Saturday, December 9, 2017

EAT Or Be EATEN

For Disney - It's EAT or be EATEN
There has been a take-no-prisoners war raging between content providers and distribution providers for over ten years.  The battles being pitched between Hollywood and digital domain stalwarts.

The Hollywood studios have, by and large, been the victims - being gobbled-up by the likes of Comcast (Universal), Sony (Columbia), Fox (20th Century Fox), Paramount (Viacom), Time Warner (Warner Bros. cum Viacom).  Only Disney and MGM (privately owned) remain old-school studios. On the other side, Amazon and Netflix have won the digital streaming battle - not only distributing Hollywood's content but producing their own high-quality content.

Given this, Disney's only play was to eat or be eaten and it decided to 'eat', and what it wants to consume is a big hunk of Fox.  Rumor has it that Disney is going to offer Fox $74 billion for the 20th Century Fox film and TV studio, the FX Networks, National Geographic Channels, and 22 regional sports networks.  Fox, if seems, wants out and views its media assets as at their peak value. Disney is willing to bet big that becoming significantly larger will, one: prevent itself from being purchased, and two: become a much larger player in the content production and distribution areas  -  the buzz word being 'scale', which would give it the muscle to battle the social media behemoths going forward.

Stay on touch,
Jim Lavorato

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