct link to Walt on the board."

When I read that and recalled my own Hollywood experiences, I thought-with no satisfaction at all-"Well, some things never change." And then I thought of the veteran screenwriter William Goldman's famous dictum, "In Hollywood, no one knows anything," and reflected that Mr. Goldman may be right as far as making movies is concerned, but when it comes to fucking each other over, the people out there wrote the book. And that book is this book.

Here, I suppose, I should declare an interest or two. I consider Jim Stewart a friend, although that friendship has consisted of perhaps a dozen entirely happenstantial encounters in the 14 years since we first met following my (favorable) review of Den of Thieves (1991) on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. I admire him as a reporter and a writer, and I value our cordial acquaintanceship.

I also have certain feelings about Disney. Not about its "iconic" place in American popular culture, the sort of pap from which DisneyWar is mercifully and blessedly free. (Mr. Stewart's book is about the mismanagement of a company, not the desecration of a holy place, although Roy Disney might say it's also the latter.) No, I think of Disney because it fell out that in the late 60's and early 70's, I also worked on their investment-banking business, on which we were "joint account" with Kidder Peabody, in close but subordinate harness with the late Joe Rosenberg, Lehman's L.A. partner-who, back in the 1930's, when he was at the Bank of America, loaned Walt and Roy O. Disney (Roy E.'s father) the money to make Snow White. We went way back with the Disneys, in other words, and it is hard to read much of what Jim Stewart has written without a certain pang.

I have neither the inclination and the space to regurgitate the "plot" of DisneyWar or to synthesize or synopsize the material. The book has been excerpted in The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal, and been reviewed and written about elsewhere. Because I was reading it for review, I plowed straight through, but had I bought it for myself (and I surely would have, and not regretted a penny of the investment!), I would have done more dipping and skipping. It's an intense, dense piece of work. No one would wish it longer. Indeed, there were times-after encountering yet another of Michael Eisner's pathological, ultimately self-destructive changes of attitude-when I was reminded of one of those cute children's sayings of the kind compiled by Art Linkletter, a third-grade book report that went, "This book tells me more about penguins than I care to know."

And yet I do not think Mr. Stewart could have done otherwise. This is one of those stories that requires that all of it be told if any of it is to be understood. It cumulates: meeting by meeting, small treachery upon small treachery, memo by memo.

At the center, of course, is Michael Eisner, who came to Disney as a 42-year-old wunderkind, although such wunderkinder frequently make their bones as No. 2 to a born No. 1 (in Mr. Eisner's case, Barry Diller) and end up confronting their own limitations, which is what may have happened here.

After more than 500 pages, I'm not sure what to make of Mr. Eisner as Mr. Stewart presents him. Is he nuts? Does he suffer from A.D.D.? What is the compulsion that, time and again, causes him to raise someone up and then, the minute that person is installed on a rickety stool next to the Eisner's throne, to start to kick the legs out? In his epilogue, Mr. Stewart compares Mr. Eisner to those Shakespearean monarchs "whose power is such that [they] bend the truth itself to suit [their] will," and he cites as Mr. Eisner's overriding negative trait "his dishonesty."

Well, I don't know. Something compulsive is at work here, something much fiercer than mere dishonesty, a kind of paranoia. As I read, there came to the tip of my tongue the name of someone to whom Mr. Eisner's pattern of treacherous, dissimulating behavior seemed authentically similar, but it was a while before I got who I was trying to think of: Stalin. No one was ever dragged out of the "Team Disney" building and summarily executed on Donald Duck Drive on the tyrant's orders, but in the Hollywood scheme of things they might as well have been; and on page after page, the mood of Mr. Eisner's minions as they whistle their way to work is just what you'd find on a gray morning at the Lubyanka. Oddly, unless I missed something (and I went back to the index and double-checked), Mr. Eisner at no time seems to have sought or obtained either therapy or medication. To have behaved this way this long without calling for the Prozac either testifies eloquently to strength of character or to outright lunacy.

In this area, as in others, Mr. Stewart is both limited and advantaged by his sources. People were reluctant to talk for the record, so we can only guess what Michael Ovitz told Mr. Stewart, or didn't; or Sid Bass, or Warren Buffett-who ended up with a bundle of Disney stock when Mr. Eisner bought Cap Cities, and presumably sold it forthwith. On the other hand, Mr. Stewart had access to all the court papers filed in the two lawsuits in which two of Mr. Eisner's "best friends," Mr. Ovitz and Jeffrey Katzenberg, were handed, properly (according to their contracts), some $420 million of the Disney stockholders' money- and with his lawyer's training, Mr. Stewart knows what to make of the rich evidence presented in discovery. Including Mr. Eisner's own literary testament: The man seems like a kind of pre-blogger, in that he shares present-day bloggers' vain absorption with their every utterance, and can't help writing it all down in a way that's clearly intended to show off as well as to inform.

DisneyWar is a plum pudding of a book: It repays the probing or roving finger with many a choice sweetmeat. Obviously, the gossip will attract many readers. I would think a close reading essential if one is to hold one's own at the dinner table of, oh, a Stephen Schwarzman, himself the apparently willing recipient of a reportorial whoopee cushion a couple of months or so ago in The Times. Certainly everyone in Hollywood will devour it-or already has. Yes, it might have been more aggressively line- and copy-edited (on page 508, I think "dispersed" was meant, not "disbursed"). Just take it more slowly than I was able to, and it will repay this more measured pacing a dozen times over. It's one of those books that needs (and deserves) to be read as it is written.

In a larger context, it seems to me that DisneyWar completes a virtual trilogy-the other volumes being Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's Barbarians at the Gate (1990) and Mr. Stewart's own Den of Thieves. Together, they vividly capture the whole arc of what, to my thinking, has emerged as the great business/finance story of the mega-cycle that began in August 1982, when the stock market broke out. It's the story of the evolving abuse of "insiderness" in the Greenspan era of (virtually) free money. If there's to be a fourth volume, I dare say it will feature real heads on real pikes. But for the nonce, Michael Eisner's grinning face impaled on James B. Stewart's elegant prose and exhaustive research will do just fine.

Michael M. Thomas writes The Midas Watch for The Observer.

Six years ago, Mr. Kweller experienced a wholly different brand of stress. As the front man for the pubescent grunge band Radish, Mr. Kweller found himself at the center of an intense, high-stakes bidding war among record-label executives, who considered the precocious Texas native the natural heir to Kurt Cobain. Radish eventually signed with Mercury Records for more than $1 million, and Mr. Kweller was memorably profiled in The New Yorker –but the band never took off. After one underachieving album, Restraining Bolt , Radish broke up.

Still, the hefty record deal left Mr. Kweller reasonably flush. He kept playing music, but he also invested in the stock market, obsessing over the tickers scrolling across his television screen. More recently, he ventured into the precarious world of New York City

real estate, buying a four-story Federal-style brownstone four stops in on the Brooklyn-bound F train. With help from his girlfriend, Liz Smith (not the Liz Smith), Mr. Kweller was beginning the unlikely transformation from teenage rock star to landlord.

"It's going to take a month and a half to renovate everything," Mr. Kweller said, giving a visitor a tour of his new property the other day. The rocker's hair was no longer bleached blond, as in his Radish days, but his face was still boyish; even up close, he could still pass for a 16-year-old.

Walking into a bedroom, Mr. Kweller yanked at a strip of linoleum, revealing moldy yet promising hardwood below. "We're going to pull up this flooring, because underneath there's these beautiful floors," he said.

