Disney announces deal of purchasing 21 Century Fox Assets
March 1, 2018
A little boy at target excitedly hands the movies he has selected to the cashier. He cannot wait to go home and enjoy the new titles he now owns. This past December, the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, decided to make a similar purchase. A $52.4 billion purchase of 21 Century Fox and all of their shows and movies.
“Disney has already created a kind of monopoly,” senior Cassandra Menzies said. “They are just trying to get even stronger through their deal with Fox. The quality of the shows will be ‘Disney-fied’ with a lot more humor and jokes. I know some people weren’t too happy with how Disney did the most recent star wars movie. The streaming service will be more convenient for Disney, but harder on the American household with another streaming service to buy. Even though Disney is expanding, they will still fire people from Fox; they like to use their own people for making movies. Disney is already changing the quality of Star Wars by releasing more movies and side stories, because they see a lot of people like it, so they get more money out of it. But with producing so much, the quality might go down.”
Disney plans on a streaming service that will be kid-friendly, while the adult shows and movies, such as Marvel and “The Simpsons” will be available for viewers on Hulu. However, viewers now face the problem of having to buy multiple services.
“My family loves to watch movies,” said french teacher Nicole Chouinard. “We started going to the cinema at Brighton MGR, but at home, we stream movies on AT&T or Netflix. With Disney’s new Fox deal, I think traditional cable companies are going to go out of business because they are so expensive. At home, we are contemplating dropping direct tv and signing up for sling and getting Hulu and Netflix streaming on there. It all depends on the pricing; I don’t want to have to pay for several different streaming services and go back to a monopoly system for streaming services. So hopefully they have a package deal.”
While Fox will hold onto their news, business and a few of their sports programs, people are questioning the kind of brand Disney will become. With their numerous purchases, some believe Disney’s focus is shifting from promoting family to promoting business.
“Disney is still holding onto their original kid-friendly brand,” Chouinard said. “They still have the little kid channels on regular cable and all of their original movies. They are definitely taking on a new role with their recent adult movie purchases, like Star Wars and Marvel. I think that Disney is trying to take on the demographic that had grown up watching Disney movies and try to turn them into Disney adult watchers.”
Comcast has made a move to disrupt the Disney-Fox deal by offering to buy 61 percent of the shares to Sky, a telecommunication company in the UK, which Disney was also looking to purchase. This sudden move faces Fox with two options; to try to outbid Comcast or to inform Disney that sky will no longer be included in their deal.
“It would be beneficial for Fox to acquire the rest of the Sky shares,” business teacher Bruce Burwitz said. “It would make them seem more lucrative to be bought by Disney if that’s what they’re looking for. Comcast probably made this move because they don’t want Disney to take over everything and it gives them a foothold in England. Comcast is definitely a thorn in the side for the Disney-Fox deal. Their move could give them more control over the media instead of letting it be controlled by Disney and Fox, instead of the monopoly Disney is trying to create by buying all these companies.”
No solid deal on Sky’s shares has been hashed out yet. With the purchase of the Sky company shares, Fox would own over one-third of UK news programs, giving more influence to Disney and increasing the national revenue of both companies.
