Disney sells A+E Global Media stake to Hearst in $1 billion deal
Disney is selling its 50% stake in A+E Global Media, home to A&E, History, and Lifetime, to co-owner Hearst for about $1 billion. Disney valued that stake at $2 billion a year ago. It’s the first big sale under new CEO Josh D’Amaro.
Disney is partially getting out of the cable business it helped build, and taking a haircut to do it.
The company is selling its 50% stake in A+E Global Media to Hearst, the partner that already owns the other half, in an all-cash deal worth about $1 billion. Once it closes, Hearst owns the whole thing, and Disney is out.
A+E Global Media is the parent of A&E, the History Channel, and Lifetime, plus Vice TV and a stack of related channels. Disney and Hearst have co-owned it for decades.
The sale is expected to be announced at Disney’s earnings call on August 5. Analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners was first to report it was coming.
Disney is selling A&E for half of what it valued it at
Here’s the number that tells the real story.
In its SEC filing for the quarter ending in March, Disney listed its A+E investment at a carrying value of roughly $2 billion. It’s now selling that same stake for about $1 billion. Disney also took a $147 million write-down on the investment during that same quarter.
So this isn’t Disney cashing in a winner. It’s Disney taking what it can get for an asset it no longer wants, at roughly half of what the company’s own books said it was worth a year ago.
That gap is the whole cable-TV story in one line. These channels used to be reliable money-makers. Now they’re the thing big media companies are trying to unload.
Why Disney is dumping its cable channels
The reason is the same one hanging over all of traditional TV. People stopped watching it live.
Cable viewership has been sliding for years as audiences move to streaming, and channels like A&E and History aren’t the profit machines they once were. Disney has spent that whole stretch shifting its focus and its money toward Disney+ and streaming, and away from linear cable.
A&E is still profitable and carries no debt, for the record. It’s not a failing business. It’s just not a growing one, and it doesn’t fit where Disney is trying to go. Disney and Hearst brought in Wells Fargo about a year ago to shop the joint venture, so this has been coming for a while.
Notably, Disney is keeping the cable assets that still matter to it. It’s holding onto ESPN and ABC, the networks tied to live sports and news, the two things that still pull a live audience. The channels it’s selling are the ones it can live without.
Hearst still owns less than 20% of ESPN.
This is Josh D’Amaro’s first big move as Disney CEO
The timing points at something bigger, too.
This is the first major strategic sale under Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s new CEO. And it lands in the same stretch as a wave of Disney layoffs across Pixar, ESPN, and National Geographic this month, part of the “One Disney” streamlining plan D’Amaro has been running.
It is important to note that former Disney CEO Bob Iger initiated the sale to Hearst. D’Amaro is completing it.
Put it together and a picture forms. New boss, cutting costs, shedding the parts of old Disney that don’t fit the streaming future, and doing it fast. Selling a billion-dollar cable stake at a loss is a blunt way to signal which direction the company is walking.
For the fan, not much changes day to day. A&E, History, and Lifetime keep running under Hearst, and the same executive, Paul Buccieri, keeps leading them. The Disney name just comes off the ownership paperwork.
Still, it’s a genuine end of an era. Disney helped launch A&E back in the 1980s and co-owned it for roughly forty years. Now it’s selling, at a discount, to get its money out and move on. The mouse is packing up the cable box.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Deadline (July 30, 2026), Nellie Andreeva’s reporting that broke the pending sale, the all-cash structure, and Buccieri staying on
Variety (July 30, 2026), the $2 billion carrying value and $147 million impairment from Disney’s 10-Q, and the Greenfield analysis
TheWrap (July 31, 2026), the deal being D’Amaro’s first strategic sale as CEO
The Statesman (July 30, 2026), A&E’s debt-free profitability, the FAST-channel context, and the Wells Fargo sale process
WDW News Today and Laughing Place (July 30, 2026), the ESPN ownership breakdown and the confirmed brand portfolio