WI Sony did not buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment?

British Republic · Jun 2, 2014

In 1987, the Coca-Cola owned Columbia Pictures merged with the Coca-Cola/HBO owned (although the latter sold their shares shortly afterward) Tristar pictures, this forming Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Coca-Cola then listed the company in the stock market to get out of the entertainment business.

In 1989, the Sony Corporation bought the company and renamed it Sony Pictures Entertainment, which they own to this day (although there has been pressure for a sale of the businesses)

The question I want to ask is this, what if Sony decide not to buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment?

Would Sony buy another film studio or stay out of the movie business?

Will Columbia Pictures Entertainment remain as a independent business or be bought be another company (if so who...)?

Note: Sony has already bought CBS Records (now Sony Music) in 1987.

Nivek · Jun 2, 2014

Maybe Sony will not enter into movie business at all, remember that was a chance thanks to japanese bubble and under the table loans with japanese Keretsu, if Columbia who was a juicy target is not put into sale, the japenese bubble burst will make Sony backdown that.

Dan1988 · Jun 2, 2014

If would be interesting if there was a weird combination that could work in this case, i.e. HBO in combination with, say, the Canadian outfit Alliance Communications. That would be interesting have those three brands in operation; which of course leaves the question open as to if they get an opening in the Quebec market (and thus get wider distribution of French-language Canadian films in the US as a result).

British Republic · Jun 3, 2014

Nivek said:
Maybe Sony will not enter into movie business at all, remember that was a chance thanks to japanese bubble and under the table loans with japanese Keretsu, if Columbia who was a juicy target is not put into sale, the japenese bubble burst will make Sony backdown that.

Perhaps Coca-Cola could either refuse to sell their stake to Sony or demand a price Sony cannot afford, or maybe even the banks in Japan (due to the fact they are already suffering from bad debts) could take a dim view on financing Sony's bid for a Hollywood studio, remember that Sony made a loss on that deal until the late 90s and was rumoured to be selling it at the time.

Where that to happen, then Panasonic's buyout of MCA (owner of Universal Studios and MCA Records as well as a part owner of both the USA Network and the Sci-Fi Channel) is also not going to happen if the Japanese banks objected to the Sony deal.

That will in turn create a lot of butterfiles, I could see News Corporation end up buying MCA/Universal (OTL they where interested once or twice in doing so, along with NBCUniversal). Question is what would they do to UMG?

If that where to happen then Seagram (unless there is a way of butterflying Edgar Bronfman, Jr from either running the company or at least staying out of the media business) will look at buying TimeWarner insted (OTL, they where its largest shareholder until the MCA deal with a 15% stake), which would in turn mean that the AOL-TimeWarner merger does not happen either.

That in turn also means that Vivendi will not merge with Universal at all, although they will still follow its path to becoming a media company, so they might still deal with Seagram and merger with TimeWarner insted (although like OTL, it will still go pear shaped)

Then we come to Polygram, with no Seagram owning UMG, who will end up buying the company from Phillips? (or maybe Murdoch sells UMG to Polygram, or form a joint venture with Phillips)

Lastly we come back to Columbia, if the CBS-Viacom and Disney-ABC deals go ahead as OTL, maybe we would see a NBC-Columbia merger or if NBC buying Vivendi's media assets (as OTL, thus forming NBC Warner), perhaps one of the other studios might end up buying the company.

Perhaps we would see AOL buy Columbia insted of Time Warner in OTL

Lastly, with no Sony to buy MGM, maybe Warner Brothers bid for MGM is sucessfull (in 2004)...

What we will see is a more poweful News Corporation in Hollywood (and a Universal-Fox merger), a different music industry, GE buying TimeWarner and a different fate for Columbia Tristar

British Republic · Jun 3, 2014

Dan1988 said:
If would be interesting if there was a weird combination that could work in this case, i.e. HBO in combination with, say, the Canadian outfit Alliance Communications. That would be interesting have those three brands in operation; which of course leaves the question open as to if they get an opening in the Quebec market (and thus get wider distribution of French-language Canadian films in the US as a result).

