Walt Disney completed its $71bn acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s
entertainments assets, and now must get to the task of squeezing out
promised cost savings, an effort that will lead to thousands of
redundancies in the film and TV business.
With the deal, Disney takes over a portfolio that includes the
104-year-old 20th Century Fox studio, the FX and National Geographic
cable networks, and an additional 30% of Hulu, the online video service.
To make the deal
work financially and support the company’s costly
efforts to compete with Netflix, CEO Bob Iger has promised $2bn in cost
savings, a commitment that all but assures epic job cuts.
The deal is one of the most dramatic in the current wave of
entertainment-industry mergers, shrinking the number of major Hollywood
studios to five from six and putting the irreverent Homer Simpson and Family Guy
in the same stable of cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald
Duck. The closing follows a nearly two-year effort that included a
bidding war and regulatory compromises from Brussels to Brasilia.
Underscoring the looming human cost, Disney is taking on 15,400 Fox
employees, while the smaller, new Fox Corporation will keep about 7,000.
Last August, executives at Burbank, California-based Disney said they
would achieve their targeted savings over two years, with the US
operations bearing the brunt early on. The Hollywood Reporter said last
month that 4,000 jobs would be lost.
“You can anticipate more domestic at the front end, just because of
regulatory issues outside of the US,” CFO Christine McCarthy said on the
August call. In other words, it will be easier to cut workers at home
first.
Already the largest entertainment company in the world, Disney
emerges with more clout to negotiate everything from the fees it gets
from cable TV operators to the share of ticket revenue at movie
theaters. The sale represents the end of an era for Rupert Murdoch, the
media mogul who steered the Fox studio for nearly four decades.
Under the terms of the deal, Fox shareholders will receive $38 a
share in cash or Disney stock. They also get stock in the new Fox, led
by Murdoch’s older son Lachlan. That company will continue to operate
Fox News, the Fox broadcast network and Fox Sports 1. It will be focused
on news and sports — live programming that is seen as less vulnerable
to viewer losses in a streaming age — and also plans to ramp up its
production of scripted shows designed to appeal to a broad demographic.
Iger’s gamble
At its heart, the merger marks a huge bet that Iger can establish a
direct connection to consumers, sell them multiple monthly subscriptions
to watch Disney programmes, and up-end the traditional model in which
network owners collect fees for their content from pay-TV operators.
Last April, Disney launched ESPN+, a $5-a-month sports streaming
service that has already passed 2-million subscribers. Hulu, in which
Disney acquires majority control, will be focused on more adult-oriented
fare, such as that produced by Fox’s FX network and its Oscar-winning
Fox Searchlight film studio. Later this year, the company will introduce
Disney+, a family-focused streaming service that Iger has said will be
the home of all of the classic Disney films, as well as original
content.
Video focus
Much as Iger built Disney’s film studio into the industry leader by
acquiring Pixar’s animation, Marvel Entertainment’s superheroes and
Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series, the Fox acquisition will bring
new characters and franchises. Disney’s CEO said at the March 7 annual
meeting, for example, that a sequel to Fox’s Avatar, the top-grossing movie in history, will be delivered in late 2020.
Iger has said he plans to continue to operate 20th Century Fox, Fox
Searchlight and other film labels, many of which release the kind of
R-rated films that Disney previously stayed away from.
Disney’s new assets also include the powerhouse Fox TV studio, responsible for hits such as Homeland on Showtime, This Is Us on NBC and Empire
on the Fox network. Personnel decisions over the past few months
reflect a virtual Fox takeover of Disney’s TV business, with Fox
president Peter Rice overseeing the combined company’s entertainment
channels and TV studio chief Dana Walden leading production. FX’s John
Landgraf continues in his role.
High costs
Iger’s gamble is far from a sure thing. In addition to the cost of
starting, marketing and running new streaming services, Disney is giving
up revenue it could have made by selling its movies and TV shows to
rivals. A deal with Netflix expired last year, for example, and Disney
has said revenue lost from licensing content will cut operating income
by $150m this year.
The Fox deal, which was first officially announced in December 2017,
led to a bidding war with Comcast. Disney warded off its rival suitor,
but had to pay about about 36% more for Fox under new terms announced
last June. Comcast, meanwhile, won Fox’s stake in Sky and ultimately
took over the satellite TV service in Europe.
To win the blessing of regulators, Disney agreed to sell 22 Fox
regional sports networks in the US, its half of the A&E channels in
Europe and Fox’s sports network in Brazil.
- Bloomberg
No comments:
Post a Comment