“It’s good to see all of you,” Newman said, greeting the group as the image appeared on screen. “I hope you had a great holiday and enjoyed your vacations. As you can see, Dana and I certainly did.”
The Grand Ballroom at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena – our home for the next two weeks – exploded with laughter. “[We wanted to acknowledge] the elephant in the room or, in our case, the mouse,” Newman added, to further laughter and applause.
And just like that, the air was cleared for a session largely devoted to the recently announced sale of many assets of Fox to The Walt Disney Company.
Newman (pictured at top with Walden) wasted no time explaining exactly what the sale – which he said will not be finalized for another 12-18 months – will mean for the Fox Television Group. “On the day the deal closes, the TV studio will become part of Disney,” he said. “On that same day, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Sports, Fox News and the Fox owned-and-operated stations will be spun off into what we are calling ‘New Fox.’ This will be a very robust and nimble company, which will continue the tradition of disruption that has always been core to the Fox brand. We are in the most exciting and dynamic time in the history of the TV business, and ‘New Fox’ has an extraordinary opportunity to chart a new course for the future.”
Along those lines, Newman reminded the press that Current Fox has jumped out way ahead of the other broadcast networks during this first week of the new year by premiering three new shows -- the comedy LA to Vegas, the drama 9-1-1 and the reality competition series The Four: Battle for Stardom -- along with the 11th season of The X-Files.
Dana Walden acknowledged that there has been "a little bit of confusion” over plans for “New Fox.” “When [News Corp. Executive Chairman] Rupert Murdoch initially was talking about ‘New Fox,’ he was talking about it as a whole entity -- Fox Sports, the O&Os, Fox News and the broadcast network," she said. "The three companies that I mentioned first are largely live platforms. So, 80 percent of the programming in all of 'New Fox' will be live and sports, and then the network will continue to do entertainment programming.
“Rupert sees this as an enormous opportunity for the broadcast network,” she continued, noting that independent program suppliers like Warner Bros., Sony, Lionsgate and MGM have been outsiders at Fox. “They never have a leg up in terms of getting onto a broadcast network, and in [Rupert’s] view, this is a great opportunity for a lot of companies that have tremendous rosters to be advantaged at a network.
“If you look at those four companies that I mentioned earlier, that will become part of ‘New Fox,’ it’s an extremely lucrative, domestically focused business,” Walden added. “The real estate on the broadcast network is very valuable. I’m sure that anyone who wants to be in business with ‘New Fox’ will also have to contemplate some sort of ownership split with the network in order to gain entree onto their schedule. If you look at the company as a whole it will be very lucrative.”