Time Inc would either not merge with Warner Communications for TimeWarner will have to buy Alliance Communications for that to happen.

Was there any talk in OTL of that happening, also what are the media ownership laws of Canada at the time?

Dan1988 · Jun 3, 2014

British Republic said:
Time Inc would either not merge with Warner Communications for TimeWarner will have to buy Alliance Communications for that to happen.

Was there any talk in OTL of that happening, also what are the media ownership laws of Canada at the time?

AFAIK, no - at the time, the first major acqusition of Alliance Communications was a then-small Quebecois French-language distributor, Vivafilm (which subsequently became the French-language film distribution channel for Alliance). Several years down the road, after another purchase it got renamed to Alliance Atlantis Communications, and became Canada's largest film distributor (and, to a degree, producer). The only downside I can see to this would be the hue and cry over Time Inc purchasing Alliance Communications, which the CRTC would definitely investigate (in the past, the CRTC has been vigilant at even the slightest hint of American influence/control over the Canadian broadcast media) - then again, this was the beginning of the age of media concentration in Canada, so who knows? That's why I'm suggesting a joint-venture between HBO and Alliance Communications, which could also potentially bring HBO legally to Canada instead of having to force everyone to use grey-market satellite subscriptions - and thus complement the existing regional premium movie channels (Movie Central for Northern and Western Canada, The Movie Network for Eastern Canada, and Super Ecran for Quebec). Of course, HBO Canada's films as broadcast would be somewhat different, HBO Canada would also have to fulfill CanCon regulations (which mandate a certain amount of Canadian programming, in this case both films and TV series), and a standardized film rating system would be used (probably following the trend with the regional movie channels, with Alberta ratings for Western and Northern Canada and Ontario ratings for Eastern Canada) - but that's a small price to pay, IMO.

British Republic · Jun 3, 2014

Dan1988 said:
AFAIK, no - at the time, the first major acqusition of Alliance Communications was a then-small Quebecois French-language distributor, Vivafilm (which subsequently became the French-language film distribution channel for Alliance). Several years down the road, after another purchase it got renamed to Alliance Atlantis Communications, and became Canada's largest film distributor (and, to a degree, producer).

Did Time inc have any non-print assets apart from HBO, otherwise I could see TimeWarner buy Alliance Communications insted, since it would mean Warner Brothers expands in Canada. It would mean TimeWarner owns channels in Canada itself and maybe even ends up co-producing CSI with CBS...

Dan1988 said:
The only downside I can see to this would be the hue and cry over Time Inc purchasing Alliance Communications, which the CRTC would definitely investigate (in the past, the CRTC has been vigilant at even the slightest hint of American influence/control over the Canadian broadcast media) - then again, this was the beginning of the age of media concentration in Canada, so who knows?

This has been going on since the era of radio, it would take a lot of lobbying for it to be allowed, would Jean Chretien and the Liberals allow such a deal?

Dan1988 said:
That's why I'm suggesting a joint-venture between HBO and Alliance Communications, which could also potentially bring HBO legally to Canada instead of having to force everyone to use grey-market satellite subscriptions - and thus complement the existing regional premium movie channels (Movie Central for Northern and Western Canada, The Movie Network for Eastern Canada, and Super Ecran for Quebec).

I could see that happening for sure, maybe HBO Canada overtakes Movie Central/Movie Network as well or buys them out...

Dan1988 said:
Of course, HBO Canada's films as broadcast would be somewhat different, HBO Canada would also have to fulfill CanCon regulations (which mandate a certain amount of Canadian programming, in this case both films and TV series), and a standardized film rating system would be used (probably following the trend with the regional movie channels, with Alberta ratings for Western and Northern Canada and Ontario ratings for Eastern Canada) - but that's a small price to pay, IMO.

Maybe HBO Canada invests in a few orginal programmes to met the criteria...

