Well, thanks a lot, Disney (NYSE: DIS), for making a liar out of me. I thought the media company would beat earnings expectations for the fiscal fourth quarter. It didn't. Net income on an adjusted basis was $0.43 per share. Wall Street thought the Mouse was good for $0.49. And there wasn't much growth quality to the bottom line, either. Disney only managed to increase it by a single solitary penny. Alas.

Shareholders can console themselves with the 18% growth seen in the adjusted per-share earnings for the full year. However, they won't be too pleased by the 38% drop seen in Q4 free cash flow. And the 1% gain in free cash flow for the year isn't going to make any investor jump for joy. Disney's operating segments struggled during the quarter, save for consumer products, which saw its top and bottom lines expand. Looks like merchandise based on Hannah Montana and High School Musical are still performing (for now).

Make no mistake about it, I'm disappointed. I'm a shareholder, so I've got money behind CEO Bob Iger's vision. And it looks like not even he can make the recession go away. It clearly is affecting Disney. And it clearly will continue to affect Disney. All he can do now is manage the pain for shareholders. Every single dollar should be looked at before it is spent. Do I have confidence that Iger is up to the task? I think he'll do a reasonably good job, but quite frankly, that isn't good enough. The best thing Iger could do at this grave economic juncture is reward shareholders with a much higher annual dividend and, perhaps more importantly, a special dividend. If you're a long-term shareholder in this market environment, you definitely want to be paid to wait.