Disney Nixes CNN Merger, Makes Bid for Drudge
September 24th, 2002 by Scott Ott
(2002-09-24) — Saying he needs a news operation that gets the big stories first, Disney’s Michael Eisner rejected a merger between his ABC News division and CNN, then announced he is folding the ABC News division and replacing it with The Drudge Report.
“It suddenly hit me,” said Eisner, “that this is potentially the biggest business news of the day, and neither CNN nor ABC News had it on their Web sites. Drudge had it. That’s the kind of news organization I want to own.”
However, Matt Drudge rebuffed several “generous” offers from Disney, and isn’t taking Eisner’s calls.
