According to reports, Disney (NYSE: DIS) hasn't been satisfied with the Toon Disney cable channel. To be sure, you don't hear a lot of buzz about that property. Now, though, that's all about to change (in theory, at least), as Disney management is intent on turning this once relatively dull asset into a thriving franchise generator.

Make no mistake, this news about Disney XD should be important to shareholders (I am one, and will be watching this rebranding investment intently). That's the new name of the Disney Toon channel. Sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? Disney wants it to be cool so that it can appeal to boys. And that's the crux here: Disney Channel already has the girls market cornered. The Mouse wants to become more relevant to the male tween demographic. Don't think that the media company can't appeal to boys. It can, as the oft cited Cars example proves (I have no idea why that Pixar creation is such a hit with boys, but it doesn't matter what I think, it is). A major push is planned for XD, and the web will be utilized to great effect, as will Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes digital store and Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 Live service (this source talks about the strategy). Content will be distributed over these platforms and will be used to build brand equity; Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) FiOS will also be utilized to promote XD.

Not long ago, I wrote a little piece about The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) CEO Bob Iger. No, I'm not his biggest fan, and I have to say, I'm amazed that so many people revere him. Quite frankly, if you look at Disney's stock price, it is not representative of an unequivocal vote of confidence, in my opinion. Well, I'm here again to point out that Iger really has some explaining to do. Disney will be paying its annual dividend pretty soon (annual dividend, I hate those, it should be quarterly!). Here's the press release. The company plans on doling out $0.35 per share in spoils. But there's one huge problem, my friends. This is the same exact amount that was paid last year! And please note how in last year's press release Iger was crowing about the increase in the payout. Guess you're not that confident in the long-term fundamentals of your business, eh, Bobby? How else am I to interpret this move?

Oh, I know, we're in a credit crunch, recession, period of jobs-contraction, etc. If this were a movie, it would be called The Economic Calamity Horror, and the walls of all the institutions on Wall Street would be bleeding ectoplasmic ooze and there would be screams of warning from demonic voices to "get out!" of the stock market. I don't want to hear it, Disney. You could have raised your dividend. No, make that, you should have raised your dividend! At least 10%. Your dividend sucks as it is. As far as I'm concerned, Disney's cash-flow characteristics would have made a 10% increase feasible, even in this environment. Hey, I admit, I'm not on the inside, I don't see what he and the rest of the board sees in terms of what's coming down the pike. But, as far as I know, Disney isn't a financial company, and although it is certainly affected by what's going on, I don't think it needs to conserve capital like say a General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) needs to. GE has a ton of financial exposure. Disney simply isn't in the same league. I would love to know what better investment alternatives the board has at their corporate disposal that would make a dividend increase imprudent.

At the end of the day, Iger doesn't care about me and my little opinion. I know that. And I know many out there are simply wondering "why doesn't he just sell already?" Hey, maybe I will. I was hoping to hold Disney until I retired, but I need to see a better commitment to the dividend policy. I mean, not even a three-cent bump this year, Bob? Come on. I'm really amazed that there isn't more negative opinion out there about Disney's dividend. At least, I'm not aware of much. Jim Cramer did recently point out, however, that Disney's dividend doesn't amount to much. It certainly doesn't...

Disclosure: I own Disney, GE; positions can change without notice.

I was reading an article from Fortune yesterday about Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Bob Iger. When I got to the end of it, I had the biggest feeling of deja vu that I had ever experienced. Yes, I had heard it all before.

You've heard it all before, too, I'm willing to bet. Here's the basic gist of the piece: Bob Iger knows what he's doing. He's a genius. He's a creative powerhouse, a business wunderkind, a man who has studied the Disney brand, knows it inside and out, and is capable of leveraging that brand over multiple platforms to create immense economic value for shareholders. You know the examples,: you've got your Jonas Brothers, your Miley Cyrus, your Zac Efron and the whole High School Musical gang migrating from Disney Channel to concert stages to DVD releases to the silver Iger was the prescient exec who realized that Pixar should be acquired (take that, Michael Eisner!).

