The Walt Disney Company bought ClubPenguin, a kids social network in May. And now Disney is picking up on another trend, e-books. Disney is selling access to Digital Books for $8.95 per month. Kids can access about 500 Disney e-books including those in the Hannah Montana and Winnie the Pooh series. The e-book reader works on browsers and the books have animated illustrations including authentic character voices.
Remember Buzz Lightyear? Buzz was the astronaut toy in the movie Toy Story that competed for Andy’s affection against Woody. A Buzz Lightyear toy has made it into outer space and the NASA astronauts that took him up there made the above video showing proof.
Buzz returned to Earth last Friday from the shuttle Discovery after it launched aboard the STS-124 on May 31. Buzz went into outer space as part of a partnership between NASA and Disney to encourage students to study science, math, and technology.
American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the television network that The Walt Disney Company owns was responsible for the news about President Barack Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass” spreading. Kanye West stole the microphone from Taylor Swift when she received an MTV VMA award and the news exploded in the media. West personally apologize on his blog about the situation, but it was too late — he already came off as looking as a jerk. Even the President called him a jerk.
Some of ABC’s employees overhead a conversation between President Obama and John Hardwood of CNBC. A conversation between the two that was off the record made its way on Twitter and was never meant to be the official words from the President.
When asked about whether Obama’s daughters were annoyed by what Kanye West did, the President replied “I thought that was really inappropriate.” He added “What are you butting in (for)? … The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She’s getting her award. What’s he doing up there?” Then he added “He’s a jackass.”
After realizing that he went too far, the President said “Cut the president some slack. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my plate.”
When ABC employees overheard the conversation, they turned to Twitter. Terry Moran wrote “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential” on Twitter. The tweets have been deleted shortly after they were originally written.
Too late to crowd control ABC, the word is out. The President has expressed his opinion about Kanye West’s behavior.
Jim Breyer of Accel Partners had an amazing 24 hours yesterday. Raytheon had acquired BBN Technologies and Disney bought out Marvel. Breyer helped buy out BBN Technologies about five years ago which gave a nice return to Accel Partners.
Breyer was the third largest direct shareholder in Marvel Entertainment. He made the investment from his own personal funds and not on behalf of Accel. According to regulatory filings, Breyer will make $5 million personally from Disney’s acquisition of Marvel.
BBN was purchased by Bell Atlantic back in the day but ended up not gaining much traction after that. BNN was started by three MIT professors that implemented ARPANET (the base for the founding of the Internet). BBN was the first to create packet switching, the first router, and the first network e-mail using the @ symbol.
The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) has made an agreement to buy out Marvel Entertainment Inc. (NYSE:MVL) today. The transaction will take place in cash and stock.
As part of the agreement, the transaction will be based on the closing price of Disney stock as of August 28, 2009. Marvel shareholders would receive $30 per share in cash and 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share that they own.
“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” stated The Walt Disney Company CEO and President Robert A. Iger in a press release. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”
Disney will acquire the ownership of Marvel and 5,000 of the characters belonging to the franchise. Perlmutter will continue to oversee the Marvel properties.
The transaction is subject to the clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, non-U.S. merger control regulations, etc. Marvel was advised by BofA Merrill Lynch.
Disney has launched a couple of netbooks through a partnership with ASUS. The netbooks come in “Magic Blue” and “Princess Pink” colors. There are several customized themes for Windows XP on the netbooks as well. There are parental controls in place that prevent kids from getting viruses or accessing adult content. The two Disney netbooks are available for preorder at a price of $350 each. The devices will most likely start shipping next week.
Just when I thought Netflix would stop giving Blockbuster a beatdown, the DVD mailing company just signed a deal with major TV production company ABC. ABC will be streaming shows such as Lost and Grey’s Anatomy on the Netflix website to subscribers.
ABC will air all five seasons of Lost on Netflix. Netflix will air several seasons of Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, and the Legend of the Seeker. A couple of ABC’s shows started appearing on Netflix on August 1t, but the rest will be fully available in the next few months.
In Late 2008, Disney’s ABC added several children shows such as Hannah Montana, The Suite Life On Deck, JONAS, and Sonny With A Chance.
Netflix isn’t the only online service that ABC programs are streaming on. ABC signed a deal with Hulu in late April that gave the TV company 27% ownership. As part of that agreement, ABC provided some of the latest episodes of their shows on Hulu.
Back in late April, Disney signed a deal with Hulu. As part of the deal Disney would retain 27% ownership in Hulu but would be expected to add some of their owned TV shows on the video website. Through the Disney-owned channel ABC, Grey’s Anatomy has started to appear on Hulu.
