What's Next: Bob Iger closes in on Fox. Disney has won antitrust approval for its $71.3-billion takeover of 21st Century Fox, on the condition that it then sells Fox's regional sports networks. The move gives Disney a major lead on Comcast in the race to acquire Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
But it's not over: A source with knowledge of the matter confirms the WSJ report that Comcast is talking to private-equity firms and other companies about a joint bid that could value Fox at more than $90 billion. No telling whether anything will come of that.
Nevertheless, Both Iger and the Murdochs are jubilant about the news, sources at both companies tell us. All things being equal, the Murdochs would rather sell to Disney than Comcast, because they have better relationships with the former and fear the regulatory hurdles posed by the latter. Comcast's only real leverage would be money.
Where's Bob? At the Disney board members' retreat in Anaheim, per our sources ... More on what comes next for Fox below ... | | | PACIFIC
The Agenda Welcome to PACIFIC, and Summer summit days. Google's Sundar Pichai, Snap's Evan Spiegel, AT&T's Randall Stephenson and John Stankey, Alibaba's Joe Tsai, Tencent's Marin Lau, IAC's Barry Diller and Benchmark's Bill Gurley have been among the small group of guests at Coatue's East Meets West summit, which wraps up today in Pebble Beach, California. The exclusive confab of US and Chinese execs has almost no online presence. One guest tells us it was "a beautifully organized and productive event…fairly rare for these things."
We're headed to Aspen for the Ideas Festival. I'll join Facebook's Campbell Brown, The Atlantic's Adrienne LaFrance and NPR's Joshua Johnson for a talk about the future of online journalism tomorrow at 3:10pm Mountain Time. Come join us if you're in town. | | Lachlan's Next
The future of 'New Fox'
We're beginning to get a clearer picture of the Murdochs' vision for "New Fox," the company that will exist after the bulk of 21st Century's Fox's assets are sold to Disney or Comcast.
The Focus: Live, Live, Live.
"New Fox," which will be run by Lachlan Murdoch, will include Fox Broadcasting, Fox News and Fox Sports. Sources at the company say all three branches will focus on live events like sports and talent competitions -- traditional television's last hold-out in the age of DVR and on-demand viewing.
The Latest: Fox has acquired rights to WWE's "SmackDown," rights it stole from -- guess who? -- Comcast.
Sports up for grabs
If and when Disney closes its Fox acquisition, Disney will have 90 days to divest Fox's 22 regional sports networks. Makan Delrahim, the head the Justice Department's antitrust division, said that "will ensure that sports programming competition is preserved in the local markets where Disney and Fox compete for cable and satellite distribution."
For Hollywood, that includes Fox's West Prime Ticket, which broadcasts both of LA's NFL teams, UCLA and USC, and Clippers, Kings and Angels. | | Life After Fox
Bill Shine to White House?
Speaking of Fox ... Bill Shine, the former Fox News executive and right hand to Roger Ailes, is in late-stage talks to become President Trump's White House communications director, per Fox News' own John Roberts (and confirmed by CNN).
NYT's Maggie Haberman and Michael D. Shear break down the obvious complications of hiring a man who was fired from Fox for his handling of the network's various sexual harassment scandals:
• "Officials at the White House are aware that they will face blowback for appointing someone so closely tied to Mr. Ailes and the culture of harassment toward women at Fox News. But they said Wednesday that they believe they can weather it." | | WHAT HOLLYWOOD IS READING Taffy Brodesser-Akner's excellent profile of Jonathan Franzen, which covers, among other things, his uneasy relationship with Hollywood:
"Two weeks before, [Franzen] had finished the final script for Showtime's adaptation of his fifth novel, 'Purity.' He'd had an ambivalent relationship with TV all his life ... But he'd come around. He realized, reluctantly, that TV was where people were now, that big cultural moments more often involve screens than books, which, he guesses, is how evolution works. ... He wrote an adaptation of his third novel, 'The Corrections,' for HBO in 2012, though it didn't receive a season order beyond the pilot. There were problems with it; he will tell you that himself. But that was before he really understood how great TV worked. That was before he watched "Breaking Bad," then watched it again, and saw what it meant to keep someone glued to a story onscreen, how doing that is different from how you have to do it in a novel." | | | Der Spiegel
Snap's next: Games
Snap's Evan Spiegel is preparing to launch a new platform that will let outside developers create Snapchat games, The Information's Tom Dotan and Amir Efrati report. They've already "lined up at least one gaming publisher to make a game for the new platform."
The Playbook, per Dotan and Efrati:
• "Snap's foray into games follows in the footsteps of other social media and messaging apps, most obviously Chinese gaming giant Tencent. The company has leveraged the huge user base on its messaging app WeChat to funnel them toward Tencent's games."
• "Nearly 40% of Tencent's revenues come from purchases of virtual goods on its games, a potential source of revenue for Snap in the future as well. Tencent is a significant shareholder in Snap, and ... Spiegel has said he admires Tencent's business model."
What's Next: If Snap is doing it, there's a good chance Facebook/Instagram will probably follow 😂. | | The Big Picture
Are we at 'Peak Screen'?
NYT's Farhad Manjoo says we've reached "peak screen":
• "For much of the last decade, a technology industry ruled by smartphones has pursued a singular goal of completely conquering our eyes. ... Americans spend three to four hours a day looking at their phones, and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind."
• Now "tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes."
Counterpoint: Voice assistants may soon have screens, watches already do. The screen likely doesn't go away yet, it just changes form.
But we agree with Farhad on this point: "Screens are insatiable. At a cognitive level, they are voracious vampires for your attention, and as soon as you look at one, you are basically toast." | | WHAT HOLLYWOOD IS REALLY TALKING ABOUT The Future L.A. Lakers Superteam: ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski et al report that there is mounting pressure on the Lakers' front office to acquire Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard as a deal-sweetener to bring LeBron James to L.A. | | | Future of Dating
The Raya phenomenon
The exclusive dating app Raya, long the talk of Hollywood bachelors and bachelorettes, gets the New York Times' Style treatment -- which means the waiting list may soon balloon from 10,000 to 100,000.
NYT's Kevin Roose:
• "Raya first appeared several years ago as a dating app aimed at people in creative industries. It has expanded into an invitation-only social network populated by movie stars, fashion designers, pro athletes, tech executives and too many Instagram models to count."
• "'It's the Soho House of dating apps,' said Hayley Greenberg, 27, a social media manager in Los Angeles who joined Raya in 2016 and used it for several months. 'They have the really good-looking guys, the athletes, the actors, the guys that have like 500 followers on Instagram but got accepted because they're a D.J.'"
• "The app costs $7.99 a month, but joining is no small ordeal. Prospective members are evaluated by an algorithm and human gatekeepers, who consider factors like the size of an applicant's Instagram following, how many Raya members he or she knows and other, less quantifiable attributes."
The Big Picture: Founder Daniel Gendelman's vision "is to see Raya become a kind of digital Davos, a meeting place for influential people to concoct all kinds of commercial, artistic and humanitarian projects." | | What Next: The first still photo from Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
See you tomorrow, from Aspen. | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment