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Do you watch shows on Lifetime, A&E, or the History channels?
No? OK. But would you like to own those channels?
That’s the question Disney and Hearst, who co-own the A&E Global Media cable conglomerate, are asking potential buyers right now: They’ve hired a bank to shop the properties, according to people familiar with the companies.
And by doing so, A&E is now the third big media company to publicly put a “for sale” sign on cable networks in the last year. In December, Comcast announced that it was going to put most of its cable channels into a spinoff company, and in June, Warner Brothers Discover announced a similar split.
All of them are trying to dump cable for the same reasons: While cable TV networks are often still profitable businesses, they are aging and declining because their audiences are also aging and declining.
Reps for Disney and A&E declined to comment; I haven’t heard back from Hearst yet. Variety first reported the news.
For the record: Just because A&E’s owners have put it up for sale doesn’t mean it will sell. And there could be lots of different permutations for a transaction. Maybe the A&E channels get rolled into another group of channels, like Versant — the name that Comcast has picked for its spin-off to be. Maybe a private equity firm will want some or all of the channels.
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But it’s certainly not surprising to see another big media company decide it wants out of cable TV. Disney CEO Bob Iger had already mused about hiving off some of his TV assets before walking that back. Now he’s kind of doing it, after all.
If you wanted to, you could argue that Paramount owner Shari Redstone is also part of the trend, since she’s dumping the entirety of her company, which used to be a cable heavyweight. (She’s so eager to get out that she’s willing to pay Donald Trump $16 million in the process.)
Fun footnote — back in 2016, A&E thought one answer to cable’s shrinking, aging audience problem would be Vice Media, and did a deal with the then-buzzy digital media company to turn one of its channels into a Vice-branded network.
The theory: Young viewers who didn’t watch TV but loved Vice would somehow become cable TV owners and start watching Vice on TV.
That didn’t work, but the channel still exists. Any offers?
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