ABC, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 21Ben Gilbert 11
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where ABC comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 1:03:07 David Rosenthal He talks to ABC, does a typical Michael kind of lowball offer.
- ▶ 1:03:13 David Rosenthal But Michael had actually started his career at ABC.
- ▶ 1:03:17 David Rosenthal So Barry Diller and Michael, they were TV guys at ABC before they went to Paramount.
- ▶ 1:04:29 Ben Gilbert A lot of listeners probably won't know this, but ABC is actually not the parent company that Disney was going after to acquire.
- ▶ 1:04:35 Ben Gilbert ABC was owned by something called Capital Cities, which had unbelievably managed to acquire ABC, even though ABC is much bigger than it was.
- ▶ 1:04:52 Ben Gilbert So there's basically, uh, using Berkshire Hathaway's capital and the small company of capital cities to sort of jointly buy and control ABC.
- ▶ 1:05:38 David Rosenthal So the broadcast networks like ABC went from, like, historically these great businesses to, meh, just kind of like, okay businesses, because so much of American viewing time and thus advertising dollars had transitioned over to cable.
- ▶ 1:05:56 David Rosenthal But it just so happened that buried within ABC was the single best cable asset in the history of mankind.
- ▶ 1:06:24 David Rosenthal After it was founded, when it was still a startup, Texaco then acquired Getty, sold off ESPN to ABC.
- ▶ 1:06:34 David Rosenthal ABC wanted a financial partner for the deal, so they bring in Nabisco, like Nabisco as a 20% minority partner in ESPN.
- ▶ 1:08:37 David Rosenthal That may have been how it started, but pretty quickly, though, ESPN and then within ABC, once ABC owns it, they realized that sports rights are
- ▶ 1:11:17 Ben Gilbert Nobody would have told you when that deal, the ABC deal, was being made that ESPN was gonna turn out to be the weightlifter of the group.
- ▶ 1:12:29 David Rosenthal MLB, NBA, they do a big NFL deal in 1998 to get Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football rights for ABC.
- ▶ 1:14:42 David Rosenthal With ABC.
- ▶ 1:14:44 Ben Gilbert And all that did become important.
- ▶ 1:15:23 David Rosenthal I think you can make an argument that ABC fits in with the Walt Disney Company and the Disney Flywheel.
- ▶ 1:31:38 Ben Gilbert One, a failure to bring ABC primetime back from its ratings abyss.
- ▶ 1:34:47 Ben Gilbert It's got two completely different business models doing two completely different things from this merger with ABC.
The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 59:44 David Rosenthal But there was another upstart TV network out there, ABC, and they were the perfect match.
- ▶ 59:53 David Rosenthal So Hunt goes to ABC and they find a young executive there.
- ▶ 59:59 David Rosenthal ABC doesn't even have a sports division at this point in time, but a young executive within ABC named Rune Arledge.
- ▶ 1:01:44 David Rosenthal So ABC signs a league-wide five-year TV rights deal with the American Football League for eight and a half million dollars over five years.
- ▶ 2:09:55 David Rosenthal Remember ABC?
- ▶ 2:09:57 David Rosenthal ABC's been out in the cold for several years now.
- ▶ 2:10:11 Ben Gilbert that's still far off in the future, but ABC is clearly interested in sports.
- ▶ 2:11:01 David Rosenthal You know, it's very telling that all of these networks had separate sports divisions, and that ABC didn't even have one until they got the first AFL deal.
- ▶ 2:14:05 David Rosenthal So, this whole vision for Monday Night Football that Rune Arledge and ABC can make happen for the NFL and new meteorites for the NFL to sell more revenue.
- ▶ 2:15:02 David Rosenthal This is his career within ABC.
- ▶ 2:15:14 David Rosenthal ABC gets exclusive rights to Monday Night Football for a new deal, new product, 8.5 million dollars per season.
- ▶ 2:15:42 Ben Gilbert And ABC is coming in and now spending eight and a half just for one game on Monday nights.
- ▶ 2:16:11 Ben Gilbert Because if I'm ABC, I'm like, wow, those guys, that really sucks for them having to produce four or five, six different games.
Enron · Acquired
- ▶ 33:14 Ben Gilbert ABC.