WASHINGTON POST'S PAUL FARHI: "In one stroke, Disney would
become the largest among the handful of global entertainment
goliaths" (WASHINGTON POST, 8/1).
MEDIA ANALYST PAUL SCHULMAN: "It's a shock. If you'd heard
Disney had bought one of the three networks, your third guess
would have been ABC. How did they keep this quiet? That's what
I want to know" (USA TODAY, 8/1).
BOOZ, ALLEN & HAMILTON'S MICHAEL WOLF: "The merger wave in
media is far from over. I think this puts a premium on the two
remaining networks and makes them much more interesting to other
media companies" (DAILY VARIETY, 8/1).
DREAMWORKS' JEFFREY KATZENBERG: "Everything I speculated on
was wrong. This one wasn't even on my radar screen" (L.A. TIMES,
8/1).
L.A. TIMES' TOM PETRUNO: "While synergy is an overused word
on Wall Street, many large investors say this merger offers more
potential for true synergy than most" (L.A. TIMES, 8/1).
INVESTOR WARREN BUFFETT: "It's a marriage of the No. 1
content company in the world with the No. 1 distribution system"
(REUTERS/FINANCIAL POST, 8/1).
SMITH BARNEY'S JOHN REIDY: "This is a colossus among
colossuses. ... It's a company which is going to have the muscle
to do almost anything it wants" (NEWSDAY, 8/1).
L.A. TIMES' CLAUDIA ELLER: "Hollywood, Wall Street and the
entertainment media at large were all caught with their pants
down" (L.A. TIMES, 8/1).
VIACOM CHAIR SUMNER REDSTONE: "There was not a whisper.
This was a well kept secret" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/1).
TELE-TV CHAIR & CEO HOWARD STRINGER: "This is Godzilla
marrying King Kong. The jungle is going to be a lonelier place
for everyone else" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/1).
NEWS CORP. CHAIR RUPERT MURDOCH: "They are twice as big as
me now" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/1).
RUTGERS PROF. BENJAMIN BARBER, in a N.Y. TIMES op-ed: "The
fashionable term for all this vertical and lateral corporate
integration is synergy, but synergy turns out to be just another
word for monopoly" (N.Y. TIMES, 8/1).
UPENN'S JOSEPH TUROW: "The engine of all this is the
globalization of media. In order to make money on content, you
have to be able to move your content through a larger number of
distribution windows than in the past" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER,
8/1).
