Katzenberg closes $1BN funding for short-form content company, New TV

Katzenberg closes $1BN funding for short-form content company, New TV
Michelle Clancy
| 28 July 2018


DreamWorks co-founder/Hollywood mover-and-shaker Jeffrey Katzenberg has closed his first $1 billion round of funding for his New TV platform, according to sources in the US.

New TV which aims to bring premium production values a la Game of Thrones to the short-form mobile platform. More specifically, the content will be serialized – i.e., long-form content broken up into shorter, snackable bites.

Even though the shows will each only be a few minutes long (and no more than 15), the cost for each series will rival that of a full-length Netflix series at about $5 million to $6 million per hour, the sources said.

Sources familiar with the latest funding deal told CNN that Disney, 21st Century Fox, Warner Bros, Entertainment One and other media companies have collectively invested around $200 million so far into the enterprise, while institutional investors, primarily from the US and China, have ponied up the rest.

Last year, Katzenberg announced that he had raised money for WndrCo, an investment vehicle for media and technology companies. New TV is the largest of WndrCo’s investments to date. Meg Whitman, former CEO at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, has been tapped to lead the business.

Then, in April, New TV reportedly raised $800 million, from 21st Century Fox and Warner Bros, along with institutional investors.

Questions remain as to the feasibility of the idea, including content costs, distribution schemes and even his choice of Whitman, an executive with no media experience, as CEO.

“Jeffrey wants to take what Apple and Netflix and HBO are doing and translate it into 10-minute-or-less shows,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG, said. “I’m not saying it will work or won’t work. The reality is -- until we actually see it -- it’s hard to know.”
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