Dan1988 · Jun 3, 2014

British Republic said:
Did Time inc have any non-print assets apart from HBO, otherwise I could see TimeWarner buy Alliance Communications insted, since it would mean Warner Brothers expands in Canada. It would mean TimeWarner owns channels in Canada itself and maybe even ends up co-producing CSI with CBS...

I don't know if Time-Life (

) had any non-print assets other than HBO prior to the merger with Warner Communications. A joint-venture that would lead to HBO Canada would at least allay some fears over creeping Americanization (heck, a good portion of the specialty channels on Canadian cable/satellite TV are either channels with the branding licensed from the channel owner back in the States or are joint ventures - TSN, for example, is a joint venture of ESPN and CTV, the latter Canada's oldest and largest private TV broadcaster). An HBO Canada Group, say, with Time-Life and Alliance Communications as the principal shareholders, which could then expand in the age of multichannel television.

British Republic said:
This has been going on since the era of radio, it would take a lot of lobbying for it to be allowed, would Jean Chretien and the Liberals allow such a deal?

For 1989 into 1993, well we would still be dealing with Brian Mulroney and the Tories, and then a brief period where Kim Campbell (Canada's only female PM) was in power, only to lose to the Liberals. Given that Mulroney was largely pro-free market (he was one of the architects of NAFTA), I would think that he would probably allow it. Not without controversy, of course (cf. the Karlheinz Schreiber Airbus scandal), but he'd allow it.

British Republic said:
I could see that happening for sure, maybe HBO Canada overtakes Movie Central/Movie Network as well or buys them out...

True - at least some healthy competition wouldn't hurt, eh?

British Republic said:
Maybe HBO Canada invests in a few orginal programmes to met the criteria...

They'd have to invest in original programming from the get-go anyway. Whatever programmes they produced would be interesting to figure out (and for that, they'd have to go for a general-interest channel licence, as under the CRTC pay-TV policy at the time general-interest channels had to be commercial-free and hence what we would call "premium" channels), including films.

British Republic · Jun 4, 2014

Dan1988 said:
I don't know if Time-Life () had any non-print assets other than HBO prior to the merger with Warner Communications. A joint-venture that would lead to HBO Canada would at least allay some fears over creeping Americanization (heck, a good portion of the specialty channels on Canadian cable/satellite TV are either channels with the branding licensed from the channel owner back in the States or are joint ventures - TSN, for example, is a joint venture of ESPN and CTV, the latter Canada's oldest and largest private TV broadcaster). An HBO Canada Group, say, with Time-Life and Alliance Communications as the principal shareholders, which could then expand in the age of multichannel television.

Speaking of which, would this deal still mean (as it did in OTL), Alliance will merge with Atlantis and ultimately end up as part of Shaw Media?

Dan1988 said:
For 1989 into 1993, well we would still be dealing with Brian Mulroney and the Tories, and then a brief period where Kim Campbell (Canada's only female PM) was in power, only to lose to the Liberals. Given that Mulroney was largely pro-free market (he was one of the architects of NAFTA), I would think that he would probably allow it. Not without controversy, of course (cf. the Karlheinz Schreiber Airbus scandal), but he'd allow it.

Thanks for telling me this...

Dan1988 said:
True - at least some healthy competition wouldn't hurt, eh?

Agreed!

Dan1988 said:
They'd have to invest in original programming from the get-go anyway. Whatever programmes they produced would be interesting to figure out (and for that, they'd have to go for a general-interest channel licence, as under the CRTC pay-TV policy at the time general-interest channels had to be commercial-free and hence what we would call "premium" channels), including films.

In my view, this would mean Warner Brothers/HBO would produce a large amount of Candian as well as American content (if the Time-Warner merger still happens)

British Republic · Jun 4, 2014

Another question I want to ask is this, if News Corp did by MCA by the late 90s, what would happen to Fox and Universal Studios, as well as USA Network and Sci-Fi channel by now?

