After washing up and touching up her makeup, Kris Jenner stepped out of the bathroom and saw that Simon had already returned to the round table on the terrace. A small complaint rose in her heart. You don't have to deal with any of the hassle.
Of course, she did not dare show it on her face.
In the courtyard below, the party music and laughter continued.
Everything that had happened in the past half hour seemed to have gone unnoticed by anyone.
She straightened the hem of her red low cut evening dress once more, then walked over carefully. Only after receiving permission from the man's eyes did she sit down beside him.
She had already checked the angle earlier. She had chosen the seat farthest from the railing, where no one downstairs could see her.
Although she did not mind and even somewhat hoped someone would notice, a smart woman clearly knew what she could and could not do.
"The crew arranged a crossover episode between The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of New York. They are shooting it here these past few days."
She explained why she had appeared here tonight. Seeing that the man simply leaned back in his chair and quietly looked down at the courtyard without any intention of chatting, Kris Jenner sensibly closed her mouth.
Anyway, having this "tiger skin" was enough.
At the very least, Jonathan Friedman definitely knew she had come upstairs.
She sat for only a short while before hearing the man instruct her to have someone bring up a glass of wine. Realizing she was being dismissed, she obediently stood up and left the terrace.
Because of this woman, Simon had just thought of the USA Network.
After last year's merger, the two flagship series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of New York launched through USA had made the network's transformation into a women's channel extremely smooth.
However, that alone was still not enough.
The past year, with two major acquisitions and various other matters, had already consumed most of Simon's energy. He had not had much time to focus on USA's development, or even on MCA Records, which he valued highly. All of that had been left to the company's executives.
The new year had only just begun, yet another huge pile of matters awaited.
Only now.
After several years of personal oversight, Daenerys Entertainment's position in the film sector had become extremely solid. It was probably time to shift some energy toward other businesses.
Cable television would remain prosperous for at least another thirty years. This was a field Daenerys Entertainment was bound to expand into.
On the music side, although physical record sales would decline rapidly with the rise of the internet, in the West where copyright protection was very complete the record industry would never disappear. It would simply transform.
In his memory, the few major record giants that had survived multiple mergers and reorganizations always claimed publicly how difficult their days were, yet they had actually kept making money the whole time.
Moreover, the record industry was exactly on the eve of its final flourishing period in the 1990s.
Veteran superstars like Michael Jackson and Madonna still ruled the charts, but the 1990s were the era when teen pop music rose.
During this period, groups like the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and the British Spice Girls drove most of the Western record industry's performance and spread the trend worldwide. Even many years later, the Korean entertainment industry was still following the group model that had emerged in the West during the 1990s.
In Simon's view, the biggest characteristic of teen pop was that stars could be manufactured in batches.
The rise of traditional superstars like Michael Jackson and Madonna involved a large component of talent and luck. For teen pop singers, as long as they had a good appearance and performance skills that were not too bad, it was basically enough. The rest was simply packaging according to fixed formulas.
There were also more direct and faster methods: talent shows.
Of course, none of this could be accomplished overnight. It had to be done step by step.
After careful consideration, Simon decided to start with USA.
Having two lifetimes of experience allowed Simon to easily sort out certain patterns. For example, the rise of a television network or media platform often required a phenomenal television program. Take HBO's The Sopranos at the end of the 1990s, whose phenomenal ratings pushed this pay cable network to its peak. Later, because of House of Cards, Netflix's development also entered the fast lane.
At this stage, the later wave of classic American dramas had not yet appeared.
Cable networks invested far less energy in television series than in movies.
This went back to the 1970s.
During Barry Diller's time at ABC, he discovered that purchasing film broadcast rights from Hollywood studios was often too expensive, so he pioneered the television movie model.
Compared with films produced by Hollywood studios, television movies had advantages such as low budgets and short production cycles. Moreover, when the network personally invested in producing television movies, it possessed the exclusive first broadcast right, which also attracted more viewers to a great extent.
Once again, Hollywood was very conservative.
Once a business model rose and proved successful, everyone would swarm in.
