(FORTUNE Magazine) – MICHAEL EISNER

What took him so long? While other moguls were assembling powerful arrays of media businesses, the CEO of Walt Disney kept roaring that his company was a premier content provider and had no need of additional distribution clout. Although the company's profits continued to soar thanks to animated hits like The Lion King, some Hollywood insiders began to view Eisner, 53, as an emerging also-ran, too cheap or too timid to do a big deal, and strategically weak compared with other entertainment conglomerators like Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and Gerald Levin.

Then, in early August, Disney's $19 billion merger with Capital Cities/ABC answered Eisner's critics--at least for now. This shrewd pairing makes the combined company a top player in content and distribution. Disney can now market its movies, prime-time TV shows, and cartoons over Cap Cities' top-rated TV network and globe-spanning ESPN sports channel, both distributors, not creators, of entertainment. Explaining his about-face to reporters, Eisner mangled Ralph Waldo Emerson, saying, "Being totally consistent is kind of boring." Fair enough. But if Eisner had done this deal in 1992 instead of sticking to his content strategy, he might have saved his shareholders billions.

Maybe Eisner's diffidence was just a negotiating ploy all along, or maybe he changed. During the past year, Disney's CEO has faced death, losing Frank Wells, his esteemed second-in-command, to a helicopter crash and surviving a quadruple-bypass coronary operation himself. Disney, too, experienced its vulnerability, as key executives defected to DreamWorks and other competitors. Whatever the cause, Eisner found the courage to confront a truth he had long denied, ensuring Disney its place among the media elite and proving yet again that he is one of the more talented executives of his time.

SUMNER REDSTONE

He started out in life ahead of the pack, with a small, Boston-based chain of movie theaters inherited from his father, a degree from the Harvard law school, and a determination so ferocious that he survived a hotel fire by hanging from a third-floor window ledge while flames seared his hands. Redstone, now 72, has made the most of his good fortune, building the family business into a quarter ownership of Viacom, the $10.1-billion-a-year media powerhouse that owns the Paramount movie and TV studio, Blockbuster video stores, MTV cable networks, and Simon & Schuster publishing. Redstone's Viacom stake is worth about $4 billion.

Crusty and smart, the young Redstone made a powerhouse of National Amusements, his theater chain, by siting new theaters at intersections of major highways. Redstone came into public view in 1987, when he mounted a leveraged buyout of Viacom, an operator of cable TV systems that CBS had spun off. Viacom had recently bought the MTV and Nickelodeon cable channels from Warner Communications for $500 million, one-twelfth their estimated value today. After years spent growing the business and paying off debt, Redstone lunged last year, spending $17.5 billion for Paramount and Blockbuster.

Using Paramount's Star Trek: Voyager TV show as a base, Viacom in 1993 joined broadcaster Chris Craft to create a startup TV network called UPN. Though modestly successful, UPN looks puny compared with Disney's ABC. You shouldn't be surprised if the man on the mountaintop finds a way to haul up a network more his size.

RUPERT MURDOCH

Don't play cards with this guy: He bets big, breaks all the rules, and usually wins. Murdoch, 64, is CEO and one-third owner of Australia's News Corp., whose revenues last year reached $9 billion. He doesn't seem to care what you think of him, having imported British-style sleaze journalism to his U.S. newspapers and Fox TV group. Murdoch recently hobbled CBS by snatching rights to NFL football games and by stealing several of its key affiliated stations. In July the FCC confirmed that News Corp.--despite regulations prohibiting foreign corporations from station ownership--may own America's fourth-largest TV station group.

Unfortunately for his competitors, there's more to Murdoch than rapacity and guile. No one can match his foresight about the future of media, his adventurous dealmaking, and his entrepreneurial brio. Starting with an inherited newspaper chain, Murdoch in 1985 bought the Twentieth Century Fox movie studio, and acquired Metromedia's TV stations for $1.5 billion. With those stations as a foundation, he created the successful Fox TV network, betting that a strong distribution system would attract the programming he needed.

Thanks to prescient investments in satellite-based TV networks in Europe and Asia, News Corp. is close to creating the first truly global TV-distribution system. That's a priceless advantage: Most of the world's 1.2 billion TVs are located beyond the U.S. border, and their number has tripled from ten years ago. That's why, despite Disney's breakthrough deal, Murdoch remains unrivaled as the mogul best positioned to prosper from growing global demand for entertainment.

GERALD LEVIN

Scholarly and reserved, Time Warner's deep-browed CEO helped assemble an unparalleled collection of media assets, yet has extracted less value from them than many shareholders hoped. At $43 per share, the company's stock recently traded for less than Time Inc. alone had sold for in 1989. Spurning Paramount's hostile offer, Time Inc. loaded on debt in a $14 billion merger with Warner Communications. The corporation owns more than its share of market leaders such as the Warner Bros. studio, Warner Music, and Home Box Office, plus vast cable systems and Time Inc. magazines from People to FORTUNE.

The conundrum puzzling Levin, 56, is one Eisner soon will face at ABC: how to get past the hype about synergy and make it happen. Despite such triumphs as Batman Forever, a $1 billion multimedia bonanza, Time Warner generally has not been able to make its many autonomous business units work together on a large scale. Thus the leaders of Warner Bros., who started the fledgling WB TV network, opposed Levin last year when he considered buying part of NBC from its owner, General Electric. Their strategy, which prevailed, now seems questionable in light of the Disney-Cap Cities deal.

Embattled though he is, Levin remains a formidable chess player. His huge investments in cable TV systems, lately unpopular with investors, could prove stunningly profitable if Congress deregulates cable pricing as planned. Attacking the company's fiefdoms, Levin recently ousted the rebellious leadership of Warner Music. And he has promised to restructure the company and reduce debt.