Disney has closed the door on another piece of its cable past. The company has completed a $1.2bn sale of its 50% stake in A+E Global Media to Hearst, which now owns the business outright.
The deal had been coming for a while. It was announced in July 2025 and finally closed this month, handing Hearst full control of a portfolio it had jointly run with Disney for decades.
The assets are substantial on paper. A+E owns A&E, History, Lifetime and FYI, a stable of channels that together reach more than 414 million households across 200 territories and 40 languages.
Yet the logic of the sale is about decline, not scale. Linear television keeps losing viewers as audiences move to streaming, and even a profitable, debt-free cable group no longer moves the needle for a company Disney’s size.
Disney has been reshaping itself around streaming for years. Its new leadership wants to turn Disney+ into a super app to take on Netflix, and cable stakes that throw off cash but little growth do not fit that story.