Especially in recent years with the rise of cable television, in order to compete for audience resources, television movies with many advantages had become even more prosperous. This included USA Network, which last year, while focusing on the Housewives series, had also invested in producing several television movies.
However, in Simon's view, television movies also had an unavoidable disadvantage.
The unsustainability of popularity.
After a television movie aired a few times, audiences basically lost interest. It then moved to syndication platforms and video tape channels. Once the remaining value was extracted, it would gradually be forgotten. The popularity cycle was extremely short.
Phenomenal television series, however, were different.
Take The Sopranos and House of Cards, for example.
In his memory, The Sopranos had been filmed for a full six seasons. Over six years, the popularity of The Sopranos had continuously and rapidly expanded HBO's subscriber base.
Similarly, Netflix's House of Cards had produced comparable results.
These were things television movies could hardly achieve.
Based on the information in his mind, Simon roughly judged that it was precisely the emergence of excellent American dramas like The Sopranos in the late 1990s that had squeezed the living space of television movies, ultimately leading to the decline of this business model.
After the new century, the screen space for television movies had been completely replaced by the continuous emergence of classic American dramas.
As for now.
Hollywood, or rather the entire American media industry, had clearly not yet realized this.
Hollywood had actually always been developing.
The American media industry of 1992 was not what many people would see ten or twenty years later.
In Simon's view, even after decades of development, Hollywood's film industry before the rise of blockbusters and CG effects had not been particularly solid. Everyone had simply been "trying their luck."
Whether it was Jaws or E.T. back then, or even earlier films like Ben-Hur and Gone with the Wind, they had all been the result of luck.
Only after the era of blockbusters and CG effects began did Hollywood enter its strongest period.
The television industry was the same.
Before the 1990s, with the existing business model of television movies and the strong platform monopoly of television networks, there had been no need to invest too much in television programming to compete for audiences, so the industry had appeared unenterprising.
After the 1990s, cable television rose completely and competition in the television industry intensified. At the same time, the rise of the internet also threatened the television industry. Only then did the major television companies begin to place greater importance on content development, and the production of television series often reached the level of films.
Now, if he wanted USA Network to develop rapidly, the best method was to disrupt the traditional business model ahead of schedule.
Simon had already disrupted the traditional American television industry once through reality television programs.
This would be the second time.
A women's channel naturally needed women's programming to match it.
When it came to television series related to women, the first thing Simon thought of was the phenomenal Desperate Housewives.
In his memory, because of the single American drama Desperate Housewives, ABC Network had even shown a trend of being called a women's network. One could see how enormous the influence of this drama had been.
The reason Desperate Housewives had become such a hit was that on one hand it was close to life, and on the other hand it went beyond life.
The drama's setting was positioned in the middle class neighborhoods that existed everywhere in America. The images of the several housewives were also sufficiently typical, covering most types of traditional American housewives. However, the bizarre and twists filled plot was something many traditional American housewives might never encounter in their entire lives.
With more than ten people's memories in his mind, plus the fact that Desperate Housewives was truly a classic, Simon basically remembered most of the drama's plotlines.
As for the details, Hollywood had never lacked screenwriters.
It was still 1992. The original core writer of Desperate Housewives, Marc Cherry, was still an unknown small figure. Simon had no interest in searching for him.
So he simply wrote it himself.
In the following days, every evening after dinner, while chatting with Janet and the little one, he would tap away on his laptop.
After a week like this, with Janet occasionally adding some details from the side with great interest, the first season story outline and brief script were basically completed.
"It is quite an interesting story, but it still feels not stimulating enough."
Inside the villa at Dume Point Manor, after finally organizing the first season script, Janet rocked Melbourne's small cradle while offering this comment.
Simon sent an electronic copy of the script to Robert Iger in New York and said, "I actually have a more stimulating story, but I am worried the housewives of today might not be able to accept it."
Janet immediately became interested. "Tell me. I am a housewife now too."
Simon briefly summarized. "It is also a woman's story, but compared with the several housewives on Wisteria Lane, this woman is simply a complete mess. First, she is a drug dealer."
