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Milad Malakooti
CST 300 Writing Lab
26 January 2021

Disney Industry Analysis

Thanks to technology, the entertainment industry has grown tremendously in the last

decade. It is now a significant income source for many people, and it is also one of the most

critical industries in our society. One of the most popular and yet successful companies that play

an essential role is Disney. On October 16, 1923, Disney was initially founded by brothers Walt

and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood (Disney Website, n.d.).

Disney is considered one of the major companies in the entertainment industry, and it is one of

the pioneers in many ways. Disney produced the first animation with fully synchronized sound.

Disney Studios produced the first feature-length animated film, "Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs." Disney also created the famous cartoon "Toy Story 1" (1995), which is the first

computer-animated film (Rindskopf, 2018). Disney always used first-hand technology, which

made it the pioneer in many ways. Disney has become successful, powerful, and wealthy enough

to buy other companies in the industry. Some of the major studios Disney owns are Pixar

Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm Ltd. (Publisher Zacks, 2017).

As explained, Disney is powerful enough just by considering its productions and the

companies owned, but there is more. Disney has stores in North America, Europe, and Japan, as

well as an online store that makes it easy for Disney fans to purchase the company's products

from anywhere in the world. Disney also owns theme parks and resorts. Disneyland, Disney

California Adventure, Downtown Disney, and Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel are some of Disney's

theme parks and resorts. Arguably, the cartoon movies' production featuring the character

"Mickey Mouse" is what made the company famous. Despite the first two films featuring
Mickey Mouse not being successful, the third one, "Steamboat Willie," which integrated sound

besides the animation, was a huge success (Beattie, 2020). In the presiding years, Disney

ventured into the creation of full-length cartoon movies and the integration of color into its

cartoon films, making it the first company to achieve tremendous success in the cartoon

industry.

As Beattie (2020) indicates, in March 2019, Disney bought all the media assets of 21st

Century Fox, making it the largest media company in the world. Despite the company's

tremendous success, it faces considerable competition from other entertainment powerhouses,

including Time Warner and CBS. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is an American entertainment

company founded in 1923 (Britannica, 2020). Four brothers, Harry Warner, Albert Warner,

Samuel Warner, and Jack Warner founded the company and produced the Jazz Singer film in

1927, which was a huge success. The company would later produce the animated short film

Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes became a successful title, favorably competing with Disney's

Mickey Mouse. As Young (2020) indicates, the introduction of Looney Tunes made Disney's

long domination of the cartoon industry weaken with Looney Tunes characters becoming more

popular. Years later, the companies continue fighting for dominance, with both of them releasing

blockbuster movies. Warner Bros Inc. remains one of Disney's primary competition in the

contemporary era.

Atkins (2020) brands Disney as "an innovator, an entrepreneur, a film producer, and an

original imaginer." Disney started with black and white cartoons that were mainly without any

form of dialogue. Then they produced a full-color animated movie, “Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs,” which is considered the company's technological breakthrough (Atkins, 2020). The

film, which was warmly received by the audience, shaped the company's future. The opening of
Disneyland, an amusement park project by Disney, in 1955 changed everything for the company,

as new entertainment alternatives were being reimagined. However, while Disneyland provided

incredible sources of amusement and enjoyment for its customers, the advancements in

technology begun threatening the existence of the amusement park (Jochem, 2020).

Technological innovations led to the company introducing the digital wristband (the

MagicBand), which eliminated the need to carry different accessories to access various services

in the park and streamlined the park's experience (Jochem, 2020). Besides the MagicBand,

Disney has also ventured into and accomplished auto animatronics technology in its movie

production. The injection of Artificial Intelligence into Disney's animatronics has made the

production lifelike and more appealing to the audience. Another significant technological

development is the use of robots for stunts (Atkins, 2020). This has changed the production

process and the audience experience from science fiction movies such as Avengers.

Another major success from Disney is the Disney Channel. The channel began

broadcasting in April 1983, showing episodes from Mickey Mouse Club. At the start of the

Disney Channel, it was airing its animations from 7 am to 1 am. However, it moved to air 24

hours in December 1986. Over the years, the channel has changed what they air and its logo to

mark new starts. This is partly due to the recent technology trends around the world and user

preferences. Currently, the channel schedules the programs that it airs depending on what

appeals to the users. The channel also produces some of its own films, which have also recorded

significant success (Mittell, 2010). As Mittell (2010) indicates, the channel is primarily intended

for toddlers, young children, teens, and young adolescents. However, the channel has gained

significant popularity in other audiences outside the target audience. Despite the popularity that

the channel gained in the past, statistics by Stoll (2021) indicate that the company continues
suffering a decrease in viewership yearly. In 2014 the channel had an average of 2 million

viewers in the United States, however, as of 2020, the number of viewers dropped to

approximately 355 thousand. With the launch of the Disney Plus channel in late 2019, the

company accumulated millions of subscribers because it revolutionized the Disney Channel

experience.

As indicated by Solsman (2021), Disney Plus is a giant hub that is used to stream most of

Disney's productions. The hub streams movies from Disney owned companies, including Marvel

studio, Pixar, Star Wars, as well as films and cartoons from Disney. The conception of the

Disney Plus Channel was mainly as a result of the Disney Channel's falling support. As opposed

to the Disney Channel, which streamed mostly kids' content, Disney Plus includes streams for

adults and kids. Disney Plus is an amalgamation of original programming and an accumulation

of exciting movies and TV shows, which has made it garner a lot of subscribers since its launch.

