Mr. Staggs: It's been an interesting year, obviously, for us and a lot of other people. We were in a softening economy before the events of September 11, and that exacerbated the situation. But things have progressed about as we would have expected and hoped they would, so we're feeling pretty upbeat about the direction of things at this point in time.
TWST: Has the competitive landscape been altered at all by events
lately?
Mr. Staggs: I wouldn't say the competitive landscape. It's really
been more the economic landscape. The economic downturn didn't
change our competitive position in any fundamental ways.
TWST: What segment of the business operations do you think was
affected the most?
Mr. Staggs: Clearly theme parks, and to an extent the advertising
businesses, which for us are the ABC Television Network and our
cable operations. We had some ratings declines in the network
that had an effect as well. So the combination of those two hurt
us a little bit, but now I think we're taking the right steps to
come out the other side and to recover pretty dramatically.
Tickers included in this excerpt: DIS
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