Media mogul Byron Allen has made a $10 billion bid to buy Disney’s ABC television network and cable channels, including the FX and National Geographic cable channels, an Allen spokesman confirmed Friday.
It follows reports that Disney has also held exploratory talks about selling ABC to regional TV channel Nexstar Media, owner of cable news network NewsNation.
The news sent ABC News staff into a panic, one of which was telling CNN: ‘Everyone is going crazy.’
A Disney spokesperson said in a statement: “While we are open to considering a variety of strategic options for our linear operations, The Walt Disney Company has not made any decisions at this time regarding the divestiture of ABC or any other ownership and any report to that effect is baseless.”
The discussions come after Disney CEO Bob Iger said in July that the company could sell some of its traditional TV assets, which have struggled for years due to the rise of streaming services.
Media mogul Byron Allen (left) has made a $10 billion bid for Disney’s ABC television network and cable channels, including cable channels FX and National Geographic. The discussions come after Disney CEO Bob Iger (right) said in July that the company could sell some of its traditional TV assets, which have struggled for years due to the rise of streaming services.
Iger’s comments have fueled speculation that he plans to reduce Disney to a set of core assets built around the company’s legendary characters and franchises, in preparation for selling the company in a mega deal.
A television industry executive told CNN that while ABC News and its prestigious anchors like David Muir were once “Iger’s jewel in the crown,” the CEO now views them as expendable.
‘Iger is unsentimental and cold-blooded. He will do what is best and necessary for Disney. He won’t hesitate to cut off high-paid anchor friends, exclude beloved networks or sell the jewels in the crown,” the person said.
Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC in 1995 for $19 billion, a deal overseen by former CEO Michael Eisner.
That price tag also included the acquisition of ESPN, which is not part of ABC’s sale talks — although Iger has separately discussed the possibility of running ESPN as a joint venture with new strategic partners.
In July, Iger suggested during a CNBC interview that the company’s television business, including its stations and cable channels, “may not be the core of Disney.”
His comments sparked a flurry of activity among bankers and private equity players, who began evaluating whether to “take a step,” a banker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
“He’s sending a signal to investors,” the banker said. ‘It makes people think.’
ABC News and its prestigious anchors like David Muir have long been considered major assets in the Disney empire, but Iger appears to be reassessing that
Iger fueled this suspicion during Disney’s third-quarter earnings call, when he said the company was considering strategic partnerships for its major sports brand ESPN and had received “notable interest,” although Disney planned to retain control.
Iger has said the three businesses that will drive the biggest growth over the next five years are the company’s film studios, theme parks and streaming video.
Some executives have speculated that Iger’s endgame is a sale of Disney itself.
To make it attractive to the only likely buyers big enough to stomach a Disney — Apple or Alphabet’s Google — Iger would have to pare Disney down to just the parts that retain its global intellectual property portfolio while keeping its cash-generating legacy operations such as TV.
“There’s no way a FAANG company is going to buy his company when he has all these cable channels, a broadcast network and a cable sports network,” the executive said, using an acronym for the five major US tech companies, Facebook (now Meta), Apple, Amazon , Netflix and Google.
“It’s not the business they’re in, and it’s unlikely the government will ever allow it.”