Arguably, Disney Plus is a game-changer when it comes to Disney competing with other popular

streaming services such as Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video.

Bob Chapek is the current CEO of the Walt Disney company as of February 25th of 2020,

before he became the CEO of Walt Disney, he was the chairman of Disney Parks, experiences

and products from February of 2015 to February 2020 (Disney Website, n.d.). In terms of

customer service, Morgan (2020) describes Disney as company with an amazing customer

service. Morgan continues that Disney has created an immersive experience for customers. Also,

Disney encourages its employees which are more than 130,000 employees to set their primary

goal make customers happy and spread happiness regardless of their position in Disney

company. This culture, makes customers always happy and makes Disney one of the most

popular company in the industry.

 As a software engineer, there are a lot of opportunities that can be found in the

entertainment industry. Some of these include; video software engineer, associate producer,

game producer, producer, broadcast application developer, game designer, associate game

designer, web designer, and audio producer. Every entertainment company needs the services of

a software engineer to incorporate technology into its operations effectively. The film industry

needs software engineers to perform services such as creating their websites to performing video

rendering and production. I am particularly interested in full-stack web development. A full-

stack web developer is an expert who can develop both client and server web software programs.

These people have a wide range of knowledge in different programming languages, including

JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, ASP, Python, SQL, and SQLite. The amalgamation of these different

programming languages gives them the ability to do front end, back end as well as database

programming virtually.

Server software development, also known as back end software development, is the

creation of web software to enable the software to receive information from users and store it in

databases. Back-end web development mainly focuses on how the website works. It includes

thousands of code lines, which enables the website to communicate with the database effectively.

Back-end web development requires a combination of one or more programming languages,

including PHP, ASP, C ++, Java, C#, Python, SQL, and Ruby.

On the other hand, front end web development or client-side development focuses

majorly on what the users see in their browser applications when they access the website. Front

end development constitutes the analyzing of code, designing, and debugging of applications, as

well as ensuring a smooth user experience. Front-end programming uses programming languages

including HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

 In addition to performing front end and back end development, there is also mobile app

development. Mobile app development is the process of writing applications that work on mobile

devices such as smartphones and tablets. It constitutes the use of programming languages such as

HTML5 and Java, as well as the designing, defining, and building of mobile products.

In order to qualify to be a full-stack web developer, I first need to finish up my bachelor’s

degree in computer science. The computer science degree will provide me with the foundation

for venturing into web development. Similarly, I will need proficiency with both front end and

back end web programming languages; thus, I will take short courses to master these skills more

because full stack web developers require database skills such as MySQL and Oracle. I will also

need the experience to prepare me for my job efficiently. As such, I will take an internship where

I will work under a supervisor, who will guide me through performing different jobs and prepare

me for my future task as a full stack web developer.

In order to prepare adequately for the position of a full-stack web developer, I will join

Disney's DevOps. DevOps is a combination of practices that work to systematize and integrate

the processes between software development and IT teams to enable them to build, test, and

release software faster and more consistently. Disney, being a leader in media, has adopted and

used technology strategically in its operations. The company has sufficiently adopted DevOps

practices to achieve its business goals. This includes automation, the collaboration between

different teams, and data-driven business acumen. Being among the experienced experts of

Disney technocrats will give me additional skills to make me ready for my position as a full

stack developer.

Disney also uses tech stack in its information technology ventures. A tech stack is a set of

technologies that the organization uses to build web and mobile applications. The web stack is a
set of programming languages, frameworks, patterns, servers, solutions, and tools primarily used

by its developers. Disney uses applications such as Backbone.js, underscore, Hogan.js to develop

its applications and to manage its data. It also uses CloudCheckr and AlertBot for its DevOps

operations. In order to prepare effectively for the full stack development, I will need to master

the company's full-stack protocols and programs.

Being a full-stack web developer at a big company like Disney is a venture that requires

both a high set of skills and competency. Disney has remained at the top when it comes to

content that they offer their customers. And with the adoption of technology into its operations, it

continues to garner more customers. The company needs web and mobile app developers to

advance its content to customers. The customers depend on these developers' creativity to get a

smooth experience when they are interacting with the content provided by Disney.
 References
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c3116bee776d

Beattie, A. (2020, July 26). Walt Disney: How entertainment became an

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entertainment-to-empire.asp

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Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friz-Freleng

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World from PRX. https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-17/how-whole-new-world-

technology-reinvented-disney

Mittell, J. (2010, December 3). Disney

channel. https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/FMMC0104/Disney_Channel

Morgan, B. (2020, January 24). 5 Lessons From Disney’s Magical Customer Experience. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/01/23/5-lessons-from-disneys-magical-

customer-experience/?sh=33aee6875558

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January 29, 2021, from https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/your-complete-guide-all-

things-owned-disney-2017-11-09

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https://blog.cheapism.com/disney-facts/
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Stoll, J. (2020, December 28). U.S.: Number of viewers of the Disney channel 2020.

Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/859487/disney-channel-viewers

The Walt Disney Studios website| History. (2018). The Walt Disney

Studios. https://www.waltdisneystudios.com/history/

Young, R. (2020, October 6). The history of the Disney vs. Warner Bros

feud. https://www.cinelinx.com/movie-news/movie-stuff/the-history-of-the-disney-vs-

warner-bros-feud/