Disney Channel is an American television channel owned by the Walt Disney Company. These are channels for children but also for the family. They all depend on Walt Disney Television and have programming that “tries to be the guardian of family values”. However, they do not necessarily belong to Walt Disney Television. Thus European companies are financially owned by national or transnational companies (Benelux), with pan-European programme management.
Since 2002, the channel has also become a digital cable and satellite “bouquet” of three channels, available as a pay-TV option.
Before launching a Disney television channel, Walt Disney had considered in March 1950 the production of his own television programs, a simple broadcasting of short animated films, an idea proposed to his brother Roy. Starting in 1950, at the request of NBC, Disney produced a special television show called One Hour in Wonderland, based on the Mickey principle and the Magic Bean of the Spring Rascal (1947) presented by Edgar Bergen and his puppets Mortimer Snerd and Charlie McCarthy.
In 1981, an internal study including an inventory established that the studio owned 250 feature films, 456 short animated films and 27 years of television programs, most of which had never been rebroadcast. Jim Jimirro, director of the new markets department, proposed that Disney’s management create its own television channel3. The project will take two years to complete.