Word is leaking out that Canada’s Peace Arch Entertainment is considering a takeover bid for ContentFilm. The CBC plans to sell its entire international sales catalog to ContentFilm’s subsidiary, Fireworks International.
Variety is reporting this morning that ContentFilm might be an attractive takeover target — the firm announced half-year net profits down 76% to $896,000, and sales down 5% to $20.3 million.
ContentFilm says the poor performance is because of “challenging” market conditions for another subsidiary, Allumination, and a “quiet” half-year for ContentFilm.
Sales at Fireworks, the firm to which CBC is negotiating to sell its international sales catalog, is healthy — “in excess of expectations” says the company.
The potential bid from Peace Arch would offer investors a 25% increase over its opening price just a year ago on London’s “Alternative Investment Market.”
The former Tristar and CBS head and the former chairman of Paramount TV Group are both pivotal investors in both Peace Arch and ContentFilm.
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“The CBC plans to sell its entire international sales catalog”? Uh, no. It’s planning to sign a distribution deal. Not the same thing.
Semantics, really. The end result of signing the deal will be the sale of the CBC’s international sales products.
Not semantics at all. Producers and content owners license their products to distributors all the time without giving up copyright. The distributor takes a cut of the sales. If the CBC feels that its in-house distribution department isn’t up to the job - whether because they don’t have the economies of scale of a larger distributor or because they’re just not aggressive enough - why not try something else? What’s the downside?