MediaFile

The Walt Disney Co drew kudos from analysts in an otherwise dismal earnings report for breaking out results for its Interactive Media Group for the first time.

The unit, made up of its console, mobile and online gaming operations and Disney.com, turned in an 18 percent revenue increase but operating profit dropped after the soft retail environment, competition for consumers’ time and Disney’s “substantial” investment in the product lines were factored in.

The decision to break out the unit’s results — it comprises just 3 percent of Disney’s total revenue, according to one analyst — came in the same quarter in which Disney CEO Bob Iger warned investors that its older media businesses — DVD sales and broadcast television — face “secular changes” from which they may never recover.

Disney CFO Tom Staggs said the company plans to invest upwards of $200 million in video games development in 2009, and a more “modest” increase in spending on Disney.com and in virtual worlds like Club Penguin.

The new transparency by the often tactiturn Disney management struck Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente as a good thing in a “modestly disappointing” first quarter earnings report.

Is it really giving if the money you’re shelling out for charity isn’t real? The 6- to 14-year-olds that Disney is targeting in a Dec. 12-22 charity drive on its social networking Club Penguin Web site probably would answer an emphatic “Yes!” to that existential poser.

That’s because donating the make-believe coins they earn playing games on Club Penguin to charities like the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund – two beneficiaries of past penguin largesse — means less “money” to spend in the snowy virtual world on rugs and armchairs for their igloos, or hairdos and clothes for their penguins. Talk about a painful choice!

Kids who donate will actually be voting on which of three real-world causes to support, and their giving will determine how the New Horizon Foundation, whose principals started Club Penguin, splits up a $1 million donation to charities that represent those causes. During last year’s 10-day campaign, 2.5 million kids ponied up more than 2 billion virtual coins to help other children around the world, New Horizon’s Lane Merrifield said.