Posted by Miva in News, TV | 0 Comments
A&E Sold to Disney Corp.
We all know that the big media companies are worth a fortune, but we rarely see specific values place on the smaller, lesser known cable TV networks. Case in point when it comes to A&E, a relatively small group of cable channels that are best known for airing a variety of lesser known reality TV shows, such as Dog The Bounty Hunter, Storage Wars, and The First 48. It was announced today that NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast, would be selling its stake in the A&E Network of channels to their current partners; Walt Disney Corp and Hearst Corp.
The three companies struck a deal to sell NBC’s 15.8% stake in A&E to Disney and Hearst for $3.03 Billion USD. That puts the value of the entire A&E network at roughly $20 Billion. The sale price is a 50% jump compared to Comcast’s valuation of their A&E holdings, which they recently placed at only $2 BIllion.
Overall, we’re not excepting any major change ups in the programming that will air on A&E. Since the previously ownership already included both Disney Corp and Hearst Corp, it will simply be removing NBC Universal from the picture. So for those of you who may have been worrying, Dog the Bounty Hunter isn’t going anywhere. Storage Wars will continue and we’ll continue to watch “Gene Simmon’s Family Jewels”. Furthermore, we’re not going to start seeing Disney cartoons on the network either.
Overall, we were quite surprised at how a one time small network, A&E, managed to quickly rise up in the ranks to be worth tens of billions of dollars.