Mr. Kweller and Ms. Smith, a designer of women's accessories, hope to have the building's two rental units ready by September. "It's definitely a little scary to think that somebody in their 40's is going to be paying a 20-year-old kid rent," Mr. Kweller said. Later, he and Liz–already Carroll Gardens residents for the past two years–plan to get started on overhauling their own unit.

"Check out where my studio's going to be," Mr. Kweller said, hopping down a brittle set of wooden stairs leading to the basement. "We're gonna take back the basement a foot and a half. Soundproof it. We're going to tear down these walls to make a bigger room."

Like a lot of new homeowners, Mr. Kweller acknowledged that buying property and hunting for contractors often left him feeling alternately helpless and exhausted. "Negotiating a record deal is a lot easier, because you don't do all the talking," he said. "But here, I don't even have a manager. It's just me. You feel very alone …. It's crazy."

During negotiations, Mr. Kweller sought help from elders like his friend Bryce Goggin, a record producer for such bands as Pavement and Spacehog and the owner of several buildings in Park Slope and Fort Greene. "I think that musicians have to multitask these days," Mr. Goggin said in a phone interview.

Mr. Kweller continues to make music; lately, he's been recording a solo album. But now it was clear that there would be other things on his mind. "When there's a water leak, I don't call anybody," Mr. Kweller said. "I'm going to have to deal with it."

–Dan Maccarone

Small World, After All

This fall, Doubleday books will publish The Crusader , a sweeping debut novel about a 13th-century Spanish nobleman, written by a promising new writer named Michael Eisner. No, not that Michael Eisner.

This Michael Eisner is a 35-year-old attorney turned novelist and Upper West Side resident who is quite familiar with the confusion his four-syllable name produces. Recently, Mr. Eisner found himself being ushered to a fantastic and suddenly available table at the restaurant AZ, only to have the hostess shoot her colleagues a thumbs-down sign when she discovered her dinner guest was not related to the Walt Disney Company C.E.O. There was the senior partner at Morrison & Foerster–the law firm in L.A. where Mr. Eisner once worked–who commented on Mr. Eisner's "striking" resemblance to his "father." The more Mr. Eisner insisted there was no connection, the more impressed the partner became, thinking Mr. Eisner was trying to coolly distance himself from his progenitor.

This sort of thing happens again and again. "That's kind of the burden of having that name," the author Mr. Eisner said the other day. "People get really excited. They see dollar signs or something. And then they're always disappointed."

As the writer Michael Eisner takes his turn in the limelight, steps will be taken to avoid a mix-up. When The Crusader is published in October, the name on the cover will be Michael Alexander Eisner. "Doubleday wanted to avoid distraction," Mr. Eisner said. Over in Great Britain, however, it will be published under plain old Michael Eisner. "They don't seem to care about Michael Eisner in England," the author said.

Of course, there is also the chance that the two Michael Eisners will cross paths some time in the future. The Crusader 's film rights are for sale, and the book is generating some interest in Hollywood. Mr. Eisner's literary agent, Luke Janklow, would not confirm if Disney was among the suitors, but he didn't deny it, either.

Mr. Eisner the author sounded pretty laid-back about the possibility. "To say that this is one of my ambitions would be false. But it would be kind of amusing, my namesake …. " his voice trailed off. "My guess is, he probably has more important things to worry about."

– Rebecca Traister

Netizen Hauben

In 1992, a brown-eyed whiz kid from New York named Michael Hauben coined the term "netizen" to describe particularly conscientious members of the global e-village. In 1997, two years out of Columbia University, Mr. Hauben co-authored (with his mother, Ronda) Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, in which he envisioned the 21st-century Internet as a "grand intellectual and social commune." ComputerWorld magazine called Netizens a "must-read."

By 2000, however, the Internet's and Mr. Hauben's fortunes had turned, and he was working as a help-desk guy at a grocery-shopping dot-com. On June 23, 2001, he was unemployed and job-hunting again, posting a notice on his own Web site looking for a job that required "technical ability and working with people and not just computer screens."

Four days later, Mr. Hauben, 28, threw himself off the 15th-floor fire escape of his parents' Upper West Side apartment.

Those who knew Mr. Hauben described a young man whose early passion for the Internet and its democracy of ideas was soured by the Net's growing reliance on profits. "The pollution of the Internet by all the commercialization and privatization really pained Michael," said Mr. Hauben's father, Jay.

Michael–who'd bought his first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000 with 2K of memory, at age 8–had been online since the early 1980's. He was active on Usenet, the freewheeling network of news groups and bulletin boards that was a precursor to the World Wide Web. Like a lot of early devotees, Mr. Hauben was turned off by those who considered the Web a money-making device.

"The Net is the vehicle for the distribution of people's ideas, thoughts and yearnings," Mr. Hauben once wrote. "I do not need a computer to order flowers from FTD or clothes from the Gap."

Mr. Hauben was also a member of the city's rave community, but his dancing days ended in 1998, after he was struck by a taxi cab. He later lost a job he loved at a museum, and his credit-card debt grew immense. Those who knew him said he grew increasingly withdrawn.

"He needed introductions to eligible women," Jay Hauben said at his son's funeral. "He needed to be invited to dinner more."

As tragic as his death was, Mr. Hauben may prove to have a lasting legacy.

"The notion of citizenship in this community outside physical space is going to become more important, and it will be tracked back to Michael," said David Farber, a professor of telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania and a revered Internet elder. "Even if the Internet turns into a glorified TV with a big 'BUY' button, there'll be an underground operating as if they're under attack, and they will remember and reclaim terms like 'netizen.'"

–Lynn Harris

Why did he get the appointment?

"Because he was lucky enough to be president of ABC when Millionaire was put on the air," said Mr. Philbin. Then, accompanied by ABC News correspondent Barry Mitchell on the accordion, Mr. Philbin launched into a parody of "Pennies From Heaven" describing how Who Wants to Be a Millionaire had thrown ABC from third to first place in the prime-time ratings war.

It wasn't quite music, it wasn't quite entertainment, but it made the house happy. Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer and Connie Chung–along with Mr. Iger's wife, CNN's Moneyline News Hour anchor Willow Bay–roared with approval. After years in the wilderness and long controversy after its acquisition by Disney, ABC not only had success for the first time in years, but a graduating executive moving into the first place of succession in the parent company.

"What can I really say about you, Regis?" said Mr. Iger, who was celebrating his 49th birthday. "Regis, you are the man. I got my job because of you, ABC is No. 1 because of you, Disney earnings are what they are because of you, our stock price is what it is because of you … what is your agent's name again?"

The Grand Ballroom roared for Disney's new subchief, heading off to Los Angeles from his little offices near Columbus Avenue. But Mr. Iger wasn't completely kidding; as Cosby did for NBC in the 1980's, Millionaire was a single hit that hoisted up a network and generally remade its executives' profiles. Mr. Iger had long been expected to be named president and chief operating officer of Disney, but the expectation began to fade along with ABC's fortunes after the network was acquired by Disney in 1995.

In his new position, he will have to not only navigate Disney through a technological rearranging of the media landscape–but also live with the hulking, domineering presence of Michael Eisner, the 6-foot-3 chief executive of Disney whose dispatch of other lurking executives–Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Ovitz–had been violent enough to threaten his own absolute power at the Happiest Place on Earth.

But still, there he was: Bob Iger. Bob Iger, the former apprentice to ABC-Capital Cities founder Tom Murphy who survived the Disney purchase to become, one could argue, the biggest winner on Millionaire . And whose trip west is in no small part testament to the power of the network television hit–still a thunderclap event even in the age of the Internet.

