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The Hollywood strikes, the Disney-Charter carriage dispute and deal, a possible sale of production giant All3Media (The Traitors, Fleabag, 1917), and even his move from the U.S. to the U.K. – those were among the topics that Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries discussed at an industry conference on Wednesday.
In a keynote session at the Royal Television Society (RTS) Cambridge Convention, he was asked about the potential sale of All3Media, which Liberty Global jointly owns with Warner Bros. Discovery. The companies recently launched a process to explore a sale. Calling All3Media “an incredible business” with “a billion in revenue and pretty much doubled that since we’ve been investors,” Fries also lauded the firm for winning awards, concluding it has “just done an incredible job.”
So why explore a sale? “The industry is changing,” the Liberty Global boss said. “And studios are searching for scale, especially pureplay studios, like All3Media. So Warner Bros. Discovery, our partner, and we decided that this might be a business that has greater value in a larger platform and could be a catalyst for consolidation and really help transform other studio businesses. So it has nothing to do with the business itself. We love (CEO) Jane (Turton), we love what All3Media does.”
Given Liberty Global’s traditional focus on pay TV and telecom business, “it’s not quite as strategic to us as it might be to Warner Bros. Discovery, but they’re in their own situation,” Fries added. “So it’s bittersweet. And let’s see what happens. If we ended up continuing to own it, that would be fine with me as well. But I think it’s an interesting time for All3Media also to find an opportunity to scale up itself because, the management team there, the assets, the studios are world-class. In terms of the interest we’re getting, we’re not the only ones who think that.”
Questioned about suitors likely to take a look at a deal, Fries said: “We’re just starting the process. And pretty much everybody you could think of is interested, even that company here, ITV.” That was a reference to ITV earlier this year saying it was “actively exploring” a deal for All3Media before later saying it was no longer doing so.
Addressing the recent Walt Disney carriage deal with Charter Communications, in which his chairman John Malone is a big investor, Fries said: “It’s a win-win (and) might be the way of the future.” He added: “It was frightening for a lot of people when it was happening, but it worked out well, I think, for both parties.”
Questioned about the current Hollywood strikes, the Liberty Global CEO offered: “It’s a tricky, tricky question. For starters, I think, as I understand it, the writers and the actors are asking for all these normal things. They want, understandably, more compensation, better services, better benefits. These are fair and reasonable requests.” But streaming and AI fear cause challenges in the negotiations. After all, streaming is at “an inflection point,” he argued. “That’s unusual for everybody.” “So that transparency, I think, is critical for the creative industry.”
How about AI? Fries argued it means “a lot of fear of the unknown,” adding: “I’m not sure it’s the best time to negotiate this because in a few years, when it comes back up, you might know a lot more about AI.” But it’s understandable that for many in the creative industries “it’s frightening, it’s scary stuff,” he said. “So how would that be shorted up in the writers want, basically that no AI developed content can be utilized, no rewrites. And actors don’t want their digital images used by anybody. “So it’s really a tricky conversation.”
Fries on Wednesday also shared that he recently relocated from the U.S. to London with his family. “We’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve been living on an airplane pretty much that entire time,” he shared. “We’ve invested in 50 countries around the world, but Europe has always been one of our biggest markets, and we’ve been in as many as 20 countries in Europe.” The U.K. is “our biggest and most important market,” he added. “So it seemed like a great time. I’ve got four of my core reports here in the office. And to be honest, it’s a great time for my family. I lived abroad once before with my two older daughters and I have my three-and-a-half-year-old son and my wife.”
The Liberty Global CEO also quipped that it has been “a seamless transition, except for the driving,” explaining that “my wife would not drive with me on the other side of the road, until one morning when we didn’t have anyone to take him to school, and I had to drive, and it worked. Now she’s over the hump. But other than that, it’s been really great. It’s nice to be here.”
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