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Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, now the backer of online entertainment studio Vuguru through his company Tornante, stopped by Microsoft's Advance08 this morning to deliver his diagnosis of what ails the entertainment business. Calling YouTube "old news," he says that storytelling online will inevitably progress from "the salacious and the stupid" (good luck with that). But he also pointed out that by enabling content producers, companies like Yahoo, Microsoft or News Corp. could create a competitor to the current distribution rackets:

It's a very small piece of their business, there are so many other things that are so important — search and other things. If they stay like that for another decade, I probably will have a big advantage in building a big company.

After the Terry Semel debacle at Yahoo, I'm not sure I'd buy into Eisner's suggestion, but as he pointed out, it's cheaper than trying to buy Yahoo. (Photo by Jason McELweenie)