Only problem is, none of this seems to be working. I base this statement on the fact that Disney really hasn't broken out of a really long-term range. I honestly have to wonder if shareholders will ever see Disney at better than $50 per share in their lifetime. I can't be the only one wondering this. That's why I get a little annoyed when I read puff pieces like this one on Iger. Is he really that much of a visionary? And is he doing anything that original? Did he invent the concept of synergy? As far as I know, he did not. One of the main points of the article centered on the major franchises that Disney has going for it. Just once, I'd love to hear about Disney's plans to take one of its existing Disney Channel properties that has not hit franchise status and turn it into the next Hannah Montana phenomenon. To be fair, there may have been a few articles here and there on the subject, but none have studied it to my satisfaction, certainly.

I've been critical of Disney (NYSE: DIS) when it comes to some of the Mouse's moves in terms of content development. But, when I see something I approve of, I have no problem highlighting my feelings about it. Today is just such a day.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney does not want to help Walden Media make the next picture in the Chronicles of Narnia franchise. The studio teamed up with the production company on The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as the second feature, Prince Caspian. Although I'm certain that there will be Caspian DVDs under a lot of Christmas trees this holiday, I, along with everyone else, noticed back in the summer that the film delivered disappointing results at theaters. And then, Disney CEO Bob Iger tried to make excuses about the bad performance (CEOs are always trying to make excuses about one thing or another, it seems). Now, though, Iger is done synthesizing reasons for the failure of Caspian. Instead, he's passing on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I congratulate him on his decision.

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.

Get ready, Mouse fans. Disney (NYSE: DIS) will be letting Wall Street know this Thursday if its fourth quarter was a good one or not. A lot of eyes will be on the company. Shareholders will want to know the outlook for the theme parks and how the advertising marketplace is treating the company's media holdings. So far, things haven't been too bad at Disney, but many on Wall Street are expecting the recession is to catch up to the company. I expect this myself. So I'll be perusing the conference-call transcript for such items as guest spending at the parks and the quality of the scatter advertising market at ABC. I'll also be keeping my eye out for comments about the consumer-products segment and the company's investments in the video-game division. Disney is spending a lot on the latter, and I think shareholders need to have an idea of how the portfolio of games to be released during the holiday season is expected to perform. In terms of the former, I want to know if the Disney brand is working its magic in the retail channels.

In terms of the bottom line, Earnings.com says that income should be about $0.49 per share. That would represent growth of roughly 17%. I'd be happy with that double-digit number. And I'm pretty sure that estimates will be beat by a penny or two, knowing the company's reputation. But as a shareholder, I tend to be more interested in the cash-flow statement. I like to see how much free cash has been generated, and how the company is using it. In fact, we'll get the cash-flow number for the last twelve months this Thursday. I'll want to see how many shares have been repurchased, and I'll be interested in attempting to gauge what the next dividend increase is likely to be. Disney likes to take shares back as a way of rewarding shareholders, but management really needs to do a better job with the dividend, as I think it could be higher. I would expect that Disney will deliver a decent cash-flow statement.

And how are the Disney Channel franchises faring? Is Hannah Montana wearing out her welcome? Somehow, I don't think that will be the case; someday soon, sure, but not just now. And will the next High School Musical movie be released on the big screen with a new cast? I would appreciate one of the analysts out there inquiring about that. The whole Disney-Channel-incubator thing has been a powerful force for both the company and the brand, and I'm sure CEO Bob Iger will be crowing about it. But I'd love to know what his spreadsheets are saying about the longevity at this point for the current franchises. Will Disney know when it's time to sell out of one fad and invest in another? For that matter, how are the Jonas Brothers doing? We do hear about them, but they don't have the same iconic value of a Miley Cyrus, do they? They don't to me, at least, but maybe I'm just out of the loop. Iger should explain what plans the company has to turn them into the next truly big thing.

Here's an idea for you: Disney (NYSE: DIS) should consider buying Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS). No, I didn't come up with the concept. It came from Martin Peers over at The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Although this is an interesting idea, I can tell you that as a Disney shareholder, I absolutely disagree with it. In fact, I have to wonder if any Disney shareholder in their right mind could possibly be supportive of such an idea.

Buy EA? The author must have been kidding, right? Honestly, that would be one of the worst things that CEO Bob Iger could do. I really don't think it would happen, but then again, I never thought we'd see a hellish financial implosion based on a crisis of confidence precipitated by the popping of a housing bubble to end all housing bubbles.

