By Jamie Barrie D isney’s $71 billion US acquisition of Fox’s entertainment business deal looks to change the media landscape and sets the course for Disney to launch its own streaming service, Disney Plus, later this year. To do this Disney is well aware that it will need TV shows and movies with a following to attract users to sign up and pay for yet another stream- ing service. This deal will explain the portfolio of offers as it already has classic Disney cartoons, Star Wars, Pixar, the Muppets and some of the Marvel characters. However, with Fox, Disney could add Marvel’s X-Men and Deadpool to their movie offerings along with a slue of program offering from Fox channels like FX Networks and National Geographic, plus Fox’s TV productions like; The Americans, This Is Us and Modern Family. The deal helps Disney further control TV shows and movies from start to finish — from creating the programs to distributing them through televi- sion channels, movie theaters, streaming services and other ways people watch entertainment.
This will also give Disney valuable data on custom- ers and their entertainment-viewing habits, which it can then use to sell advertising, which is another way the company can generate revenue and offer advertising as companies and viewers move away from more traditional forms of viewing. Cable and telecom companies have been buying the companies that make TV shows and movies to compete in a changing media landscape. Although internet providers like AT&T, Bell and Comcast directly control their customers’ access to the internet in a way that Amazon, YouTube and Netflix do not, they still face threats as those streaming services gain in popularity and they want to get into the game. Just last year, AT&T bought Time Warner for $81 billion and has already launched its own streaming service, Watch TV. So they see the value of these services to stay relevant in the market.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • MARCH 2019
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