Fox Corporation Becomes Standalone Company as Disney Acquires 21st Century Fox

Lachlan Murdoch (L) and Rupert Murdoch (R) at the TIME 100 Gala, celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world, at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Time Warner Center, in New York, on April 21, 2015. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Fox News, Fox Broadcasting, and Fox Sports have become the Fox Corporation after 21st Century Fox was acquired by Disney.

The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox will become official on March 20.

The Fox Corporation will be a standalone firm and began to appear on NASDAQ under the FOXA and FOX symbols as a publicly traded company on March 19, according to Reuters.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan will join the Fox Corporation’s board.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), speaks about the Republican tax reform legislation currently before Congress, during his weekly briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Dec. 14, 2017. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Jacques Nasser as well as controlling shareholders founder Rupert Murdoch and CEO and chairman Lachlan Murdoch will also be on the board, according to Fox News.

Meanwhile, Aragon Global Holdings founder Anne Dias, Media Ventures CEO Roland Hernandez, and Formula 1 chairman Chase Carey will be on the Fox board.

“We are thrilled to welcome our new colleagues to the Fox board,” Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement carried by Fox News. “We look forward to working with and being guided by them as we begin a new chapter, steadfastly committed to providing the best in news, sports and entertainment programming.”

According to Reuters, 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets were sold to Disney for $71 billion.

Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on March 12, 2013. Richard Drew/AP Photo

Disney won a bidding war in 2018 against cable giant Comcast to acquire the assets.

With the acquisition, Disney now has a huge amount of content and intellectual property, including “X-Men,” “Avatar,” and “Deadpool.”

“The goal is to ramp up a programming pipeline for a new streaming service, called Disney+, that the company plans to launch later this year,” Los Angeles Times reporter Meg James wrote of the deal.

For Fox, in all, it will have assets such as the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, FS1 and FS2, the Fox Broadcasting network, and a number of Fox television stations, according to the LA Times.

“The reconfigured Fox Corp. will emphasize live programming, with NFL prime-time games on Thursday nights and WWE’s ‘Smackdown’ on Fridays. With a growing number of viewers watching scripted dramas and comedies on a delayed basis, Fox is seeking to have more commercials that reach consumers with greater immediacy,” according to James’ report.

Fox’s Charlie Collier said Fox will still produce scripted-TV shows. It came up with deals to keep shows like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy.”

“The spinoff comes amid high anxiety on the Fox lot in Los Angeles because of the anticipation that more than 3,000 jobs will eventually be eliminated as part of Disney’s consolidation of the remaining Fox assets, two people familiar with the matter said. Most of the affected positions are in Los Angeles,” James wrote.

Fox assets National Geographic and the FX channel will also go to Disney, according to the LA Times report.

“We think the company, absent a tethered TV studio to pump up, will become much more aggressive on managing their scripted entertainment content costs,” Wall Street analyst Michael Nathanson wrote of Fox Corporation, Variety reported. “In other words, we would expect more shows like ‘The Masked Singer’ and less programs like ‘Empire’ in the years ahead.”