Fox TV Group chairmen and CEOs Dana Walden and Gary Newman keep facing a lot questions they can’t really answer — but, during a Thursday morning visit with press at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, the duo came armed with plenty of details about “New Fox” to appease a crowd that was never going to hear much about that pending Disney deal.
“What makes New Fox new?” Walden said, referencing a term that first popped up around the network’s May upfront presentation. “It will be the only network to operate with complete independence and no studio agenda. … It’s an opportunity to get vibrant indie studio series on TV.”
Opening up Fox development and buying beyond longtime sister studio 20th Century Fox TV was the focus of Walden’s spiel, and it seemed to push the Walt Disney Company’s pending acquisition of Fox’s entertainment properties (i.e. everything but the network) out of the discussion. “Not since my kids were little have I been asked so much about going to Disney,” joked the exec, before noting that she could not discuss odds of management structures once Fox’s entertainment assets (i.e. not the network) are absorbed by the company or about where she and Newman will land. That’s not to say there hasn’t been some clarity on that front. Walden and Newman each signed one-year contract extensions at the broadcast network in May, and Walden, for her part, is said to be in consideration for a job in Disney’s new executive structure.
But the departing Fox studio, where they each started their long tenures in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, is no longer at the top of their minds in running the network. Walden positioned New Fox as a savior of independent studios, noting that the 50 percent of its upcoming development slate will be from studios other than 20th TV. One year ago, that stat was a meager 10 percent.
“It’s not good for them or the vitality of the business,” Walden said of Sony Pictures Television, MGM, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. all getting squeezed out of broadcast series orders in the time of vertical integration. “New Fox will be an aggressive buyer. They have invested in major talent and have great IP. We want to be their first choice among networks.”
Talk of “aggressive buying” bucks the widespread industry speculation that the studio-free Fox will focus solely on sports, live events and relatively inexpensive unscripted shows. Recent acquisitions of Thursday Night Football — “only 11 weeks of the fall,” Walden reminded the room — and WWE wrestling certainly put the squeeze on available Fox time slots, but Walden did not appear fazed.
“I think that there was some confusion back to the original announcement about the [Disney] deal when Rupert said Fox would be 80 percent live,” she said. “He was talking about the entire media organization. The broadcast network will continue to have the same mix it had before.”
“There is no difference between The Simpsons on [New] Fox and The Big Bang Theory on CBS,” added Newman. “Networks have always licensed shows they don’t own.”
Still, New Fox needs to make money. And the fact that the entirety of its post-Disney deal entertainment slate will now come from outside studios obviously means dealmaking at the network is going to change. So while independent studios may have an aggressive buyer in New Fox, they’re also going to have to surrender some ownership to get their series on its schedule.
“Fox will have a co-ownership stake in anything that’s ordered at the network going forward,” insisted Newman. “That’s just commonplace in our business right now.”