Mr. Iger almost says so himself, though he cautions against overstating it. Mr. Eisner first talked to Mr. Iger, then head of ABC, about coming into Disney as his No. 2 in May 1998.

"It didn't seem to make sense at that point," Mr. Iger said during a morning interview with The Observer . "One reason was that it wouldn't have worked for me personally: My wife had just gotten pregnant and wanted to have her first child in New York, and I had a daughter who was still in high school in New York. And Michael and I also talked about the perception of ABC being in third place and my being named president. I'm not suggesting it had an impact on us deciding not to do it then, but it was clearly something that was on his mind."

"I think," Mr. Iger said, "the timing was better because ABC was back, of course."

And so other names started to pop up in the press, like Walt Disney Attractions chief Paul Pressler and current Walt Disney Studios chief Peter Schneider. Even Joe Roth, who resigned as Walt Disney Studios head in January.

It all must have come as somewhat of a shock to Mr. Iger, who, though seemingly still being groomed for the job, had to hear about these other people.

Mr. Iger had been on the precipice before. Just before Disney purchased ABC in 1995, Mr. Iger had learned that ABC-Capital Cities chairman Tom Murphy was planning to name Mr. Iger as his replacement. When the $19 billion Disney-ABC merger took place, Mr. Iger was in the position of having to please a new boss.

Until then, Mr. Iger had built a reputation as a reliable go-to guy with a magic touch and steady hand. "Charmed" was a word often used to describe his career. Growing up in Oceanside, L.I., Mr. Iger had dreamed of being a foreign correspondent for CBS News, and after graduating from Ithaca College, he set out on that path, working as an on-air reporter for the local television and cable stations in Ithaca. In 1974, he landed a bottom-rung job at ABC, helping the producers at ABC Sports, eventually becoming a producer himself.

The Capital Cities executives are said to have taken notice of him when he coolly programmed around unseasonably warm weather during the 1988 Winter Olympics, in Calgary. They decided he was worth taking a chance on, and promoted him to the head ABC's entertainment division, even though he had no experience.

It was a good fit. Mr. Iger steered the network to No. 1 with Home Improvement and Ellen . He developed NYPD Blue . But then came Disney.

Mr. Eisner already knew Mr. Iger–he had sold him Disney-produced television shows–and, along with strong recommendations from the ABC-Capital Cities leadership, made him a point man in the integration of the companies. That left Mr. Iger with the task and power of melding the two cultures–the more open ABC management and the more authoritarian management of Disney.

"In the early years, after the merger," he said, "I used to compare myself to a traffic cop at 42nd Street and Broadway. It was going by so fast and coming from so many different directions. It was impossible to stop, impossible to control and, for the most part, impossible to breathe."

And during that integration, the dry spell for ABC was beginning to loom. NBC had E.R., Seinfeld and dominance. ABC's shows were turning stale. And ABC's programming chief, Jamie Tarses, brought in from NBC by Mr. Eisner's appointed No. 2, Mr. Ovitz, was struggling to find a hit. That failure began a long struggle for leadership at ABC Entertainment that finally ended last summer when Ms. Tarses was forced out and the network division was merged with Disney's television studio. But by then, ABC was solidly stuck in third.

The merger of Disney's television studio operations with the network division represented the final frustrations of Mr. Eisner over ABC. He had bought the network in order to create "synergies": Disney would make shows, ABC would air shows, they would work hand in hand. That was theory. But it wasn't happening, and that failure was starting to be seen on Wall Street as a drag on the Disney stock, which by the end of the summer was falling far from its 1998 high.

Mr. Iger argues that in reality ABC's cable assets, such as ESPN, A&E and Lifetime, were doing great. Its radio division was growing. Its television stations topped their markets. It still ruled daytime with its soap operas. But prime time is still the most visible part of ABC, covered by the media and watched by investors, and so prime time can still affect stock prices. ABC had to win.

"It was less of a problem from an economic standpoint than it was from an image standpoint, a P.R. standpoint," Mr. Iger said. "Network television is so visible, it moves markets really in a way that belies sort of bottom-line economics, and when you suffer in that arena, when you are off, so to speak, the perception that's created is huge, perhaps much larger than it should be. So the entire merger was sort of viewed negatively because of that, which was completely unfair in many respects."

But it was a long haul in third, five years, and the accruing scent was not sweet.

Enter Millionaire . British producer Michael Davies had been doing great with the show in England and pitched ABC Entertainment's Stu Bloomberg on the idea. Mr. Bloomberg loved it, weighed running it for consecutive nights–as was the custom in Britain–in the dead of August, when ratings are off, anyway. Mr. Iger said he loved the idea. So did Mr. Eisner. Everybody loved the idea.

Mr. Iger ordered it up without a pilot.

"I don't think anybody in our entire company knew it was going to be a hit of this magnitude," Mr. Iger said. "But when we all saw it, we all said, 'Boy, this really is something.' Stu and Michael and myself have had experiences like this in the past, you know, but maybe four or five times out of 350 pilots."

Here's what Millionaire has done for ABC: For the week ending Feb. 13, it was the No. 1 network, with an average 13.9 million nightly viewers compared with 12.8 million for CBS and NBC. This time last year, ABC was in third place with an average 12 million viewers to CBS's 13.2 million and NBC's 12.7 million.

Meanwhile, so far this television season, Millionaire is averaging more than 31 million viewers per show and holds the top three slots of the Nielsen Media Research Top 10.

Other shows are being lifted by it. The Practice , long hailed by critics but never quite a hit with viewers, suddenly has more than 20 million viewers a week.

Now look at the Disney stock. At the end of August, it was going for $26 per share. On Feb. 15, it closed at roughly $37 per share. The day Mr. Eisner announced Mr. Iger's appointment, he also announced that first-quarter earnings were up 7 percent for Disney, after two years of decline, thanks in part to Millionaire .

"As I look at it, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire generates about $1 million a minute," said Jack Myer, chief economist of the Myers Group, a media analysis firm. Mr. Myers quoted Michael Eisner as saying it was "like having three ER 's a week. If ABC can get one more hit program, then they're going to have accomplished what really no network has accomplished in 20 years, which is to demonstrate that network television can still bring in huge ratings week after week after week, day after day after day."

Meanwhile, Millionaire is fitting into that old Disney synergy: There's a Millionaire CD-ROM, a Millionaire book published by Disney's Hyperion, and there will soon be a play-along-at-home version on its Go.com. At long last, old media ABC wasn't looking like such a dumb purchase after all.

And this made Mr. Iger suddenly look like a pretty good promotion. Wall Street had been carping about Mr. Eisner's lack of an heir apparent, and now it can't. Now, Bob Iger will start overseeing other Disney divisions, like film–which has racked up Oscar nominations from Sixth Sense and The Insider –and home video-DVD, its positioning in the on-line age.

But Mr. Iger's hardest task may be living with Mr. Eisner. "Generally, I think it's hard for anyone to work with Eisner," Mr. Myers said. "Eisner is hands-on and an autocratic and highly focused leader. He's right on top of you."

Back at the Waldorf, Mr. Philbin was singing to Mr. Iger, a rendition of "Happy Birthday to You": " You're the new No. 2/ Michael Eisner chose you/ As the one to succeed him/ Michael Ovitz was, too ."