Janet slapped her small hand on the cradle. "I like it. We must make it."
Simon saw his son's eyes suddenly widen from his mother's sudden slap, looking like he was about to cry. He hurriedly reached out and picked the little one up.
Janet had also noticed the detail. Of course she would not admit fault. She simply pouted and said, "I will send this little nuisance to Australia in a few days."
Simon gently soothed the son in his arms and simply smiled.
Having Veronica look after Melbourne had been his decision. He could not contradict himself now.
Janet clearly sensed her husband's thoughts. She hummed twice but did not ask further, nor did she pursue the previous story. She walked to the side table, picked up a document from the shelf beneath it, and said, "New York just sent over another case. Leon Black and the others are planning a big move."
Feeling that the little one's head resting on his shoulder had almost fallen asleep, Simon continued holding his son and gently paced beside the cradle while asking casually, "What is it?"
"A comprehensive clothing enterprise called Limited Brands Inc., mainly focused on sportswear, underwear, and other businesses targeting teenagers and women. It is a listed company with a recent market value of 1.31 billion dollars. Because of continuous expansion in the 1980s and the economic downturn in the past two years, LTD's operations have fallen into difficulty. However, Leon and the others are very optimistic about the Victoria's Secret lingerie brand owned by the company, so they plan to launch a privatization acquisition."
Simon had not reacted at first. Only when he heard Victoria's Secret did he remember.
Victoria's Secret.
Many years later, every year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was equivalent to a Super Bowl of the fashion world. It was precisely Victoria's Secret that had produced the top supermodels of the first decade of the new century.
After a brief moment of surprise, Simon was not too astonished that Apollo Management Company, led by Leon Black under Cersei Capital, had chosen Victoria's Secret's parent company.
Wall Street private equity firms each had their own areas of expertise.
Because of its relationship with Melisandre Company and Daenerys Entertainment, Apollo Management Company, which focused on private equity investment, concentrated a large part of its attention on clothing and cosmetics industries in addition to its specialty in real estate investment. The previous acquisition of Simmons and the stake in Estée Lauder had been the same.
Now, Leon Black leading the team to target Victoria's Secret's parent company was also within reason.
A company with high quality brand assets, tight cash flow causing temporary operational difficulties, and a stock price at a low level was precisely the main condition for being targeted by private equity.
Thinking of this, Simon asked, "1.31 billion dollars. For a full acquisition, roughly how much premium would be needed?"
Janet rolled on the sofa like a little cat, casually flipping through the document in her hands. "Leon and the others are currently in contact with LTD's management. If a friendly acquisition can be achieved, the premium would probably be within thirty percent. Competition in the clothing industry is very fierce, unlike the emerging new technology companies right now, so even with a public tender the premium would not be too high. If it gets too high, Leon and the others would proactively give up."
LTD was obviously the abbreviation for Limited Brands Inc.
Simon mentally calculated. A thirty percent premium for full acquisition would probably require around 1.7 billion dollars. Apollo Management Company could produce such a sum. Of course, this would undoubtedly mean considerable risk. "After the acquisition, what do Leon and the others plan to do?"
Janet said, "Like Simmons, operate it for a few years. Once the company recovers, relist it, or carry out a second private equity operation and sell it directly to another private equity firm."
Simon nodded. "The federal economy is currently at the bottom. If Leon and the others confirm the company possesses sufficiently high quality assets, simply holding it for a few years would indeed allow appreciation."
Janet, however, caught other implications in her husband's words. Her soft body bounced up from the sofa, and she leaned over the armrest to look at him. "You would not have other ideas, would you?"
Simon smiled. "You all buy the company first, then we will talk."
Victoria's Secret's current fashion shows were basically still at the stage of runway presentations during fashion week. According to the original timeline, it was not until the end of the 1990s that Victoria's Secret gradually turned its fashion show into a commercial event with entertainment value.
If Cersei Capital could bring LTD into its fold, perhaps they could also produce this very eye catching fashion show ahead of schedule.