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Comcast Wants To Buy Disney For $66 Billion

Posted by timothy on from the free-mouse-hats-with-cable-service dept.

BenBenBen writes "Comcast have made a surprise $66 billion bid for Disney. The public bid (aimed at swaying shareholders) follows a period of secret negotiation which resulted in Eisner saying no. Comcast has a statement on their website and there is better coverage available here."

8 of 573 comments (clear)

  1. Hostile takeover? by jaf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Curious.. is this what's called a hostile takeover?

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    -- jaf
    1. Re:Hostile takeover? by The+Original+Yama · · Score: 5, Interesting

      " Heck, Bill has NEVER owned more than 50%. He and Paul Allen each had 50% to start with, until they went IPO. "

      Not true:

      "Bill Gates received 64 percent of Microsoft to Paul Allen's 36 percent, which explains why Gates is the richest man in the world and Allen is only number two or three on the list."

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      OLPC Australia
  2. Good Investment? by z0ink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With the death of their traditional 2d animation studio and Pixas leaving is Disney really an investment anymore? I don't think Disney World is worth 66 billion.

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    Steal This Sig
  3. Re:deja-vu^WAOL-Time-Warner all over again by TopShelf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The difference here is the cable TV aspect, however. If Comcast buys Disney, which includes ESPN, for example, you can bet that competitors to ESPN (i.e. Fox Sports) will get 2nd class treatment on their systems. If I recall correctly, isn't something like this the case in Philadelphia, where Comcast owns the Flyers, but if you have some other service, you can't get most of their games on TV?

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    Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
  4. Sounds like way too much to me by Andy_R · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Given that Disney just lost their main content supplier (Pixar), and are creatively running on empty (Atlantis, Lilo and Stitch, dozens of straight to video cash-in sequels to classics anyone?), this seems like a lot of money for a chain of shops, a few theme parks and a stack of about-to-go-out-of-copyright cartoon characters.

    Pixar have shown a start-up can outdo Disney at animation, Universal and Busch have shown the theme parks are cost effective to build from scratch, and the shops are nothing special.

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    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  5. Re:Question from non-usa by Tassach · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IIRC, Microsoft is already the largest Comcast shareholder, owning approximately 33% of the company last time I checked. BillG owns another substantial chunk of Comcast stock under his own name, too. I remember reading that all the major Microsoft insiders were investing heavily in cable companies.

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    Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
  6. Conflict of Interest? by Silwenae · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be suprised if the FCC / SEC let this go through. There seem to be too many conflicts of interest in a cable company owning a content creator.

    As far as I understand, cable providers pay (and pass on those costs to customers) for channels like ESPN (which just raised how much they charge cable companies because of ESPN-HD, and had some fights with other cable companies about those rates) and having one company who creates TV shows (for ABC and others) and movies (Disney & Touchstone).

    Wouldn't Comcast be able to give themselves exclusive content, whether it's a ESPN channel, first run of pay per view movies created by Disney et al, or save on syndication rights on Comcast / Disney run stations? How many times have we seen actors sue over syndication rights when a company like Fox only syndicates to FX? (Or ABC to ABC Family, etc).

    And I have a hard time believing that Comcast would pass on those savings (creation & distribution) to their cable customers.

  7. Re:Someone should check the facts.. by tinrobot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, Disney owns the copyright to Toy Story, the characters and the merchandising rights. They own all of the Pixar films to date. If Disney wants to, they could make Finding Nemo II all by themselves.

    The deal with Pixar was that Disney owns the films and pays for distribution, the two companies split production costs 50/50, but Pixar only gets 35% of the back end.

    No wonder Pixar's shopping elsewhere.