But the problem with Mr. Ovitz, and for that matter Mr. Katzenberg, was that these were men with sizable egos themselves, men who with significant Hollywood contacts and creative histories, who had a taste of glory on their own. Mr. Iger, trained under the ultimate corporate self-sublimator, Tom Murphy of Capital Cities, was raised to have his glory connected to a team, to ABC. He's never stood out as a personality. He's not one to make the scene, opting instead to stay home in his Upper East Side town house with his wife and kids, waking up each morning at 5 A.M. for a Reebok Sports Club workout before a 6:30 A.M. start to his workday. "He really wants to have everybody like him," said one ABC insider. Sometimes that has meant that managers push ahead on projects only to find out later that Mr. Iger was not behind them. That, however, might play well at Disney, where he will likely have no problem playing second fiddle to Mr. Eisner.

"I've had five years of experience of working for him and with him," said Mr. Iger of Mr. Eisner. "Even though this is a different role and one I will need to grow into, it's part of a continuum."

Tonight on ABC, a ratings-improved Two Guys and a Girl . Millionaires don't go to pizza places. [WABC, 7, 8 P.M.]

Thursday, Feb. 17

Tonight on Late Show , Tom Snyder interviews Mike Myers. [WCBS, 2, 11:35 P.M.]

Friday, Feb. 18

Judge Judy is now the No. 1 show in New York during the day. Whadda hell raiser! [WNBC, 4, 4 P.M.]

Saturday, Feb. 19

This morning on Mysteries & Scandals , it's Ethel Merman. [E!, 24, 8 A.M.]

Sunday, Feb. 20

Tonight, it's The Little Richard Story on NBC, starring Leon and Garrett Morris. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Monday, Feb. 21

Paul Reubens, whom you might know as Pee Wee Herman, makes an appearance on network TV tonight, on Everybody Loves Raymond . Give him some support. [WCBS, 2, 9 P.M.]

Tuesday, Feb. 22

Now we're talking sweeps! Tonight, on I Dare You! The Ultimate Challenge , UPN shows a plane landing on a truck, and things will certainly blow up! [WWOR, 9, 8 P.M.]

On a fine pre-Thanksgiving Day when children by the tens of thousands frolicked through the Magic Kingdom (Hey, what's the point of taking pre-schoolers to Disney World if the schoolers are never actually in school?), I watched with some horror as cheerful "cast members" of the Disney empire insisted on the payment of $7 for a day's rental of a wheelchair. That's right: seven bucks for a wheelchair! Back in the bad old days when gigantic corporations were unaccountable and powerless working stiffs were forced to bear the brunt of customer dissatisfaction, to whom could the angry consumer complain? A minimum-wage cog in the great cash-collecting machine? That was never particularly satisfying or useful.

But now, thanks to the new economy that gives so many of us a stake in the way corporations conduct their business, one needn't administer a tongue lashing to the servant class. So, when I sought to lodge my protest over the charge for wheelchairs, I ignored the cheerful "cast members" and turned my attention to several close relatives who rather gleefully boasted several years ago of the great paper riches they had made through the ownership of Disney stock. (For reasons that became evident to me only later, they have not been so gleeful lately.)

"How could you?" I asked them. "Is it not bad enough that for purposes of admission charges you consider anybody over 10- 10! -an adult; that children disembarking from rides are led directly into tacky gift shops, and that itinerant photographers attempt to fleece you as you stroll in front of Cinderella's castle? No, that's not enough for you with your plans for retirement condos and round-the-world cruises. Now you're charging the parents of disabled children, or the children of disabled parents, seven bucks for a wheelchair rental! At long last, have you no shame?"

What satisfaction! How good it felt to know that I had registered my disgust with the people in charge! All hail the new economy!

My relatives assured me that they, too, were appalled by the blatant rip-offs and incessant selling, selling, selling, although they pointed out that those with really severe disabilities were welcome to use their own personal wheelchairs without recourse to the rentals. And they blamed "Mike" for the untoward state of affairs in the Magic Kingdom. How wonderfully intimate that these stockholders are on a first-name basis with the man who presides over the kingdom, Michael Eisner. Alas, my relatives are a little down on "Mike" at the moment, as they blame him for a great many things, including the shrinking possibility that they will ever own retirement condos and that I will ever have cause to fight with their immediate heirs over their shriveling estates. Not one to keep up with such matters, I was informed that Disney stock has taken a great tumble under Mr. Eisner's watch in recent months, an assertion I found astonishing, for not since the beer companies set up shop in sports arenas has there been a greater and more efficient method of separating wages from wage-earner than the great one-way cash machines of Central Florida.

Those who complain about what they call, clumsily, the Disney-fication of Times Square not only have a curious nostalgia for mayhem, but also don't quite understand just how good the Disney people have been for New York. After all, one can walk with impunity through the Disney-fied Times Square without paying so much as a penny to anybody. Imagine that! In this new, market-oriented economy that puts a price on everything from wheelchair rentals to the eggs of blond Ivy Leaguers, one can traverse one of the world's most famous patches of real estate and not pay any money for the privilege! Amazing!

Surely this civic magnanimity cannot last long into the next century, which seems destined to see metro columnists from The New York Times arguing that slavery really wasn't so bad after all because once you become a piece of property, well, you can expect your owners to treat you with great care. An investment is an investment, and those who don't understand how the free market works simply don't understand the real world.

For now, though, let us cherish the notion of a Disney-fied Times Square where there are no itinerant photographers looking to take your picture, where nobody is stamping your hand as proof that you paid your admission fee, and where the first wheelchair rental kiosk has yet to appear.

Wait until the stockholders hear about this.

The discussion was brief, and neither man will talk about it. But sources at CBS said Mr. Eisner expressed regret over the whole situation.

"He wasn't apologizing to Don, he was venting," said a source familiar with the discussion. "It was him saying, 'Jesus, it's been a pain in the ass for me, I'm sorry we ever made the fucking thing.' It was his frustration at the lack of money it appears to be making and all the shit they went through and it just wasn't worth it, you know?"

With The Insider , Mr. Eisner and ABC have had to endure the threat of a libel lawsuit from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, the hurt feelings at 60 Minutes over what people there believe are unfair embellishments in the film, all the press that has surrounded the release. And for what? In the end, the film grossed $7 million its opening weekend. (By comparison, Pokémon: The First Movie , pulled in an estimated $34 million its opening weekend.)

Of course, this is a CBS account of the conversation–an account that Mr. Hewitt is apparently spreading around his office to bolster the troops. But it underscores what is a sort of feeling of vindication over on 57th Street. The Insider , directed by Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino, may have won four stars from the critics, but so far fewer people have seen it than watch a typical 60 Minutes episode.

"The feeling is that the people have spoken, and they're not interested, and now everyone should just walk away from it," said one CBS source.

That's debatable. Even the people at A.C. Nielsen Entertainment Data Inc., who handicap these things, say there's plenty of time for the film to pick up steam–after all, there's nothing like an Oscar nomination to boost ticket sales, and The Insider is expected to land at least a couple of those.

Still, for Mr. Eisner, it's been a lot of agita for very little payoff so far. Brown & Williamson, the nation's third-largest tobacco company, which sits at the center of the story, is weighing whether to bring a lawsuit. It is currently polling audiences when they leave the theaters to see how badly its corporate image has been sullied. The company takes issue with two implications in the film: that Brown & Williamson threatened the life of the man who blew the whistle on their knowledge of nicotine addiction, Jeffrey Wigand (the F.B.I. has suggested that he sent the threats, in the form of an e-mail message and a bullet in his mailbox, to himself); and that the company somehow influenced the F.B.I. to cover up evidence of the threats.

"Threatening someone is a criminal offense and that is libel per se," said Brown & Williamson spokesman Mark Smith. "And they're saying that we somehow exerted control over the F.B.I., which is laughable, and that is interference with the justice process, and that is criminal and it is also libel per se."

