Tim Dowling asks a panel of media clairvoyants to assess the future after the Disney merger
Monday February 16, 2004
The Guardian
April. An audacious management buyout of key Disney assets will come close to scuppering the proposed merger with Comcast. Under the scheme, a financial consortium loyal to chairman Michael Eisner retains the company's theme parks, the Disney town of Celebration, Florida, and Walt's frozen head.
Early 2005. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will announce a surprise merger with Michael Jackson, creating a global content provider that includes most of the Beatles' back catalogue and almost a trillion recipes. MarthaJackson Omniliving will most likely seek to sell off Jackson himself in the near future, possibly to a museum.
2007. Falling gate receipts at EisnerWorld, America's first Atkins-only theme park, will result in a quick sale to AmericaWarnerOnline, the main rival to TimeDisneyCom, currently the world's largest media-leisure conglomerate. Awol, a pioneer in the carbo-leisure industry, now owns the McDonald's Channel, Fat TV and the Hall of Fries in Las Vegas, and will soon begin constructing a chocolate replica of New York City in Guantanamo Bay.
2008. AssociatedHollingerExpress will attempt a hostile takeover of itself; one in four of the world's newspapers will disappear in the mêlée.
2009. NBCSonyMicrosoft, the world's largest thing, will attempt to acquire Idaho in order to use the state to house its headquarters, its broadcasting and internet divisions, its four movie studios and the bulk of its employees. Idaho is one of America's most under-utilised states and has long been considered ripe for takeover. More than 400,000 Idahoans will be eliminated, most through attrition.
2011. ViaFoxWarnerTurnerWarner will collapse when its accountants reveal that in the most recent merger one of its major divisions had accidentally been valued twice. Upstart cable provider CrapTV may come in with an 11th-hour rescue package. The collapse will be good news for troubled rivals DisneyAwol, which will face a potentially devastating lawsuit when 47 people are killed while riding its CarboLoader rollercoaster at Disneyland Basra, mostly from coronary disease.
2013. EndTimeWarner, an all-encompassing global media singularity created by the final Merger of all Mergers, will broadcast the Apocalypse in a special interactive format for subscribers. The end of the world itself will be shown live, although the star-studded halftime show will be transmitted with a five-minute delay in case Justin Timberlake gets any ideas.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1148752,00.html
Monday February 16, 2004
The Guardian
April. An audacious management buyout of key Disney assets will come close to scuppering the proposed merger with Comcast. Under the scheme, a financial consortium loyal to chairman Michael Eisner retains the company's theme parks, the Disney town of Celebration, Florida, and Walt's frozen head.
Early 2005. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will announce a surprise merger with Michael Jackson, creating a global content provider that includes most of the Beatles' back catalogue and almost a trillion recipes. MarthaJackson Omniliving will most likely seek to sell off Jackson himself in the near future, possibly to a museum.
2007. Falling gate receipts at EisnerWorld, America's first Atkins-only theme park, will result in a quick sale to AmericaWarnerOnline, the main rival to TimeDisneyCom, currently the world's largest media-leisure conglomerate. Awol, a pioneer in the carbo-leisure industry, now owns the McDonald's Channel, Fat TV and the Hall of Fries in Las Vegas, and will soon begin constructing a chocolate replica of New York City in Guantanamo Bay.
2008. AssociatedHollingerExpress will attempt a hostile takeover of itself; one in four of the world's newspapers will disappear in the mêlée.
2009. NBCSonyMicrosoft, the world's largest thing, will attempt to acquire Idaho in order to use the state to house its headquarters, its broadcasting and internet divisions, its four movie studios and the bulk of its employees. Idaho is one of America's most under-utilised states and has long been considered ripe for takeover. More than 400,000 Idahoans will be eliminated, most through attrition.
2011. ViaFoxWarnerTurnerWarner will collapse when its accountants reveal that in the most recent merger one of its major divisions had accidentally been valued twice. Upstart cable provider CrapTV may come in with an 11th-hour rescue package. The collapse will be good news for troubled rivals DisneyAwol, which will face a potentially devastating lawsuit when 47 people are killed while riding its CarboLoader rollercoaster at Disneyland Basra, mostly from coronary disease.
2013. EndTimeWarner, an all-encompassing global media singularity created by the final Merger of all Mergers, will broadcast the Apocalypse in a special interactive format for subscribers. The end of the world itself will be shown live, although the star-studded halftime show will be transmitted with a five-minute delay in case Justin Timberlake gets any ideas.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1148752,00.html
