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Michael Eisner (born in 1942) grew up in New York, where he attended several private schools. He studied at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, starting as a premed student before changing his major to English.
While at university, he started working during the summer vacations as a page boy at NBC, and fell in love with the entertainment business. His main responsibilities were answering phones, running errands and giving studio tours. That, in turn, led to a job as a Federal Communications Corp. logging clerk at NBC for $65 a week when he graduated from university. On weekends, he got a part-time job doing traffic reports for WNBC Radio in New York.
Three months later, he applied for a new job at CBS as liaison between the programming and sales departments for the Saturday morning children’s schedule. The new job meant a great pay increase – all the way to $140 a week. He also spent his spare time developing his idea for a prime time show – which was rejected by more than 75 companies.
In 1966, Eisner landed a new job at ABC as an assistant to the national program director where he read scripts, developed new ideas for shows and started to learn more about the television industry.
“At ABC, I was achievement-conscious more than image conscious. My tie was invariably askew, my suits never quite hung right and my hair always had a mind of its own. Competitive as I was, I never became involved in corporate politics in the sense of trying to figure out what the guy in the next office was up to, or showing up at the right restaurants, or attempting to ingratiate myself with my bosses by figuring out what they wanted to hear.”
– Michael Eisner
By mid-1968, Eisner was promoted to the position of director of East Coast prime-time development. This was followed by another promotion the next year to director, feature films and program development, working under Barry Diller. He then moved to a position as executive assistant for Marty Starger, the head of programming at BAC.
Michael Eisner’s next promotion was to head of daytime and children’s programming in 1971. Even though this wasn’t considered a high status job, Eisner had pushed for it since he recognized daytime TV programming was a huge profit center for ABC, and he would finally have the responsibility to make some creative decisions. And, best of all, ABC was last in the daytime ratings, so he figured you couldn’t fall off the floor.
After achieving some success with developing new shows and increasing ratings, Eisner, in 1973, moved to Los Angeles to take up a position as vice-president of prime time development for ABC. When Barry Diller was hired away from ABC to become chairman of Paramount Pictures, Eisner worked closely with Fred Pierce on developing new shows for ABC’s prime time line up.
After a few successful years in that role, Diller offered Eisner a job as president of Paramount Pictures. It was an irresistible opportunity, so at the age of 34, Eisner left ABC and took up the new position.
Paramount Pictures was owned by Gulf & Western. When the CEO of Gulf & Western, Charlie Bluhdorn died in 1983, Eisner and Diller were forced to work with the new CEO of Gulf & Western, Marty Davis. They didn’t get along well, and Diller left Paramount to become CEO of Fox and Eisner was approached to consider becoming chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 1984 at age 42..