Further complicating matters for Mr. Eisner, the company took out a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Nov. 12, that seemed specifically tailored to make life difficult for him. The ad page was filled with a letter to Disney shareholders from Brown & Williamson chief executive Nick Brookes. After detailing the company's objections, it concluded: "By knowingly making false accusations against our company and our employees, Disney has acted unfairly and maliciously with a wholesale disregard for the truth. As shareholders of Disney, you are entitled to an explanation from your company as to why they should go to this extreme to sell more tickets."

So it seems that Mr. Eisner is learning for himself why Mr. Hewitt and his 60 Minutes team handled the story so gingerly in the first place.

It's not what Mr. Eisner needs right now: The man is under siege. His company's fourth-quarter net income is down 71 percent from the year before, and the letter came just days before Mr. Eisner was to meet with his already-unhappy shareholders–who can't be thrilled with the film's lousy box-office take.

Then there were Mr. Hewitt and Mike Wallace, decrying the film for making them look like a couple of ninnies. Both men have now seen it: According to the New York Post 's Page Six, Mr. Hewitt caught it at the East Hampton Cinema on Long Island on its opening night; Mr. Wallace caught a Sunday afternoon showing at an Upper West Side theater and told the Daily News : "The film is getting what it deserves–a decent burial."

According to Lowell Bergman, the former 60 Minutes producer who is the hero of the film, Mr. Eisner had seen a rough cut of the movie in the spring and seemed O.K. with it. When the film was given the go-ahead by Walt Disney Studios chairman Joseph Roth, Mr. Eisner reportedly only required that it be accurate.

As far as the 60 Minutes side of it goes, generally, it was. Yes, Mr. Bergman did convince Jeffrey Wigand, a former Brown & Williamson researcher enjoined by a confidentiality agreement, to go public with company knowledge that tobacco is addictive, contradicting Congressional testimony by Brown & Williamson chief executive Thomas Sandefur. And, yes, Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Wallace did initially hesitate to run the interview under the threat of a big Brown & Williamson lawsuit, which could have scuttled the CBS Corporation's sale to Westinghouse Electric Company–all of which almost left Mr. Wigand, who saw his life fall apart after agreeing to go public, hanging out there for nothing.

But the film shows Mr. Wallace and Mr. Hewitt giving in all too easily to the corporate lawyers. It's Mr. Bergman's heroics that ultimately convince Mr. Wallace to come around and get back behind it. What do you expect when Al Pacino is playing Mr. Bergman and Christopher Plummer is playing Mr. Wallace?

"What's missing is how hard he fought," said 60 Minutes II executive producer Jeff Fager, who was a producer at 60 Minutes at the time.

"It's just all the Mike and Dan spin show," said Michael Mann, the director of The Insider .

A spokesman for Mr. Eisner had no comment on the phone call. "We don't discuss Mr. Eisner's personal business," he said.

Tonight, on CBS, check out a star-studded hour of that rascally Cosby . [WCBS, 2, 8 P.M.]

Thursday, Nov. 18

As the November sweeps period began in earnest, word started circulating in Hollywood that when Action ends its shooting season around Thanksgiving, it will never be seen or heard from again.

The racy sitcom, pulled for the sweeps period, is doing poorly. But producers of the show say they have assurances that it will relaunch on Fox Dec. 2, possibly somewhere other than its Thursday, 9:30 P.M., time slot, with a healthy dose of promotion. Action 's failure in the ratings department is a mystery to its creator, Chris Thompson–whose humdrum Ladies Man , for CBS, is a ratings success, even though it has little bite and tired old themes. The biggest shock of it all is that the one show critics considered a possible comedic hit was Action , with all its bleeped-out curse words and sexual innuendo.

"I don't know how you figure it out," Mr. Thompson said.

When pressed to come up with something, he said that maybe it has to do with the way the show is structured. Its main character, movie producer Peter Dragon, is an antihero. He treats people horribly, and you just don't want to see him succeed.

"If there's anything that has kept the audience away, it's probably the subject matter," he said. "At the end of the day, television is a lot about familiarity. They fall in love with people they can relate to. The truth is, I don't have a shitload of lovable people here."

Hear, hear. Tonight, in place of the fictional greedy bastards of Action , you can see real, live greedy bastards on Greed . [WNYW, 5, 9 P.M.]

Friday, Nov. 19

Isn't it about time VH1's The List got a real host? Like, what does Charles Barkley know about music? And is there anything more painful than watching him banter back and forth with the likes of former child star David Faustino ( Married With Children ) over what the best band of the 90's was? Executives at VH1 have no plans right now to change from the guest-host format. [VH1, 19, 11 P.M.]

Saturday, Nov. 20

Kevin McDonald, the black-haired comic of Kids in the Hall , showed up along with the rest of the Kids at Luna Lounge on Nov. 15 for a live Web chat about the troupe's upcoming comedy tour. He was asked if he had left Martin Short's show–where he was a writer and player–and why. He answered in the affirmative and cited "creative differences." That was as far as he wanted to go.

But then Dave Foley piped up: "He was creative, and they were different."

The Kids tour starts in January, if we're all still here. Today, catch them on Comedy Central. [Comedy Central, 45, 5 P.M.]

Sunday, Nov. 21

It's still sweeps, so tonight NBC will air Y2K –about a man scrambling to stop a New Year's Day nuclear meltdown. Kind of like Atomic Train with a Millennium twist. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Monday, Nov. 22

Jesse L. Martin is the new detective on NBC's Law & Order , and in his first episode, he practically upstaged the great Sam Waterston. On Monday, Nov. 8, he was in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis hotel, where Law & Order producer Dick Wolf was being inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, smoking a cigarette. A few years ago, Mr. Martin was just catching his break as a cast member in Rent . The show was such a big hit, he started getting small television gigs. The biggest break came last year, when he was cast as a love interest for Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal . It looked like he was about to get a full-time role on the Fox hit when Mr. Wolf came calling and hired him for Law & Order . Mr. Martin told NYTV he went with Mr. Wolf because "I wanted to be in New York, that really meant a lot to me." He said that in Los Angeles, he always got strange looks because he is black. But then he showed up on the Law & Order set, where the acting's pretty much as good as it can get, and almost lost it. "In my first scene, I was supposed to open a file cabinet, but my hand was shaking so much, I could hardly do it," he said.

Tonight on Law & Order , a dissed lover is suspected of a killing. [A&E, 16, 11 P.M.]

Tuesday, Nov. 23

60 Minutes ' Don Hewitt and company were none too pleased last year when the bosses at CBS decided to launch a new weeknight magazine show called 60 Minutes II . As far as they were concerned, it would only dilute the 60 Minutes name, for it certainly couldn't be as good as the show they've been putting on for the past 31 years. The critics by and large agreed. In its first year, they were right. The ratings were pretty weak. But this television season something funny has happened: 60 Minutes II , watched by an average 9.7 million households, is now drawing the second biggest audience of all the news magazine shows, after 60 Minutes . That has 60 Minutes II executive producer Jeff Fager feeling pretty good.

"I think the concerns of Don originally and then Mike and Morley and everybody else were valid in the sense of 'Don't try to do this and compromise it,'" Mr. Fager said. "There was resistance for good reason. We were all resistant, including [CBS president] Les Moonves and [CBS News president] Andrew Heyward. No one wanted to put on a program that would dilute the franchise."

But even as 60 II pulls ahead of the weeknight pack, Mr. Fager said with so many of these sorts of shows, he knows in the end, only so many will survive. "I think the number of news magazines on the air is not going to be as large in the months to come," he said. "There are too many, there will be fewer."

But then what will The Daily Show have to make fun of? Tonight on 60 Minutes II : child labor in India. [WCBS, 2, 9 P.M.]

Walt Disney's chief executive, Michael Eisner, has made it clear he wants to squeeze more money from his $19 billion, third-place TV network, which is struggling to make a profit this year and is considered a major drag-though one of many-on Disney's stock, with its earnings-per-share ratio having fallen 27 percent this fiscal year. Meanwhile, Mr. Eisner has had to sit on the sidelines and watch the merger of CBS and Viacom. This new mega-company, which includes its own theme parks and movie and television production units, is a new corporate rival for Disney.

For ABC's '99-'00 prime-time season, the running time of sitcoms will be shortened from 22 minutes to 21 or even lower, ABC producers said.

Marshall Herskovitz, the co-creator of Thirtysomething , whose Once and Again debuts on ABC this fall, was not pleased with the time-shaving edict. "I think, unfortunately, it fits into the context of the corporate theory of the late 20th century, which is to bow to the immediate needs of stockholders to the detriment of the long-term health of the corporation," Mr. Herskovitz said. "Eventually, they're going to scare away audiences. They're competing with cable shows, some of whom don't have any commercials. When an audience has to wait three, four or even five minutes before the program comes back, there's likely to be erosion."

Mr. Herskovitz was not alone in his displeasure. Bruce Helford, producer of the ABC sitcoms Norm and The Drew Carey Show , said: "When the business interests take over the networks, they no longer care about broadcasts or that they're trying to entertain people and that they are a guest in their houses. The balance is, are we here to serve the public or sell to the public? It's almost like we don't care as much about the entertainment."

"It's amazing what 30 seconds means," said Kevin Abbott, executive producer of Two Guys and a Girl . "It's pretty difficult. You're either losing story points or a good comedy bit."

"For me, it's a really rough thing," said Peter Mehlman, executive producer of ABC's It's, Like, You Know . "I need every second I can get. Now I'm going to have to cut stuff that I love. It was tough enough when it was 22."

The selling of more programming time is just one piece of Mr. Eisner's continuing Disney yard sale. The company has lately dumped Fairchild Publications on Condé Nast Publications for $650 million and is looking to unload its sports teams, the Anaheim Angels baseball team and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey team.

Related to the sales is Mr. Eisner's radical restructuring of Disney. Dozens of ABC's New York employees have been forced to move to Los Angeles or give up their jobs as the chief executive consolidates many of the network's East Coast and West Coast operations for an annual $50 million savings. He has also merged Disney's Touchstone Television production studio with ABC Entertainment, where all the network's programming decisions are made. That marriage-which gave the Disney arm of the company more say over ABC's programming-resulted in the departure of Jamie Tarses, ABC's former entertainment president, and Steve Tao, ABC's former drama development chief.

Commenting on the cuts in running time, Mr. Tao said, "It was a way to try to boost up revenue. You just knew you had to do it. You had to find a way to bring program time down."

ABC executives argue that this isn't the first time prime-time lengths have been shortened and that they're not doing anything all that drastic: With the cuts, their shows will be the same length as many on NBC and Fox. With cable rising, the networks have seen their ratings shrink year after year. To keep their bottom lines above water, they've added more commercials.

But ABC already airs more non-program stuff per hour than the other networks. According to a recent survey by the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers, the networks aired a record 15 minutes 44 seconds of non-program time per hour for commercials and promos, up from 15 minutes 19 seconds the year before. ABC aired 16 minutes 27 seconds per hour of non-program material, according to the survey.

Executives on the creative side of things have had to sit back and glumly watch, powerless to do anything about it.

"When I was first involved, there were very hard and fast rules about these things," said legendary TV man Grant Tinker, who produced The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later served as NBC's chief programmer. "It was three minutes to the half-hour and 6 minutes to the hour in prime time. That went by the board about 10 years ago."

In ABC's case, the ad situation right now is complicated. In January 1998, Disney agreed to pay $9 billion to the National Football League for eight more years of Monday Night Football air rights, along with the rights to broadcast Sunday football games on its ESPN cable channel. The tab was considered way too high and investors frowned upon it after Monday Night Football saw lousy ratings last season. To help make up for that deal, ABC struck a deal in June with its affiliates, in which the network would pay $45 million per year toward the $9 billion tab in return for eight new prime-time local ad slots, among other concessions.

Disney-imposed consolidations and cuts have been fast and furious the last couple of months as Mr. Eisner has moved to stem investor anxiety. On the eve of the new TV season, they have left ABC in a political shambles.

Take the Jamie Tarses story. It was probably the first time a programming executive's resignation made its way into the nation's regular news pages. The story had all the ingredients. Ms. Tarses was the first woman to hold a network entertainment presidency. She is also attractive and young for the job-32 when she landed it three years ago. Ms. Tarses was brought in to ABC by Michael Ovitz after winning a reputation as the hottest programmer in Hollywood. She shepherded Friends and Mad About You into NBC, where she had shown that she knew how to program for her peers-affluent, upwardly mobile young adults-just the people advertisers wanted to reach.

But, while displaying that same programming sense at ABC-developing Dharma and Greg and Sports Night -she seemed to live within its corporate culture as if it were high school: She was linked romantically to one of her stars, Two Guys ' Ryan Reynolds. They were reportedly very cozy at a network press tour party in Pasadena. And after reportedly denying to ABC president Bob Iger that she was dating Friends star Matthew Perry, she was caught making out with him.

From the minute she started the job, it was rumored that she would soon be out of it. Stu Bloomberg was brought in as entertainment chairman, a position that effectively bumped Ms. Tarses from No. 1 to No. 2 after a year at the helm.

In the end, what ended Ms. Tarses' reign at ABC in large part was the perceived obstacle she put up to Mr. Eisner's grand plans for the network, people both inside and outside the network say. Mr. Eisner spent $19 billion on the Disney merger with Cap Cities/ABC in 1996 for a purchase that was positively received on Wall Street. The idea was simple-Disney already owned a content provider, Touchstone Television. Now, with ABC, it would own an outlet. So it could become a new kind of TV beast-a network that would own its own shows. (It's the same thing CBS's Mel Karmazin wants out of his merger with Viacom, which owns the Paramount production studio.) But the synergy didn't really take hold at ABC. Mr. Eisner, who did not respond to requests for comment, had to sit by and watch during the first two development seasons as ABC failed to pick up many Disney programs. Do you think he was happy about that? This fall, there will only be one new Touchstone show on ABC's schedule: Mr. Herskovitz's Once and Again . That despite a number of Touchstone pilots ordered by the network, like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive -which, as The New Yorker 's Tad Friend reported, has turned out to be a potentially costly failure for ABC-and a pilot called Brookfield , about a tony prep school. All of the ABC hits belong to someone else.

"Fox has Snoops and The Practice and Dharma and Two Guys and a Girl . Drew Carey is a huge hit for ABC, and it's Warner Brothers'. NYPD Blue is Bochco," noted a source at a competing studio. "Everybody's making money off ABC except ABC. That's all Eisner wants, and it drives him crazy he can't get what he wants."

It doesn't thrill Wall Street, either.

"I don't think they've found the natural synergies," said media analyst Jack Myer, president of the Myer Group.

When Mr. Eisner merged Touchstone Television with ABC in an effort to make those synergies come to life, it gave Ms. Tarses a new boss (in addition to Mr. Bloomberg) in ABC entertainment co-chairman Lloyd Braun.

They did not play together very nicely.

