BBC News' Angela Garvey interviews Michael Eisner about Disney's future

Michael Eisner, chairman and chief executive of Disney, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that his group plans to build another park near the existing Disneyland Paris site on the outskirts of the French capital.

The original Parisan venture has been turned around since its disastrous first few years in the early nineties. It is now along with its sister parks in the US reporting record attendances.

Mr Eisner said that the new park should be opened by 2002-3.

Michael Eisner: New Park should be open by 2003

"We have this great park and it is doing well, we have almost 13 million people go there and...what I don't want to do is trash it by building a second great park and having the whole thing be in trouble again.

"So what we are looking to do is to figure a way to grow into it, to have a better financial arrangment with France. We are a big employer in France now," Mr Eisner said.

"Some of the financing would come from just the success we now have of the first park, the excess cash flow," he added.

Disney's theme parks business may be booming but other parts of the empire are looking less healthy.

BBC News' Paul Charles reports on Disney's plans for a second tourist attraction

The last set of company results for the final quarter of 1998 showed an 18% drop in profits. That was the second quarter in a row to see a fall.

Disney films like Armageddon were successful but proved expensive to make.

However the real dip in profits came from the fall in sales at Disney stores worldwide and the drop in home video sales.

Beyond the film world, Walt Disney also owns ABC Television in the US.

This has also proved costly for the company. Income from ABC was down 48% in the last quarter, mainly because of the company buying the rights to the National Football League.

'Firing on all pistons'

But Mr Eisner told the BBC: "When you have as many assets as we now have....everything can't go to the sky at the same time.

"You may have a great year in our theme parks which we had this year, we may not be number one in prime time at ABC in the United States but we may be number one in news, which we are right now.

"We may have a great year with live film...we may not. We had Armageddon last year, it was very expensive but it did well. We had a couple of very expensive ones that haven't done well.

"There are just too many different pistons running at the same time that I can give you a blanket, well everything is great or everything is terrible."

In the meantime, the Disney chairman is concentrating on the future and the Internet.