Disney Buys Fox for $52 Billion

Usually when there is a mega merger in the media industry, it usually means one thing for consumers -- higher prices.   This one of the reasons that antitrust laws were passed and the Trump administration has already had the AT&T and Time Warner deal to review and this may face even great scrutiny as the CNN article describes.    Aside from the potential of increased prices, what doe industry experts will change in the content both of these companies will provide after a merger takes place (the deal does not include Fox News)

Trump's Anti-trust Team Will Be Working Overtime On Disney-Fox Deal by David Goldman    @DavidGoldmanCNN money.cnn.com In some respects, experts say the Disney-Fox deal could face more antitrust scrutiny than a combination of AT&T and Time Warner, CNN's parent company. The Disney-Fox merger would pair the largest movie studio by box office sales (Disney) with the third-largest (Fox), as tracked by comScore. It would bring together Disney's Marvel's superhero movies with Fox's X-Men. The deal would also combine Disney's cable channels ESPN, Freeform and the Disney Channel with Fox's FX, National Geographic and Star India. (Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox's broadcast network are not part of the deal and will be spun off into another company.) <more>

6 Things We Know (And Don't Know) About The Disney-Fox Deal By Josef Adalian and Chris Lee slate.com With the Walt Disney Company’s announcement Thursday that it had reached a megadeal to buy most of the assets of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion (plus another $13.7 billion in assumed debt), Hollywood watchers have been working overtime trying to parse the merger’s overall entertainment-industry impact. Will it yield a Reese’s “Your chocolate’s in my peanut butter” corporate synergy between two behemoth TV-movie-internet companies—or mark the birth of a terrifying new media monopoly? And will the FCC, which under the Trump administration has turned a surprisingly cold shoulder to mergers, put a stop to the whole thing? There are plenty of unanswered questions, but there are few broad areas where certain outcomes seem more likely. Let’s break down what we (think) we know so far: <more>