"It got very mean-spirited-he loved being able to beat her up," said a source who was familiar with their interaction. "He would say the worst possible things about her."

That relationship got worse when Ms. Tarses passed on various Disney-produced pilots in piecing together her fall lineup. Mr. Braun saw her rejection of Touchstone pilots as a blow to the company's overall corporate strategy, sources said. (Neither Ms. Tarses nor Mr. Braun responded to requests for comment.)

But it's not like other networks were jumping for Touchstone shows, either. Besides Once and Again -which Ms. Tarses didn't even assign a regular night-the only other new Touchstone show is WB's Popular . "It's not like they had the best product to begin with," said another source.

When Ms. Tarses refused to go along with the program and often refused to let Mr. Braun in on what she was up to, Mr. Iger flew to town to tell her she had to. Meanwhile, around the same time, Mr. Tao, a key Tarses deputy, was alerted that his services would no longer be needed-even though in June, when he was first alerted to the merger, he was told there would be room for him. Ms. Tarses, sources said, was as caught off guard by her deputy's termination as he was.

Weighing all the chaos, new speculation on her job prospects, Ms. Tarses quit-though it's obvious that she really didn't have much choice.

ABC television president Patricia Fili-Krushel, who was vacationing in the Berkshires when the Tarses debacle was going on, did not return calls seeking comment; neither did Mr. Iger. In a bit of corporate poetry, an ABC spokesman said: "Every new season dictates change. In the increasingly competitive landscape, it is incumbent upon each of us to remain relevant while still providing free over-the-air quality television to the nation."

In the end, with Mr. Eisner's new model, Ms. Tarses had to go. Industry analysts said that makes sense in 1999. "In the new media age, networks, broadcast station groups and studios are going to have to reinvent their economic models," said Mr. Myer. "And I don't think that vested interests, internal or external, can get in the way of that."

So the sitcom and drama producers will have to give up some time. They don't have to like it, but they know they have to live with it if they like being in show business. "It's their ball park, so we have to play on it," said Mr. Helford.

Sources have said that in his $250 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company, Jeffrey Katzenberg will brandish the signatures of a dead man and the unpublished memoir of his ex-boss, Disney chairman Michael Eisner. It is a wickedly honed legal strategy designed to ensure that Mr. Eisner, at the very least, falls on his sword.

But Disney's dagger may prove deadlier. The Observer has learned that Mr. Eisner's lawyers recently took depositions from Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, Mr. Katzenberg's partners in Dreamworks SKG. "Both Katzenberg and Dreamworks will go on trial," said a Disney source. "We're going to put David and Steven on the witness stand and conduct an examination of their company as well."

This is the first insight into Disney's strategy; previously, the company had been silent and inscrutable on the matter. Dragging Messrs. Spielberg and Geffen into the fray is nothing but nasty, and not just because Mr. Katzenberg's dispute with Disney predates Dreamworks' 1994 founding. Until now, it seemed that Mr. Katzenberg-who was chairman of Walt Disney Studios when he resigned in 1994-had nothing to lose and everything to gain by pressing his lawsuit. That may not be so anymore. Disney's legal team believes it may have found his Achilles' heel: his partners. The attorneys-who include litigator Lou Meisinger, known as the ultimate studio lawyer who never represents talent, and Disney in-house consigliere , executive vice president Sandy Litvack, a former assistant U.S. attorney general in the Justice Department's antitrust division-intend to exploit various press reports of reputed rifts developing in the chummy environs of Dreamworks.

The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Spielberg and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Geffen, are the keys to Dreamworks' success; in the company pecking order, Mr. Katzenberg is not just the worker bee, but literally the poor relation. He has been heard to lament that he mortgaged himself up to his ears to come up with his $33 million share to join Dreamworks. (Friends have suggested that he not bring this up in court, however, as 12 normal people might not feel too sorry, since those mortgaged homes are in Malibu, Beverly Hills and Deer Valley, Utah.) Disney's side has even suggested that the reason Mr. Katzenberg is pursuing the lawsuit is because he is not making any money at Dreamworks. In fact, a Katzenberg defender confirmed that the Dreamworks partners decided to delay taking earnings out of the company for 10 years.

Mr. Spielberg, who has a well-known distaste for legal wrangles, surely won't be thrilled to take time away from fine-tuning his latest opus, Amistad , for its Dec. 10 opening in order to be a pawn in his partner's courtroom confrontation. (The film, about a dramatic slave revolt, is Dreamworks' hope for an Oscar this year.) And Mr. Geffen, though famously pugnacious, could be reluctant to appear in court for the same reasons as Mr. Eisner. For them, it's tantamount to being administered truth serum in front of a gallery of media hyenas- The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Business Week the Los Angeles Times , Time, Newsweek , CNN, CNBC, The Observer and, in the pièce de résistance , Vanity Fair 's Dominick Dunne-who are gleefully awaiting the opportunity to hear any studio executive answer, under oath, all kinds of questions about profits, losses and salaries.

It's obvious that Disney's hardball tactics are aimed at not just bringing Mr. Katzenberg to his knees, but to the settlement table.

A California Superior Court referee is bearing down on both sides, urging them to work out a compromise and avoid a trial. And miracles do happen. But despite a published report in the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 31, Mr. Eisner's position has not softened; rather, it has hardened, sources close to him told The Observer . And a particularly disastrous settlement session between the two sides on Nov. 3 ended with one insider saying, "They're definitely headed to court."

News of the Disney strategy appeared to surprise Mr. Katzenberg's side. "What they're going to say about Dreamworks couldn't be worse than what the press has already written about us," said one Dreamworks executive, alluding to the media reaction to Dreamworks' first feature film, The Peacemaker , a box office failure. Ironically, Mr. Katzenberg had little to do with the film; it was greenlighted by Mr. Spielberg, said a Dreamworks source. "Their talking about Dreamworks is our equivalent of talking about Eisner's questionable judgment in hiring [Michael] Ovitz [to be president of Disney]. It has nothing to do with the case at hand."

But forget any gentlemanly rules of engagement. This is Hollywood's version of extreme combat, and you don't even have to subscribe to pay-per-view to watch! (Court TV has requested permission from Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk to broadcast the trial live.) And while both sides claim they don't want cameras in the courtroom (a source on Mr. Katzenberg's team expressed concern that Mr. Eisner "will try to perform for the camera, like he does on The Wonderful World of Disney "), it seems a growing inevitability.

A court-issued gag order has for some time forbidden either side from talking to the press. Then again, when did a court order ever stop people from gossiping in Hollywood? The back-and-forth pretrial chatter resembles that old Saturday Night Live skit: "Jeffrey, you ignorant slut …" For example, Disney sources noted that Dreamworks recently held a special companywide conference to reassure the staff that their groovy studio has not lost its mystical chic. (Dreamworks characterized it as the company's annual corporate retreat.) A Katzenberg loyalist pointed out that the visages of Mr. Eisner and his wife, Jane, seem to have been surgically refreshed in time for ABC's new fall lineup. A Disney official denied that allegation as "ridiculous."

Over the years, the entertainment business has witnessed its share of courtroom vitriol. Martin Davis v. Barry Diller, Sumner Redstone v. Edgar Bronfman Jr., Rupert Murdoch v. Ted Turner. But what makes this singular is that Mr. Katzenberg and Mr. Eisner are like a couple who find themselves in divorce court after 19 years of marriage: They know exactly which buttons to push to cause the most pain. What's especially ironic here is that Mr. Katzenberg learned his tactics at the feet of the master, Mr. Eisner. Disney, after all, is consistently tougher and meaner than all the other studios combined, a reflection of Mr. Eisner's vengeful leadership style.