It was rumored that Hulu and YouTube were competing to get the Disney deal. Google wanted Disney to be one of their first partners in offering premium content on YouTube, but they opted for ownership in Hulu instead.
Considering that Grey’s Anatomy is starting to appear on Hulu, it will only be a matter of time before we start seeing other shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives.
Disney-Pixar’s latest movie Up is about a cranky old man and a Wilderness Explorer that fly to South Americans in a house attached to hundreds of floating balloons. Ten year old Colby Curtin had a rare form of cancer and one of her last wishes was to see the movie, but she was too sick to watch the movie in theaters.
Colby was diagnosed with vascular cancer three years ago and earlier this month, doctors reported that she would not be alive for much longer. One of Colby’s family friends kept calling Pixar to try and work out a way for Colby’s wish to come true. Pixar sent an employee with the Up DVD to Colby’s house in Huntington Beach, California. Colby passed away about 7 hours after watching the movie.
“When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie,” stated Colby’s mom Lisa. “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.”
In August 2007, The Walt Disney Company acquired Club Penguin for $350 million. Before Disney bought Club Penguin, Sony was rumored to be considering buying the kids social network for $450 million. Club Penguin earned $350 million in cash up front and had the chance to earn another $350 million if they met expectations.
The Club Penguin co-founders Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko, and Lance Priebe had to make sure that Club Penguin made more money from premium subscriptions, and sold a certain amount of virtual items. According to a 10-Q that was filed last Tuesday, Club Penguin did not meet the goals for the full earnout. They still have a chance to earn the $175 million out of that extra $350 million.
Here is an excerpt from the 10-Q:
“On August 1, 2007, the Company acquired all of the outstanding shares of Club Penguin Entertainment, Inc. (Club Penguin), a Canadian company that operates clubpenguin.com, an online virtual world for children. The purchase price included upfront cash consideration of approximately $350 million and additional consideration of up to $350 million payable if Club Penguin achieved predefined earnings targets in calendar years 2008 and 2009. There have been no additional payments of consideration for Club Penguin and remaining additional consideration of $175 million is potentially payable based on calendar year 2009 results.”
Disney has decided to jump on board with online video streaming by sending over content over to Hulu. That’s not all. Disney has acquired 27% of the company. Disney joins other Hulu owners NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Providence Equity Partners. Soon Disney will be sending over shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy to start with.
“We are smiling big today because we are honored to be working with a company that quite frankly inspired us from the very start of Hulu. Walt Disney was a founder, an innovator, a person with an atypically high quality bar, and someone who was maniacal in his obsession to delight his customers. Hulu has always taken great inspiration in that example and the culture Walt Disney created (which Bob Iger and his team carry forward and push to new levels),” stated the Hulu blog regarding the partnership.
CBS and the CW are basically the only major TV networks left out of Hulu. CBS is hosting high quality episodes of their own TV shows on CBS.com and TV.com. The CW hosts full TV shows on their website too.
Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG) has acquired a majority of the assets that belong to Kaboose. This includes Kaboose.com, AmazingMoms.com, Funschool.com, BabyZone.com and Zeeks.com. Disney bought it for $18.4 million (CAD23.3 million). Kaboose is based in Toronto, Ontario and was founded about 10 years ago.
Disney plans to integrate it with their already existing online properties. According to comScore, Kaboose’s assets receive about 27.6 million unique visitors per month. Kaboose.com itself receive about 5 million unique visitors this past February.
In a separate transaction, Barclays Private Equity Limited is buying Bounty Group Limited, the UK business of Kaboose for $97 million in cash. Bounty Group has about $18 million in debt.
Both acquisitions will take place as long as shareholders approve.
Hulu, the video website run by NBC and FOX has loads of popular shows that they allow people to watch. They have three seasons of Arrested Development, new episodes of Family Guy, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Chuck, Heroes, etc. Now a source at Silicon Alley Insider says that a deal for Disney content to appear on Hulu is basically done.
That means on Hulu we would perhaps see content from ESPN, ABC, and some Disney movies. If the deal works out with Disney and ABC shows starts to appear on Hulu, that only leaves CBS out as the outcast. ABC and CBS both currently steam shows on their website. CBS has very good quality, but ABC not as much.
Experiment 626 also known as Stitch from the TV series Lilo & Stitch is eating up this monitor, literally. For those who are feeling spendy, you can buy your kid (or someone elses’ kid?) a monitor with the blue alien chomping on it for 100,000 yen ($1,015). Right now this 20″ LCD panel is only available in Japan. It comes with 1680 x 1050 pixels, HDMI, and D4.