Marc Pasquin · Jun 4, 2014

Dan1988 said:
If would be interesting if there was a weird combination that could work in this case, i.e. HBO in combination with, say, the Canadian outfit Alliance Communications. That would be interesting have those three brands in operation; which of course leaves the question open as to if they get an opening in the Quebec market (and thus get wider distribution of French-language Canadian films in the US as a result).

I could see your proposal resulting in Quebec shows & films getting a bigger share of the non-english distribution in the US then they currently have but would it really have any chances of raising the numbers overall ? For that matter, how much dubbed / subtitled movies and shows do you get in the US and are they mainly aimed at specific groups (such as the hispanic population) or is it still mostly the arthouse market ?

British Republic · Jun 4, 2014

Marc Pasquin said:
I could see your proposal resulting in Quebec shows & films getting a bigger share of the non-english distribution in the US then they currently have but would it really have any chances of raising the numbers overall ? For that matter, how much dubbed / subtitled movies and shows do you get in the US and are they mainly aimed at specific groups (such as the hispanic population) or is it still mostly the arthouse market ?

Don't forget Bollywood (Indian/Hindi film industry) in both my native country and the states, there is a fairly large audince in both countries for those films...

There are also 2 million French Speakers in America (Canada having 7 million).

How extensive is Hollywoods distribution network in Africa, there are large numbers of French Speakers in that region...

Marc Pasquin · Jun 4, 2014

British Republic said:
Don't forget Bollywood (Indian/Hindi film industry) in both my native country and the states, there is a fairly large audince in both countries for those films...

There are also 2 million French Speakers in America (Canada having 7 million).

How extensive is Hollywoods distribution network in Africa, there are large numbers of French Speakers in that region...

If it's anything like in quebec or France, you probably get all the major flicks dubbed in france.

A problem that has occured a number of time in regard to quebec films and shows in other part of the francophonie is that if they have too much "colour", they tend to fail.

I assume the francophones in the US most likely to understand quebecois would be the ones in New England but they probably can get the signal from free-to-air channels anyway from across the border (I know we used to get vermont and new york affiliates from ABC/NBC/CBS in Montreal)

Marc Pasquin · Jun 4, 2014

British Republic said:
Don't forget Bollywood (Indian/Hindi film industry) in both my native country and the states, there is a fairly large audince in both countries for those films...

come to think of it, how much foreign language content do you get on british television ? I know here in australia It's pretty much just on SBS (government sponsored) that you get anything not in english on the free-to-air channels. The only dedicated foreign language channels I know are those you get via grey market satellite TV.

British Republic · Jun 5, 2014

Marc Pasquin said:
come to think of it, how much foreign language content do you get on british television ? I know here in australia It's pretty much just on SBS (government sponsored) that you get anything not in english on the free-to-air channels. The only dedicated foreign language channels I know are those you get via grey market satellite TV.

The UK has a lot of channels aimed at the South Asian Community and its own radio station by the BBC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._in_the_United_Kingdom#International_channels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Asian_Network

Dan1988 · Jun 5, 2014

Hmm, I was wondering - would Time-Life buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment? In that case, both HBO and Columbia Pictures would be under one roof, thus providing even more leverage in the case of HBO Canada.

British Republic · Jun 6, 2014

Dan1988 said:
Hmm, I was wondering - would Time-Life buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment? In that case, both HBO and Columbia Pictures would be under one roof, thus providing even more leverage in the case of HBO Canada.

HBO co-founded Tri-Star with Coca-Cola (then owners of Columbia), and CBS, they still retained ownership when Coca-Cola "sold" Columbia to Tri-Star to form Columbia Pictures Entertainment, which HBO retained a shareholding in until Sony bought it.

So what if HBO offered to buy out Coca-Cola's stake in Tri-Star AND Columbia Pictures (thus HBO has a majority stake in Columbia-Tri-Star)

This will mean Sony would not even be bidding for CPE, so they could buy another studio, either Paramount, MCA/Univeral or Warner Communications.

Also if, Time-Life buy Columbia-Tristar, does the merger with Warner still go ahead?

British Republic · Jun 6, 2014

Acutally, if Time-Life/Warner Communications merger and TimeWarner-Turner mergers go-ahead (even if Time-Life buys CPE), this will mean that Warner Brothers and Columbia-Tristar will end up merging with each other, this will mean that WB will end up distributing the films of Carolco Pictures.

This could mean that if it goes out of business as it did in OTL, WB might end up buying its assets, which could mean that Warner Brothers ends up producing Terminator, Rambo and Spider-Man films in the late 90s + 00s, produce the Crusade film (a proposed Schwarzenegger-Verhoeven film that never got made) and own the Stargate franchise and have a even bigger film and television library than OTL

Overall, Marvel is not going to happy that Men in Black and Spider-Man are going to be made into films by the owner of its rival publisher...

Dan1988 · Jun 6, 2014

If HBO (in effect, Time-Life) buys out both Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola's stake in Tri-Star, I doubt that Time-Life would merge with Warner Communications in that scenario. Both would remain separate companies, and would thus clear the way for Time-Life/HBO to engage with Alliance Communications (including either Vivafilm, if Alliance still purchases it in 1990, or through alternate means, for engaging the Francophone Canadian market).

However - until 1989, within North America, Columbia Records had no connection with Columbia Pictures; instead, as shown by the use of "CBS Records" for international non-North American releases (though for a while Canada also used CBS Records, mainly for French-Canadian artists), Columbia Records was associated with the CBS radio/TV network; it was when Sony purchased both Columbia Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 that such a connection was made for the first time. It was also with the Columbia Records purchase that Sony also purchased the rights to the Columbia Records name and trademark from EMI and (for Spain) BMG, leaving Sony to use the Columbia Records name everywhere except Japan (where Sony Records is used instead). Since it's pre-POD, I could see Sony continuing to go down that same path with regards to the music, but without Columbia Pictures the question thus would remain what Time-Life's relationship with Sony would be, considering the trademarks and rights for both Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures are different.

British Republic · Jun 6, 2014

Dan1988 said:
If HBO (in effect, Time-Life) buys out both Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola's stake in Tri-Star, I doubt that Time-Life would merge with Warner Communications in that scenario. Both would remain separate companies

You think? Anyway it was a interesting idea...

Dan1988 said:
and would thus clear the way for Time-Life/HBO to engage with Alliance Communications (including either Vivafilm, if Alliance still purchases it in 1990, or through alternate means, for engaging the Francophone Canadian market).

What would be the POD used for Time-Life to get involved in Alliance, maybe HBO saw that many Canadians where intested in a HBO channel and lauched a JV with Alliance as you suggested. If Time-Life bought CPE, then Columbia Tristar could distribute Vivafilm releases in American elsewhere.

How would a HBO buyout of CPE effect Carloco Pictures?

Dan1988 said:
However - until 1989, within North America, Columbia Records had no connection with Columbia Pictures; instead, as shown by the use of "CBS Records" for international non-North American releases (though for a while Canada also used CBS Records, mainly for French-Canadian artists), Columbia Records was associated with the CBS radio/TV network; it was when Sony purchased both Columbia Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 that such a connection was made for the first time.

It was also with the Columbia Records purchase that Sony also purchased the rights to the Columbia Records name and trademark from EMI and (for Spain) BMG, leaving Sony to use the Columbia Records name everywhere except Japan (where Sony Records is used instead). Since it's pre-POD, I could see Sony continuing to go down that same path with regards to the music, but without Columbia Pictures the question thus would remain what Time-Life's relationship with Sony would be, considering the trademarks and rights for both Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures are different.

CBC Films only changed its name to Columbia Pictures to improve its image, also are you suggest BMG owns the Columbia name in Spain?

Without any buyout of CPE by Sony, would they buy another studio such as MCA/Universal or Warner Communications (it as you expect, it will not merge with Time-Life as OTL), Maybe even Polygram in the future?