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NEWS: Variety: AT&T Asks at Least US$1 Billion for Crunchyroll From Multiple Buyers


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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 10:07 pm Reply with quote
Hasbro is also an option to buy Crunchyroll. They have an animation division, have certainly dealt with Japan a lot, own Saban, thought about buying Lionsgate.
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:12 pm Reply with quote

This is gonna be wild.
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Ryuji-Dono



Joined: 26 Apr 2018
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:50 pm Reply with quote
John Thacker wrote:
Hasbro is also an option to buy Crunchyroll. They have an animation division, have certainly dealt with Japan a lot, own Saban, thought about buying Lionsgate.


Will they promote it heavily though? It depends on how interested they are.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 10:33 am Reply with quote
I doubt Hasbro cares much about anime that doesn't have tie-ins with toys, but maybe they are trying to diversify.

https://shop.hasbro.com/en-us/toys-games?q=((navigation.brand.restName%3Apower-rangers))

Also on the subject of Roku devices, support for voice commands does tend to make controlling the device more seamless. I don't use that feature since I usually know what I want to watch and where it is, but I just did a couple of tests for shows like "March Comes in Like a Lion" and "Hunter X Hunter" along with a search for "Rachel Maddow." They all came up. I could find "Girls' Last Tour" on Amazon via voice search, too.

Can't find any results for shows exclusive to Crunchyroll though. Doesn't look like Funimation supports this feature either. Searching for "Fire Force" only brings up Hulu or per-episode purchase options at Amazon and VUDU. "Fruits Basket" returns Hulu, Apple, and Amazon, but no CR or Funi.

Searching at Google doesn't bring up any pages about why some channels have voice search and others seem not to. Wonder if the services have to pay to be included in voice search, or whether Roku just limits the feature to the big-name services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
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Beatdigga



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 11:13 am Reply with quote
Hasbro is like Mattel, their IP’s serve the chief money-making tool of product sales. Crunchyroll doesn’t help with that. Their media serves their advertising, not the other way around.
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matt78



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 12:05 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
Hasbro is like Mattel, their IP’s serve the chief money-making tool of product sales. Crunchyroll doesn’t help with that. Their media serves their advertising, not the other way around.


I don't know about that. If 'm not mistaken they bought Death Row Records last year and that doesn't really lend itself to selling toys. I agree with you though that they won't be a serious competitor for Crunchyroll.

Does anyone know where Hasbro streams most of their show?
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Beatdigga



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 12:59 pm Reply with quote
matt78 wrote:
I don't know about that. If 'm not mistaken they bought Death Row Records last year and that doesn't really lend itself to selling toys. I agree with you though that they won't be a serious competitor for Crunchyroll.

Does anyone know where Hasbro streams most of their show?


That is correct, but that was a side effect of their purchase of Entertainment One, namely the Peppa Pig rights. They just happened to acquire Entertainment One’s substantial musical archives in the process. They didn’t go through with the deal wanting Death Row directly.

Late stage capitalism everybody. That all being said, I don’t see a company like Hasbro getting the service, but rather a streamer looking to boost their own offerings.
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matt78



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 1:15 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
That is correct, but that was a side effect of their purchase of Entertainment One, namely the Peppa Pig rights. They just happened to acquire Entertainment One’s substantial musical archives in the process. They didn’t go through with the deal wanting Death Row directly.

Late stage capitalism everybody. That all being said, I don’t see a company like Hasbro getting the service, but rather a streamer looking to boost their own offerings.


I agree that one of the larger streaming companies will be the one to buy Crunchyroll if it does end up getting sold. I'm personally hoping for Sony to buy them because they are the only one I trust not to make significant changes if they take control. I could easily see a bunch of shows disappearing if say Disney owned it.
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 1:33 pm Reply with quote
Beatdigga wrote:
Late stage capitalism everybody. That all being said,


Honestly, it makes more sense than when GE owned NBC, or Sears owned Prodigy and Discover, among other things. There's a lot fewer conglomerates that own random businesses these days (Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is an exception), so I don't see how it's a late stage capitalism thing. Hasbro is relatively well focused in entertainment.

The real boom time for conglomerates was in the 1950s and 1960s, with companies like LTV, OTT, Litton, and others, and that's because the Celler-Dekefauver Act of 1950 banned buying competitors so people went for weird conglomerates that spanned many industries.

I certainly understand people worrying about consolidation within an industry, but that's pretty orthogonal to the complaint about getting into unrelated businesses. And in the case of streaming, we definitely have a lot more services right now than in most of the media heyday from decades ago. We have the top four content owners launching services, two very large independents in Netflix and Amazon, and a bunch of boutique services, many not owned by major players.
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Primus



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:56 pm Reply with quote
In the year prior to the acquisition, eOne did $1.2 billion in revenue. $200 million of which came from the family division (Peppa Pig and PJ Masks). Why would Hasbro buy the entire company for a singular brand when it doesn't represent the majority of its revenue? That's a lot of baggage they're going to have to unload in the future if their plans are truly to just be a toy company forever. For years, it's been apparent that Hasbro has plans to do more. Prior to buying eOne, they were seriously considering an acquisition of Lionsgate, a company with zero mass market merchandisable properties.

I don't think they'd be interested in Crunchyroll, though. Neither Hasbro or eOne are in the distribution platform business. They both sell shows to the highest bidder and I don't see how an anime VOD service would really fit in. eOne doesn't have the library or scale to launch its own SVOD platform that could realistically compete with the giants.
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Kadmos1



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:07 pm Reply with quote
John Thacker wrote:

The other channel owners include:

Fox (smaller after selling a lot off such as FX to Disney, and the divested RSNs)
Discovery
AMC
Hallmark
MeTV
Ion
Movie Studios: Sony (owns Funimation also), Lionsgate (Starz), and MGM own channels to show their movies
Sports networks for individual sports and regional sports channels, some owned by the leagues or teams themselves, some owned by Sinclair now
Shopping channels
Religious channels
Porn
Foreign language channels

Fox selling back those Marvel rights to Disney? Sure. However, at least give Fox Lucasfilm. Then, at least Fox would have had at least 1 major media franchise (Star Wars) to mooch off of. Don't end a storied movie empire like that! It's sad! Shame on Rupert Murdoch for selling off most of the Fox Empire, for the USDOJ permitting a semi-monopoly, and Disney for buying. 1000s of lay-offs are not worth it. Uncle Walt and film producer William Fox would not approve of this merger.
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nargun



Joined: 29 Mar 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 3:23 am Reply with quote
I mean, what would you rather have, a billion dollars or ownership of crunchyroll? I'm pretty sure you could build crunchyroll yourself for a few hundred million tops. This is some sort of joke or stunt, surely.
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