Disney's trial strategy will be to contend that Mr. Katzenberg was not the model employee he has presented himself to be. Targeted in particular will be his record on live-action feature films, where his initial success starting in 1984-making high-concept, low-budget films with over-the-hill stars-began to falter by 1990 with bombs like Blank Check and My Father, the Hero . To drive the point home, a Disney source said the company's lawyers will show that Mr. Katzenberg's losing streak has extended to his tenure at Dreamworks.

However, Disney will face the near-impossible task of impugning Mr. Katzenberg's incredible track record with animated features like The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King . Mr. Katzenberg's side will claim that Disney's animation department has been in a shambles ever since the executive's departure, as evidenced by decreasing revenues and last summer's anemic Hercules .

Powering Mr. Katzenberg's case against Disney (in addition to the executive's near total recall for detail) are his two attorneys: Bert Fields and Herbert Wachtell. "Until Michael Eisner met Herb Wachtell, there was nobody he was more terrified of on the other side than Bert Fields," Mr. Katzenberg often jokes. Said another source close to the executive, "Even if Eisner wins this lawsuit, he loses, because you know he will be sliced, diced and fed to the fishes here by these attorneys. They're going to kill him."

Mr. Fields is a Century City entertainment lawyer whose nickname is the Exterminator. (He used to be called the Terminator.) The 68-year-old litigator, who has never lost a trial, is representing at least six cases against Disney and its independent arm, Miramax Pictures. "I love to sue Disney," Mr. Fields told The Observer recently. "Well, maybe that's an overstatement. I just find myself in a position of doing it a lot."

The attorney represents screenwriter Robert Towne, producer Joel Silver, directors James Cameron and Mike Nichols and actors Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. A University of California at Los Angeles graduate with a degree from Harvard Law School, Mr. Fields is accustomed to his former adversaries-like David Geffen-later retaining him. (The litigator successfully represented Mr. Towne, who wrote and directed Personal Best , against Mr. Geffen, the film's producer, over the final cut of the film.) Big cases like Mr. Katzenberg's are Mr. Fields' specialty. The same applies for Mr. Wachtell. The Observer has learned that Mr. Katzenberg is spending $10 million on his legal team, which is comprised of four attorneys under Mr. Fields and eight under Mr. Wachtell. Near the end of each workday, Mr. Katzenberg checks in with his bicoastal attorneys in a 15-minute phone call.

It was Mr. Katzenberg's idea to hire Mr. Wachtell, a partner of the Manhattan firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Mr. Wachtell may be even tougher than Mr. Fields. After all, he was hired by the Philip Morris Companies and Lorillard Inc. as one the chief negotiators in the tobacco companies' settlement with 40 state attorneys general. Last summer, representing Seagram Corporation's chief executive, Mr. Bronfman, he made mincemeat of Viacom Inc.'s chief executive, Mr. Redstone, during a Delaware Chancery Court trial in which the two executives fought over the disposition of their shared asset, USA Networks. The court ruled in favor of Mr. Bronfman.

By no means the patrician that Mr. Fields is, Mr. Wachtell was born in the Bronx to a lower-middle-class family, which nevertheless managed to send him to New York University, where he received his undergraduate and law school degrees. At 65, Mr. Wachtell, who is separated from his wife, lives on Fifth Avenue and in a low-key part of East Hampton.

Together, the pair of attorneys has been focusing on a two-pronged attack, one aimed at Mr. Eisner, the other at Disney. A source close to Mr. Katzenberg said that his attorneys, looking for a legal way to get inside Mr. Eisner's head after he successfully dodged his deposition with scores of I-don't-recalls, seized on the idea of subpoenaing Mr. Eisner's memoir, which was being ghostwritten by New York writer Tony Schwartz and was scheduled to be published in October by Random House. As The Observer noted when it broke that story in June 1997, the lawyers didn't content themselves with Mr. Eisner's manuscript. Instead, they demanded all the notes and transcripts accumulated since the project commenced in 1984, right after Mr. Eisner, with Mr. Katzenberg in tow, jumped from Paramount to Disney.

Subpoenaing "the book started out to be a petty annoyance, an attempt to make [Mr. Eisner] pay something in the pain quotient," the source suggested. "Ultimately, it's ended up being a gold mine for litigation which nobody ever expected. It just goes on and on and on and on. It's pretty amazing."

Even though they lost their attempt to quash the subpoena, Mr. Eisner's tacticians appear cocky that Judge Ouderkirk will only allow what a source close to Mr. Eisner deemed "relevant portions of the book"-and not any potentially humiliating or embarrassing revelations about prominent Hollywood stars and executives.

One thing is absolute: The book's publication has been derailed by the move until the resolution of the trial. That has to hurt Mr. Eisner, who is said to be emotionally invested in the project. "Nothing matters more to Michael than his reputation. That's what that book is all about," said one source who knows both Messrs. Katzenberg and Eisner well. "I thought he cared more about his legacy than about wanting to kill Jeffrey. That's why it's so illogical to me why Michael wants to get into a courtroom."

Sources said that the litigators also have in their possession several internal memos, all signed by Frank Wells, the Disney president and chief operating officer who was killed in an April 1994 helicopter crash, promising Mr. Katzenberg a bonus of 2 percent of the profits generated by all Disney movie and TV shows put into production during Mr. Katzenberg's tenure. The $250 million that the executive claims Disney now owes him is derived from that formula, but the figure could go as high as $500 million when all the numbers are crunched. Disney has long asserted that no such promises were made by Wells, and even if they were, that they were made null and void when Mr. Katzenberg resigned.

As a source has said, "It will become incredibly clear when they get into a courtroom that Jeffrey's not crazy. It's there in black and white, and it's not one smoking gun, but 10 smoking guns, one after another and another, and they're in Frank's own handwriting."

It was Wells' death, followed by Mr. Eisner's quadruple-bypass surgery three months later, which suddenly raised emotionally charged issues between the mentor, Mr. Eisner, and the protégé, Mr. Katzenberg, of power, loyalty and betrayal. The struggle between the two-Mr. Katzenberg wanted to be promoted into Wells' job; Mr. Eisner said No-transcended business and quickly became all too personal.

It could be argued that both men, while so clear-eyed when it comes to the art of the deal, have proven themselves blind in their postpartum attitude toward one another. For his part, Mr. Katzenberg has said repeatedly to his friends that he bears no personal animus toward Mr. Eisner, and that unlike three years ago, when he was very publicly furious, he has become a Zen master and learned to let it go.

Only a fool would believe that. Perhaps his real sentiments are expressed when he attributes more hot-blooded emotion to his wife of many years, Marilyn. Mr. Katzenberg, when dining with friends, has said that if Mr. Eisner were to walk in the door, he would go over and shake his hand. "But if Marilyn were here," he added, "she would pick up this fork, go over and stab him between the eyes. But then again, she's a Jewish girl from the Bronx."

Judge Ouderkirk seems the perfect choice to preside over all this acrimony. It's not just that he oversaw one of Los Angeles' most racially charged trials-that of three black men charged with the live-broadcast beating of truck driver Reginald Denny in South Central Los Angeles on the first day of the 1992 riots. More to the point was the judge's handling of a ghoulish scandal that rocked California's funeral home industry, in which a husband and wife were convicted for unlawfully removing eyes, hearts, lungs and brains from corpses. Judge Ouderkirk's experience with dismemberment should prove useful to him when and if Katzenberg v. Walt Disney Company comes before him on Nov. 18.