Media executives from channels such as Discovery and Disney are getting into the education business write Brooks Barnes and Amy Chozick:

• With the move towards digitization media companies are seeing an opportunity to build a new business, even as traditional textbook companies struggle to sell hardcopies.
• The total market is extremely lucrative, worth about $7 billion.
• Media company executives are doing to traditional makers of education material what others did to them: using computers and the internet to fundamentally alter the way that business is done.
• Disney is building a chain of language schools in China. The curriculum makes use of Disney characters and is expected to create an entire generation of Chinese youth that become buyers of Disney products and visitors to its planned theme park.
• The Discovery Channel believes that education is in their DNA. They were originally called the “Cable Education Network.”

To read more including the industry’s previous failed attempts to enter the education market, why Wall Street is skeptical, other initiatives by various divisions, the challenges faced by some of the companies, the role of politics, what Foxification means, and the effort to be relevant, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution