Disney originally offered to pay $3bn (£2.1bn) in cash for Fox, in addition to assuming debt of $2.3bn (£1.6bn), but tried to use the impact the terrorist attacks of September 11 had on the business to knock around $500m (£351m) off the price.
News Corp division Fox Broadcasting first mulled a sale of the division in January, when children's programming guru Haim Saban exercised a right to sell his half of the business, which News Corp was required to buy.
This news came at a bad time for News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, however, as he was trying to prepare the business for a possible takeover of US satellite broadcast DirecTV -- a deal which still has not gone through after a year of negotiations. The business was officially put up for sale in July.
Disney is expected to rename the business ABC Family and use it as a secondary outlet for network programming.
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