Walt Disney Television

**Walt Disney Television, Inc.** is a subsidiary of Disney Media Networks that oversees television assets owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company. It was formerly called **Disney–ABC Television Group,** until Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets on March 20, 2019.

Assets in the group include the ABC Network; cable networks: Freeform, Disney Channels, FX Networks, National Geographic channels; and Disney Television Studios: (ABC Studios, 20th Century Fox Television, Fox 21 TV Studios); ABC News and ABC Owned Television Stations.

The Walt Disney Television chairman and president is Peter Rice, who also serves as co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, which also manages ESPN and Disney's 50% equity stake in A&E Networks.

## History

In 1996, Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., and re-branded the holding media conglomerate as Disney–ABC Television Group. The assets acquired at the time included ABC Television Network Group, CC/ABC Broadcasting Group (ABC Radio Network, eight TV and 21 radio stations), ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group, CC/ABC Publishing Group and CC/ABC Multimedia Group to the fold. The Cable and International Broadcast Group contained ownership shares of ESPN, Inc. (80%), A&E Television Networks (37.5%), Lifetime Television (50%) and its international investments. These investments included Tele-München (50%, Germany; included 20% of RTL II), Hamster Productions. (33%, France) and Scandinavian Broadcasting System (23%, Luxembourg). ESPN also had international holdings: Eurosport (33.3%, England), TV Sport (10%, France; Eurosport affiliate) and The Japan Sports Channel (20%). The Publishing Group including Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, multiple newspapers from a dozen dailies (including the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star) and more weeklies, and dozens more publications in the fields of farm, business and law trade journals plus LA Magazine to Institutional Investor. The Multimedia Group pursued businesses in new and emerging media technologies, including the interactive television, pay-per-view, VOD, HDTV, video cassette, Optical disc, on-line services and location-based entertainment.

In 1993, DiC Animation City and Capital Cities/ABC formed a joint venture called DIC Entertainment L.P. In April 1996, due to ongoing post Disney-CC/ABC merger realignment and retirement of its president, WDTT group's division were reassigned to other groups with Walt Disney Television International (including Disney Channel International and Buena Vista Television domestic syndication and Pay TV division and GMTV and Super RTL holdings) were transferred to Capital Cities/ABC. In May due to the merger, ABC ended its ABC Productions division operations while keeping its boutique production companies: Victor Television, DIC Entertainment, ABC/Kane Productions and Greengrass Productions. The international operations of Disney TV International and ABC Cable and International Broadcast Group were merged in June as Disney/ABC International Television.

Under Disney, ABC Group sold various publishing companies in 1997. Chilton was sold to Reed Elsevier for $447 million and received $142 million from Euromoney Publications for Institutional Investor. In April, Knight Ridder purchased four newspapers including *The Kansas City Star* and *The Fort Worth Star-Telegram* for $1.65 billion. In August 1999, Fairchild Publications was sold to Conde Nast Publications. In March 1998, Disney-ABC placed it shares of Scandinavian Broadcasting System up for sale.

In late 1999, Walt Disney Television, along with other television units, were transferred again from The Walt Disney Studios to Disney–ABC Television Group and merged with ABC's primetime division, ABC Entertainment, forming ABC Entertainment Group.

In March 2000, ABC formed the Disney Kids Network (DKN) advertising group via consolidation to sell ads for ABC's "TGIF" primetime programming, Disney's One Saturday Morning, the Disney's One Too syndicated programming block, *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire*, *The Wonderful World of Disney* and Winnie the Pooh primetime specials. DKN was placed under senior vice president of sales at ABC, Dan Barnathan, and would also work on some ads with Radio Disney, Disney.com and the Disney Adventures magazine. DKN added Toon Disney when the channel started accepting ads in September 2000.

ABC Group chairman Robert A. Iger was named president and chief operating officer of The Walt Disney Company in January 2000. In 2000, with an investment by Bain Capital and Chase Capital Partners, Heyward re-purchased DIC Enterprises.

In September 2002, Disney Chairman/CEO Michael Eisner outlined a proposed realignment of the ABC broadcast network's daytime parts with the similar unit in its cable channels: ABC Saturday mornings with Disney Channel units (Toon & Playhouse), ABC daytime with Soapnet and ABC prime time with ABC Family. In October 2003, ABC Family Worldwide was changed from a unit directly reporting to the Disney COO to a unit running within the ABC Cable Networks Group under Anne Sweeney.

### Disney–ABC Television Group

On April 21, 2004, Disney announced a restructuring of its Disney Media Networks division with Sweeney being named president of ABC parent Disney–ABC, and ESPN president George Bodenheimer becoming co-CEO of the division with Sweeney, as well as president of ABC Sports. This move added ABC TV Network within Disney-ABC. ABC1 channel initially launched in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2004 as the first use of the ABC brand outside the US. While ABC News Now was launched that year in the US on digital subchannel of 70 ABC owned & operated and affiliates.

On June 12, 2007, Disney spun off its ABC Radio Networks and merged it into Citadel Communications with Citadel Broadcasting while retaining its ESPN Radio and Radio Disney networks and stations and a 10-year news provider licensing agreement with Citadel for ABC News Radio and the networks.

In February 2007, Touchstone Television was renamed ABC Television Studio as part of Disney's push to drop secondary brands like Buena Vista for Disney, ABC, ESPN, and most recently, A&E Networks. ABC1 in the UK was shut down on September 26, 2007.

On January 22, 2009, Disney–ABC said it would merge ABC Entertainment and ABC Studios into a new unit called ABC Entertainment Group. That April, ABC Enterprises took an ownership stake in Hulu in exchange for online distribution license and $25 million in the ABC network ad credits. The Live Well Network (LWN) was launched on April 27, 2009 by ABC Owned Television Stations on the stations' subchannels. Later that year, A+E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services with DATG ownership increasing to 42%. In November, Disney-ABC sells GMTV to ITV for $37 million.

On March 24, 2012, following the dissolution of the ABC Daytime division, ABC Family Worldwide Inc. began taking operational control of Soapnet until that network was slowly discontinued for Disney Junior.

In July 2012, NBCUniversal confirmed plans to sell its 15.8% stake in A+E Networks to Disney for $3 billion (along with its previous owner Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, who became 50-50 partners in the joint venture).

On August 21, 2013, Disney–ABC announced it will lay off 175 employees. The layoffs are expected to hit positions among technical operations as well as the unit's eight local stations. On October 28, ABC News and Univision Communications launched Fusion, a cable Hispanic news and satire channel.

In August 2014, A+E took a 10% stake in Vice Media for $250 million, then announced in April 2015 that H2 would be rebranded into the Vice channel with an indicated early 2016 launch. Disney also directly made two $200 investments in Vice Media in November 2015, then a week later in December, they directly invested in it again for 10% to assist in funding its programming. ABC Family became Freeform on January 12, 2016.

On April 21, 2016, Disney–ABC sold its share in Fusion to Univision. In September 2016, the group's president Ben Sherwood named Bruce Rosenblum, Television Academy chairman and former head of Warner Bros. TV Group, as president of business operations in s the newly created position, to reduce the number of direct reports from 17 to about 8. Roseblum would oversee ad sales in conjunction with channel heads, affiliate sales and marketing, engineering, digital media, global distribution, IT, research and strategy and business development. This allows Sherwood to focus on content and direct operating units that continue to directly report to him, ABC network units, cable channel units (Disney Channels Worldwide, and Freeform), ABC Studios and ABC TV Stations.

With the March 14, 2018, Disney Company reorganization, in anticipation of integrating Fox assets from a proposed acquisition, all international channels including Disney Channels have been transferred to Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International, a new segment, with US channels remaining with Disney–ABC Television Group. All global sales units and distribution units have been transfer to the Disney Direct-to-Consumer segment.

### Walt Disney Television

On October 8, 2018, Disney announced that the post-21st Century Fox acquisition Disney–ABC Television Group would be renamed Walt Disney Television (previously the name of its former television production division) and would incorporate the acquired 21st Century Fox television assets. The acquired Fox assets that are to be integrated into the division are 20th Century Fox Television, FX Networks and FX Productions, Fox 21 Television Studios, and the National Geographic channels. Peter Rice, the current CEO and president of Fox Networks Group would serve as the chairman and president of Walt Disney Television. Rice would also replace Ben Sherwood, who is scheduled to leave his post as co-chair of Disney Media Networks. Fox TV Group chairman and CEO Dana Walden is to be named Chairman, Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment. Within Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment, Walden would oversee 20th Century Fox TV and ABC Studios, plus ABC, Freeform and the ABC Owned & Operated stations. FX Networks and National Geographic Partners would transfer over as is and report to President of Walt Disney Television.

On March 5, 2019, Disney announced that Chris Hunegs would lead the combined Disney Television Studios — ABC Studios, ABC Signature, 20th Century Fox TV and Fox 21 TV studios. He would report to Walden. Disney Television and Disney Television Studios are incorporated on March 14, 2019 and March 15, 2019 respectively.

## Units

### Current Structure

	+ ABC Entertainment
		- American Broadcasting Company
	+ Disney Television Studios
		- 20th Century Fox Television
			* 20th Television
		- ABC Studios
			* ABC Signature Studios
		- Fox 21 Television Studios
	+ ABC Family Worldwide
		- Freeform
	+ ABC Owned Television Stations
* Disney Channels Worldwide (US)
	+ Disney Channel
	+ Disney Junior
	+ Disney XD
	+ Radio Disney
	+ Disney Television Animation
	+ It's a Laugh Productions
	+ ABC Radio
	+ ABC News Radio
* FX Networks
	+ FX
	+ FXX
	+ FXM
	+ FX Productions
* National Geographic Partners (73%; joint venture with the National Geographic Society)
	+ National Geographic Channel
	+ Nat Geo Wild
	+ Nat Geo People
	+ Nat Geo Kids
	+ Nat Geo Music

## External links

* Official website

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