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Muppets Head Home to Henson
The Muppets are safely back in the hands that created them.
It can't have been easy being German, because the Munich-based company, EM.TV, which three years ago paid a giant green $680 million for the rights to Kermit, Miss Piggy and all their lovable cohorts, has sold them back to the Jim Henson Co. for a bargain-basement price of about $89 million.
In the period since February 2000, when the German media company bought the felt and furry frolickers, EM.TV has already sold some Henson assets--including the Sesame Street rights--for about $200 million. The company had explored selling a 49.9 percent share of what remained to an investor group lead by former UPN president Dean Valentine but abandoned that plan in March. This final sale now ends a lengthy bidding war that reportedly also included offers from Disney.
Ultimately, though, EM.TV said see-ya to the Mouse House and anyone else who might have been interested in acquiring the personable puppets and returned them safely home to the heirs of the original muppeteer, Jim Henson, who died in 1990.
The product--dare we call the Muppets that--returning to Henson's two sons and three daughters also includes The Muppet Babies, The Fraggles, Farscape, The Hoobs and Bear in the Big Blue House.
Speaking to the Associated Press, EM.TV rep Frank Elsner says, "It wasn't a sale for strategic reasons. The main point was always to secure the liquidity of the company."
The sale should allow the company to finish paying back a loan of 250 million euros ($288 million), a debt the company acquired purchasing Junior TV, in a joint venture with fellow German company Kirchmedia. Deeply in debt, like many too-big-for-their-boots media companies who miscalculated the extent of the high-tech boom, EM.TV also recently had to pull out of Formula One racing.
The details of the return-to-maker deal, which Elsner calls "in the end, the most attractive offer" has to be approved by EM.TV shareholders at their annual general meeting in July. It essentially involves selling to Henson for $78 million cash with the additional $11 million in Henson liquid assets.
With the weight of Miss Piggy off its back and clear of Kermit's conscience, shares in EM.TV were up 12.2 percent at 1.10 euros ($1.26) in trading on the Frankfurt exchange Wednesday. (They had peaked at 109.59 euros in February 2000, the same time the pig, frog, et al. became Der Muppets.)
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