The former Paramount executive will be CEO of the independent production company, which has 85 shows and movies in the works. North Road said it has added $150 million to its capital reserves via the Qatar Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund.
CNBC asked media insiders, including Peter Chernin, Barry Diller, Byron Allen, Bela Bajaria, Jeff Zucker and Bill Simmons, for their predictions about what TV will be like in three years. They also weighed in on which companies will dominate streaming and how big a role sports and gambling will play.
Peter Chernin has launched The North Road Company, a global content studio that will bring together Chernin Entertainment, the U.S. assets of Red Arrow Studios, which includes Love Is Blind producer Kinetic Content, and Connor Schell’s non-scripted business Words + Pictures. The move comes as the former Fox chief paid $180 million for Red Arrow’s U.S. companies including Kinetic Content; The Circus producer Left/Right; 44 Blue Productions, the company behind Netflix’s Life After Death with Tyler Henry; Say Yes To The Dress producer Half Yard and Building Alaska producer Dorsey Pictures.
Connor Schell will serve as CEO of the still-unnamed studio which will “produce high quality, culturally relevant, non-fiction storytelling both inside and outside of the sports world,” according to the company.
AT&T is in talks with Peter Chernin about acquiring the balance of Otter Media, their 3-year-old joint venture, two sources told the New York Post. The move is part of a wider effort by the telecom giant to clean up a host of joint ventures ahead of its expected acquisition of Time Warner, sources said.
After five years at 20th Century Fox TV, Peter Chernin’s TV operation is moving to NBCUniversal with a new two-year overall deal. The deal will allow Chernin Television to develop and produce projects with NBCU’s Universal Television, along with the option of producing independently for cable and other streaming platforms.
Exclusives
While many former studio heads fail when striking out on their own, Chernin has found success as an independent producer, with seven hits in a row. “I’m focused on areas of the media business that are going to grow the most rapidly over the next 10 years,” said Chernin, who has barely spoken to the news media since leaving Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp., where he was president.
Just last month the telco announced that it forged a partnership with former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, valued at $500 million, to either buy or build a so-called over-the-top online video service. That’s now potentially the biggest — and perhaps the only meaningful — new opportunity for AT&T if it completes its $49.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV.
The field of bidders for Hulu remains in flux, with AT&T now said to be in discussions with Chernin Group, led by former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, to enter a joint proposal to acquire Internet TV site Hulu.
Former News Corp. President Peter Chernin and private equity fund Guggenheim Digital Media have placed bids for Hulu, triggering a tug-of-war for the online video service. Satellite operator DirecTV and cable operator Time Warner Cable also put in bids, sources say.
Former News Corp. President Peter Chernin has bid around $500 million for Hulu, the online video streaming service he helped create in 2007, according to two sources with knowledge of Hulu’s sale process.
Peter Chernin To Old Media: Be Very Afraid.
That ventures like Google TV and Apple TV make traditional media companies justifiably anxious was actually the good news from Peter Chernin, former president of News Corp. The bad news he told the Web 2.0 Summit: Those aren’t the only companies capable of doing damage to the incumbents.
