Dirt, tires, exhaust, leaking oil. The stockyards half a mile away.
Ahhhh...good times.
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Iger floats possibility of Disney selling ABC
- Thread starter michael hagerty
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Ahhhh...good times.
Definitely
Everyone's watching the RSN situation first. The Diamond bankruptcy, coupled with the rise of replacements to AT&T and NBC Sports in the RSN business will have an effect on what happens to ESPN. I personally think the channel could be spun off into its own company. But any company needs access to money without additional debt.
Other way around. Comcast owns NBCUniversal.
What does John Malone have to do with this?
Still a regulatory complication in a merger. If WBD bought NBCUniversal from Comcast outright, then no.
Major stockholder and independent director of WBD:
Warner Bros. Discovery: John Malone's Thoughts (NASDAQ:WBD)
The current stock price of Warner Bros. Discovery does indicate a higher risk level. Read more to see John Malone's thoughts on WBD stock.
seekingalpha.com
The ABC Television network, for one.
That's ABC News (America This Morning, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, Primetime, 20/20, Nightline, This Week with George Stephanopoulos), ABC Sports (though that's been co-branded with ESPN in recent years), three hours of primetime entertainment seven nights a week, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Oscars, the Emmys, the American Music Awards and CMA Awards.
ABC also has its own film and television production departments.
It has the rights to films and TV shows, though Disney might want to hold onto those in a sale.
And ABC has online assets, as well.
There are also half a dozen or more buildings the network owns in New York City. Its West Coast operations are on the Disney lot, so there's no real estate involved there---they'd likely move eventually.
Which is based in the El Capitan Theater, owned by the WDC.
It would be a complicated sale. Extricating the assets of ABC from Disney would be difficult, and make operations by a buyer difficult. I think it would be easier to sell the recently acquired Fox assets.
Yeah, but Iger specifically mentioned selling ABC yesterday, not the FOX assets.
With an ABC Sale on the Table, Bob Iger Brings Disney Back to Dealmaking Business
If his first run as CEO was about addition, his second tenure is about subtraction.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to separate out the ABC assets from Disney.
The bulk of the NYC real estate at Lincoln Square is being sold off anyway as ABC prepares to move downtown. It's probably easier to sell ABC as a business without a lot of real estate, and with commercial office space demand slumping, a buyer could move what's left into leased space.
It goes full circle: ABC was only ever a tenant at 1330 Sixth Ave in its heyday, after all.
The bulk of the NYC real estate at Lincoln Square is being sold off anyway as ABC prepares to move downtown. It's probably easier to sell ABC as a business without a lot of real estate, and with commercial office space demand slumping, a buyer could move what's left into leased space.
It goes full circle: ABC was only ever a tenant at 1330 Sixth Ave in its heyday, after all.
And remember when 'talkies' started? How about those WWII newsreels?
Uh, wouldn't the smell of a drive-in be your own car?? My car at a drive-in always smelled great, especially if on a date.
They were out of there in 1986. Once they were bought by Cap Cities, they moved to the west side.
The easy sales would be TV stations in Raleigh, Fresno, Houston, and Philadelphia, all inherited from Cap Cities. Keep the core TV stations in NY, LA, and Chicago. At least for now.
Well, only if you're breaking the station group out of the network. Otherwise, you're suggesting Disney own three TV stations, but no network---three stations all alone that would go from O&O to affiliate.
Given that Iger says the TV assets---network and stations--- "may not be core " to Disney and "the distribution model, the business model that forms the underpinning of that business, and that has delivered great profits over the years, is definitely broken", I can't see why he would do that and why he wouldn't look for the easiest, one-stop sale of ABC, with the station group simply one of the divisions.
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No, the last "great" advantage of O&O was retransmission dollars from Cable. That's the part that is evaporating before our very eyes. Yes, you are right that news is ALSO going down, but it was really the retransmission dollars, that cost basically nothing to get, that is really rapidly declining and affecting the value of these assets. Same is true of the cable networks.
Excellent point. Totally zoned retrans fees. That was a goldmine.
Because who would buy it? I think we've seen the end of these blockbuster deals like Warner-Discovery. Those kinds of deals have not worked out well for the buyers. Discovery is a great example. They were seen as brilliant operators until they bought Warner. The only US companies with spare money are technology companies. Do they really want to weigh down their operation with techno-dinosaurs? The other option is the investment companies like Apollo. The mistake Disney made was taking on the additional debt by buying Fox. They were fortunate to get rid of the RSNs or that would have been another boondoggle.
We'll see. Facts in evidence:
* Iger says he's open to selling all TV assets.
* Malone said WBD would be open to a merger with NBCUniversal.
*The Hollywood Reporter piece I posted quotes one analyst who says private equity firms could be potential buyers.
The sloppiest way out is to do it piecemeal and get less for three TV stations three years from now than could be had today.
I mentioned Apollo. Iger is throwing ideas out there. He doesn't appear to be pursuing any of them. Malone is a stockholder, not the CEO. I've seen situations where one stockholder proposes an idea, and the others oppose, and it doesn't happen. The CEO will decide what WMD does, in consultation with the full board, not just one stockholder.
Unless the FCC lifts the national ownership caps, who would be a buyer for just a piece of the station group right now? The companies that are most aggressive in that space right now - Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray - are all at or near the 39 percent cap already and couldn't add any big market, unless it's as a duopoly for Nexstar.
And then there's Byron Allen, but would he have the cash?
If ABC were to go, it would have to be all in one piece. A buyer could then spin off little stuff like Fresno down the road.
And then there's Byron Allen, but would he have the cash?
If ABC were to go, it would have to be all in one piece. A buyer could then spin off little stuff like Fresno down the road.
Sorry. Missed the Apollo reference.
I don't think Iger is "throwing ideas out there". It was a calculated comment, in a live interview on CNBC at the Allen & Co. annual conference, likely designed to get the phone ringing, or conversations started on the spot, from interested parties (the Allen & Co. conference has been called "Summer camp for billionaires").
You're underestimating Malone, who's widely considered the power behind the throne at WBD. It's him and Zaslav, who've been working together since Malone himself hired Zaslav to run Discovery 17 years ago.
That said, there are a lot of ways it could go, and we'll see.
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