Disney CEO: Won't Bid for AOL

Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger detailed several ways on Wednesday that Disney hopes to benefit from high-tech _ but one of them isn't buying AOL, which many expect to be for sale soon.

Iger said the company was still looking for new ways to adapt as people make greater use of technology to get entertainment, such as using searches on Google Inc. or downloading movies and TV shows from Apple Inc.'s iTunes service.

Speaking to a media conference in New York hosted by The McGraw-Hill Cos., which owns BusinessWeek magazine and Standard & Poor's, he left open the possibility of making acquisitions. But he ruled out Time Warner Inc.'s AOL as a purchase target.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has said AOL will separate its rapidly declining dial-up Internet service from its online portal and advertising platform, setting the stage for a sale of some or all of AOL, something investors have been clamoring for.

Iger steered clear of the other hot merger topic in the technology world, Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited overture of lagging Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc.

"We watch these things from afar," he said.

Iger said Disney had done fairly well in DVD sales despite the market "flattening," and he expects some lift from the emergence of Sony's Blu-ray format as the winner in a contest for next-generation DVDs formats, beating out a rival called HD-DVD.

Iger said the company has sold some 4 million movies and 40 to 50 million TV shows from its ABC network over iTunes in the arrangement's first 18 months _ without eating into the viewership of those programs on other channels.