Yep, strange days beget strange things, and the notion that the Mouse should invest in EA is perhaps one of the stranger beasts to walk Wall Street. Although the author does make a case that EA is cheap, I shudder to think about how Iger would possibly integrate the publisher into his conglomerate. Disney already has made significant investments in the video-game industry, and many of the games that the company releases are based on intellectual properties that have already been incubated in other parts of the business. Imagine if Disney had to deal with a larger, more complex pipeline, one that would obviously contain a lot of properties that could not be used in, say, the theme parks or by the movie studio. Personally, I think it would be a distraction to Disney.

I'm sure there are a few out there who are sick of my complaining over the failure of Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Prince Caspian film. But, I just had to write about recent comments made by CEO Bob Iger on the subject at a conference.

Okay, in Iger's mind, the reason Caspian failed is because it is a pretty competitive multiplex out there. He feels there are "too many movies being released." He also thinks the marketplace is "very delicate, very fragile." The Mouse CEO also highlighted the fact that Disney has cut back on movie production in recent years and is therefore hopefully making better decisions about the cinematic concepts it backs.

These comments sound like excuses, Bob. Sure, it's competitive out there. Marvel's (NYSE: MVL) Iron Man and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are certainly overshadowing the brand equity of Caspian. But, is that the real reason the movie performed as poorly as it did? An interesting little note in the article is that Disney originally was going to use the same releasing strategy for Caspian as it did for the first Narnia epic. The studio intended on opening the sequel during the most recent Christmas season. But, here's why it didn't: producing partner Walden Media was opening its own movie at that time, one that was being distributed by Sony (NYSE: SNE).

The box-office results are in, and I don't think there's any surprise concerning which film took the top honors this Memorial Day. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, distributed by Viacom (NYSE: VIA), took in $126 million over the four-day weekend at domestic theaters, according to Boxofficemojo. Taking into account Thursday showings, Skull has so far grossed about $151 million. These aren't record numbers as far as I know, but they certainly were high enough to displace Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Prince Caspian flick from the number-one position. The movie captured about $28.6 million at the multiplexes, good for second place; up to now, the Narnia sequel has a total tally of around $96 million.

Which is completely unacceptable to Disney shareholders (I'm one of the disappointed, and I wrote about my disappointment last week). Consider that the Memorial Day weekend is done, and that this is the second weekend for the project. To not crack $100 million domestically for a movie brand that was supposed to be strong considering the business that the first Narnia did back in winter 2005 should be troubling to Bob Iger.

At least Iron Man is around to cheer me up. The Marvel (NYSE: MVL) masterpiece is still in the top five at number three and has now enjoyed a $257 million take. I own shares in Marvel, so I'm glad the picture is offering some balance to Disney's relative flop. News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) What Happens in Vegas and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Speed Racer took up fourth and fifth place, respectively. I suppose I shouldn't complain; Time Warner shareholders must put up with the fact that Speed Racer hasn't even cracked $40 million yet. Maybe that's the true bomb of the summer.

Look out, DreamWorks Animation (NYSE: DWA) -- your arch enemy, Disney (NYSE: DIS), wants to be king of animation at the cinema over the next few years. Actually, I suppose other companies who produce animation, such as Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA), should watch out as well.

According to a Disney press release, ten cartoons will be released through 2012. The lineup sounds pretty impressive. We'll be seeing the third Toy Story movie in the summer of 2010, and two years later, audiences will be revving up for a Cars sequel. During the holiday season of 2011, a Pixar fairy tale called "The Bear and the Bow" will be weaving its magic (hopefully) in the multiplexes, which is interesting, because during the summer of that same year, Pixar will be releasing something called "newt", so fans will get two Pixar properties three years from now. Other animated projects include Bolt, which will use the voice talents of John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, and The Princess and the Frog.

Whew, there was a lot of cool intellectual properties in that press release, and as a Disney shareholder, I am excited at the prospects. But this isn't just about a bunch of cartoons, my friends -- not at all. This is a huge test for Bob Iger. Was he correct in spending billions to acquire Pixar and its talent trust, specifically John Lasseter? Mr. Lasseter, the chief creative officer for both Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Animation Studios, has a lot of pressure weighing down upon his shoulders. Not sure if he would actually admit that, but he does. He's the man who's supposed to see Disney's animation assets into the future, to bring Disney's animation brand back to prominence. Many people thought that Disney was losing its way in terms of traditional animation; to add insult to injury, some were questioning whether Pixar, when it wasn't part of Disney proper, was what Disney used to be -- innovative in its creativity, obsessed with quality, and driven to provide a moving experience for animation fans whenever they sat before the silver screen.

