Disney is purchasing 21st Century Fox to help them better compete in a new media world in which they’ve struggled to keep pace:
The Walt Disney Company said on Thursday that it had reached a deal to buy most of the assets of 21st Century Fox, the conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $52.4 billion.
They won’t, however, be purchasing the more newsy side of 21st Century Fox, including Fox News:
Not included in the acquisition: Fox News, the Fox broadcast network and the FS1 sports cable channel. Mr. Murdoch said he would spin those businesses and a handful of other cable networks into a newly listed company.
So why are they making this move?
But lately, like most of Hollywood, 20th Century Fox has struggled to keep pace with the changing way younger audiences view content — namely on an internet-connected device.
Disney now has enough muscle to become a true competitor to Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook in the fast-growing realm of online video.
Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, hopes 21st Century will supercharge its plans to introduce two Netflix-style streaming services. The company’s first major streaming effort, ESPN Plus, will arrive in the spring. A second and still unnamed offering, built around the company’s Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar brands, will roll out late next year. Rounding out its streaming portfolio will be Hulu, the already established service that focuses on older viewers with programming that includes ABC shows.
Mr. Iger is buying 21st Century Fox’s minority stake in Hulu, resulting in majority control of the streaming service by Disney, which previously owned 30 percent. Comcast and Time Warner also have stakes in Hulu.
What’s Ironic about all of this is that 19 years ago The Simpsons predicted that Disney would buy 21st Century Fox:
Way back in 1998, Homer ended up befriending Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger and later angers them in When You Dish Upon a Star. At the end of the episode, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer end up producing a script Homer had been pitching, which he does at what was then called 20th Century Fox.
A sign shown at Fox headquarters revealed that it’s “a division of Walt Disney Co.”
With the possibility of 20th Century Fox being sold to Disney, let me be one of the first to point out the Simpsons predicted it: pic.twitter.com/U1uN5VjiEp
— A Very Ryan W. Meady Christmas (@rwmead) November 6, 2017
Personally I already pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming services. And this is in addition to my AT&T Uverse. So now that Disney is getting into the mix of things with new services, competition is certainly increasing. I’m just worried that their offering might be so good that I end up subscribing to that one too! At some point I may have to dump one of these services, I just don’t know which!
I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.