WASHINGTON — The National Geographic Society and 21st Century Fox have agreed to expand their partnership, with Fox paying $725 million to form and control a new company that includes the iconic National Geographic magazine.
The new company will be called National Geographic Partners, 73 percent of which will be owned by Fox, the remaining 27 percent by the Society. The board will be composed of equal numbers of Fox and Society members, and National Geographic president and CEO Gary Knell will serve as the first chairman of the board — a post that will alternate between members of the two entities. Society chief media officer Declan Moore will be the first CEO.
Fox and the Society were already partners on international and U.S. TV channels. The new deal encompasses the magazine, as well as National Geographic Studios, digital and social media platforms, books, maps, travel, licensing and more.
The deal raises the National Geographic Society’s endowment to $1 billion, the Society says in a news release. That will ensure “that we will have greater resources for this work, which includes our grant making programs that support scientists and explorers around the world,” Knell says in the release.
“We are privileged to have the opportunity to expand our partnership to continue to bring to audiences around the world, ‘The world and all that is in it,’ as National Geographic Society’s second President Alexander Graham Bell stated more than a century ago. We believe in the Society’s mission of bringing the world to audiences through science, education and exploration,” said James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox’s CEO, said in the release.