So, we'll see whether those billions invested in the Pixar acquisition truly will reap stellar returns on invested capital. It will be the performance of the non-Pixar films that will tell the tale.

Disclosure: I own shares of Disney; positions can change at any time.

Ah, the writer's strike is coming to an end, as Douglas McIntyre discussed over the weekend. Media companies like Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) are probably happy to put this work stoppage behind them. And as a shareholder of Disney (NYSE: DIS) and the conglomerate behind NBC Universal, General Electric (NYSE: GE), I should be pleased.

Yeah, I suppose I am, for the most part, but there's a side to me that was really ticked off during this whole affair. To be completely blunt, I'm not sure that screenwriters have such a unique talent, and I'm not sure that they deserve residuals at all. Let's be honest -- when a studio puts up capital to generate a filmed entertainment product, the only entity taking on risk is the studio, plus any partner(s) that the studio has lined up to further distribute the risk. Writers aren't taking on any risk -- they're simply getting paid to do a job that a lot of people can do. You, sir or madam, reading this post, probably have the ability to write a script. I just don't buy the notion that studios have to shell out residual payments, above and beyond a flat fee, to screenwriters for their work. The Hollywood movie industry is risky enough as it is -- there's really no way that anyone from Michael Eisner to Bob Iger to Peter Guber to Harvey Weinstein, can predict what will be a hit and what won't. It just can't be done. Millions can be spent on the development of a script, only to see such a sum wasted when it doesn't translate to the big or small screen.

The Consumer Electronics Show yesterday got what they wanted in a keynote speaker -- a big name. But did Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) CEO Bob Iger accomplish anything at the CES other than filling auditorium seats? Not likely.

Iger introduced Disney's new website, which he called "Disney.com on steroids." The new site will make Disney shows and characters easier to find, add Web 2.0 widgets and channels, and allow users to create their own personal channels.

This sounds promising, but there is a caveat. Disney, which seeks to avoid controversy at all costs, is playing it safe, not allowing users to upload information on the personal channels. So the personal channels will be anything but, similar in that aspect to a failed experiment by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) not that long ago. The rest of the changes are nice, but making the Disney characters easier to find on the website is hardly going to be a big traffic builder.

Technology companies succeed by being edgy and charging onto the scene without heed to danger (See: MySpace, YouTube), not by being vanilla and playing it safe as Disney, in typical fashion for them, is doing.

I don't fault Disney for protecting its sugar-coated image; it has built up a tremendous children's brand over a period of generations. But if Disney isn't willing to go all the way, it should step out of the way and let the real innovators use the web to its full potential.

One interesting note about the iTV that hasn't received all that much analysis as one would expect in the general media is the fact that the iTV has a small hard drive in it. Disney's Bob Iger let this little aside drop during a Goldman Sachs conference where the big announcement was how many Disney movies had been sold through iTunes in the first week.

The implication of the iTV device having a hard drive is interesting, because it beefs up the iTV's media capability. This isn't just an iTunes streaming device, but a competitor to digital video recorders like TiVo. Add to that this Roughly Drafted article that points out that the iTV has a HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) and you can see that Apple is going after a rich multimedia experience and that this is not a simple wireless settop box.

Mr. Iger even makes such a reference when he says at the same conference that "...it may be an opportunity to actually charge people for a TVR experience. In that if they've forgotten to set their TiVo device or their TVR or they just have no plan to do it but they want to watch an episode that they missed, they can go to iTunes, buy it for $1.99..."

Now, the iTV doesn't show signs of being able to snag cable content like your average DVR, which makes it not quite the universal replacement device. But it will be interesting to see how large the hard drive will be, and whether iTV will be able to be modified to work as a DVR by 3rd party programs or even Apple itself thanks to the hard drive. All this makes for iTV being a very interesting salvo in Apple's battle to become a media company with media solutions, and certainly an exciting development in Apple's quest to become the center of the digital entertainment arena, linking both the traditional entertainment area and the new.

Will iTV be able to solidly compete with DVRs, or will it just be an addition for the iTunes faithful? And will you be buying one?

Tobias Buckell is a freelancer, author, professional blogger, and owns shares in Apple stock.