EM.TV AG: Background and History

[The Storyteller]

What is EM.TV AG? I know it was the company that bought Henson and then sold it back, but what was it? a media company?

 

[Phillip]

In short, EM.TV is a German-owned children's character-based media company that was formed in 1989 by the Haffa brothers. It was extremely succesful from the mid-nineties until 2000. Since they are based overseas, their exposure before the Muppets was limited in the US. But some around the world thought they had the potential to be the European version of Disney. They just needed a major, world-wide character license to sell the brand.

In February 2000, the company bought Henson for $680 million. Then a month later they bought Formula 1 Racing for several billion (if I remember correctly). By December 2000, the company's stock began to plummit and Henson was up for sale as of spring 2001. In December 2000, EM.TV sold the rights to the Sesame characters for $180 million and the rights to Odyssey/Crown Media in the summer of 2001.

It wasn't until the Henson kids bought back the company in May 2003 for a final sum of $78 million that Henson was a US owned company again, without ownership in a cable channel or the Sesame Street Muppets.

I'm sure Luke and others can chime in here with some additional info I didn't include.

 

[The Storyteller]

Why did they buy the Fomula 1 Racing? That was carrier sucide! They could have used that money to promte there characters in the US, and use the cable channels to showcase them. What IDIOTS!

 

[Luke]

Phillip pretty much said it all really, for the extended version you could try reading Munch Memories, an article i wrote for this site. It's at http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/editorials/munich_memories.shtml

At the start EM.TV did some great work giving the Muppets a higher profile in Europe, but it seemed to come at the expense of the North American market and when they started broadening their horizons beyond TV and into much wider areas they took some big gambles and lost the majority of them. If the Formula One venture did suceed (and remember they had interests in Pay-Per-View TV and those sorts of things so it did make sense) it is such a big and powerful industry (much more so than kids TV) that it could have set them up for further investment and success in the other areas they had interests in too.

 

[The Storyteller]

Has Henson resigned with SONY yet?

 

[Luke]

The Muppets were bought by Disney, so they will be distributed by Buena Vista. Henson signed a deal with Hit Entertainment to distribute the remaining family properties so they won't be on CTHE/Sony either. The only remaining properties are the movies from Henson Pictures, not sure who they will be distributed by in the future.

 

[BoyRaisin2]

Are HIT's videos distributed in-house like Disney/BVHV or Viacom/Paramount and others, or do they have their videos/DVDs released by a separate company?

>>The only remaining properties are the movies from Henson Pictures, not sure who they will be distributed by in the future.<<

Well the Muppets/Bear are at Disney, and Henson's "Family Classics" library are being handled by HIT. I imagine the first three Jim Henson Pictures films (Buddy, MFS, Elmo) still belong to Sony, and Henson said they are looking into a joint venture to form a "fantasy label," which would presumably house Dark Crystal, Storyteller, and future fantasy projects. Also, Henson reportedly inked a live-action movie deal with MGM.

So a lot of Jim Henson Company to go around.

 

[Luke]

Are HIT's videos distributed in-house like Disney/BVHV or Viacom/Paramount and others, or do they have their videos/DVDs released by a separate company?

If memory serves, they are distributed in-house.