History of Saban: Part 3
by Kurt Yoder,
Saban got help convincing Eisner to buy the channel from Disney board member Stanley Gold, but Eisner wasn't sold on the deal initially. However, after meeting with Murdoch and Saban at the annual Sun Valley investment retreat, Eisner became convinced that he needed to buy the channel or he might lose Disney if he failed to act and agreed to buy Fox Family Channel for a staggering $5.3 billion. The price was considered well above the value of the network by many at Disney and would become an expensive boondoggle that would hurt Eisner in the end, but the sale would work well for Saban's gain. When the deal seemed to be stalling post-September 11, 2001, and Disney looking to back out due to the international regulatory approvals and specifically Brazil's government process planning to extend well past the October deadline for the sale, Haim Saban made a Hail Mary to a powerful ally he had gained in international politics.
Saban had become a major supporter and donor to the Clintons during the 1990s and contacted former president Bill Clinton, asking if he could help him by having Clinton talk to Brazil. Soon after that phone call, approval came through from the Brazilian government. With the deal finalized on October 24, 2001, Saban himself would walk away with over US$1.5 billion personally from the sale, becoming a billionaire overnight. Saban would once again use one of his lawyers to try to get out of paying taxes on the money he made from the sale, leading to years of investigation and lawsuits over the next decade.
Disney now owned a network that was over $2 billion in debt and Eisner even believed he had overpaid for the network by almost $1 billion; barely two years later, Eisner would find himself being accused by Roy Disney of mismanaging the company, with the Fox Family acquisition listed as a major issue at the annual shareholders meeting in 2004. With the sale of the channel, along with the Fox Kids brand and Saban Entertainment, all of Saban's programming library moved to Disney, and the network was rebranded to ABC Family at the beginning of 2002. Disney would continue to make seasons of Power Rangers, moving production from Los Angeles to New Zealand for the next series Power Rangers Ninja Storm and continued producing seasons of the series until 2010. They would also continue to produce dubs of the next two Digimon series Frontier and Fusion, airing them on different programming blocks. One of the last anime series at the time that Saban would license and dub was SHINZO, originally called Mushrambo in Japan. The series had struggled in the ratings in Japan (being beaten by Hunter X Hunter in the same time slot) and had been canceled after just 32 episodes; Saban's dub wouldn't appear until after the sale to Disney on the rebranded ABC Family Channel in 2002.
With the sale of Saban Entertainment finished, Saban's decades-long partner in composing received a payout from the deal, but Levy felt he was owed way more than he was receiving from the sale. However, because Levy had never signed a written contract with Saban in his tenure working with him and only ever had the original handshake agreement they made in the 1970s, Saban only agreed to give him an additional US$11 million; Saban would claim he owed Levy nothing and only gave him the extra money out of compassion. The duo's long-time partnership and friendship ended there, and they are no longer on speaking terms with each other. Outside of a few productions now and then, Levy would also leave the world of composing cartoon music and directing and producing television shows behind him.
[Trigger Warning for content involving domestic abuse and sexual assault]
During his tenure at Saban Entertainment, Shuki Levy served as a director and producer on various tokusatsu-adapted shows in the 1990s. In 1998, he would have a daughter with former VR Troopers lead actress Sarah Brown, who would become engaged to Levy for a time and be involved in a relationship with him for the next several years. In 2019, Brown would state that Levy had sexually assaulted her during the production of the show when she was 20 years old and he was nearly 50. She claimed he did so numerous times. In a later interview that year, Brown would go on to state that Levy coerced her into a secret relationship with him and had her move in with him while he was engaged to another woman at the same time and also still married to his previous wife. While Brown was a cast member of the soap opera General Hospital in 1996, she lived in an apartment owned by Levy, who she paid rent to for the space. While living there, Brown said, after a big fight with Levy on the phone one day, he sent his personal handyman into her apartment while she was not there to work on the air-conditioning, which she claimed caused a fire the next day that engulfed the apartment and nearly killed her. She also stated that Levy's abuse continued for years until she left him in her mid-20s, and claimed he was still stalking her and attempted to kidnap their daughter over the years as well; Levy has not made a statement about any of these claims.
No longer in the children's entertainment business, Haim Saban set out on new investment opportunities during the 2000s while also trying to dodge accusations of tax evasion by the federal government. Saban founded Saban Capital Group at the end of 2001 and in 2003 would work with another private firm to acquire ProsibenSat.1, a group of German television networks that were in financial trouble and by 2007 had turned the network around and sold it at a profit in 2007. During this time, Saban had also set out to acquire Univision, the prominent Spanish-language television network; with the help of other investors, they acquired the channel in 2006 for the staggering price of $13.7 billion. Saban would eventually sell the channel in 2020 after over a decade of financial losses that never fully recouped the investment made.
Saban also made separate attempts to purchase the L.A. Times and the New York Times, but neither group was interested in selling to him. He would also become a major backer of Hillary Clinton's failed run to win the Democratic Party nomination for President in 2008, something he considered one of his biggest losses. Despite this setback, Saban has continued to be a powerful political donor in both US and global politics in regards to his controversial continued support of the Israeli government above all else. Through the wealth he gained over his career, Saban has created various high-scale political galas and think tank forums centered solely around gaining support for the Israeli government, refusing to ever acknowledge the nation's government's continued injustices against the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank.
In early 2010, Disney announced it had suspended production of Power Rangers following the conclusion of Power Rangers RPM, and once again, the series found itself facing cancellation. Saban would purchase the rights to the series back for $43 million, acquiring the rights to the other Toei-adapted tokusatsu shows he had made and Digimon. Under his new company, Saban Brands, the franchise would begin airing on Nickelodeon with new series Power Rangers Samurai in 2011; the new series would now extend over two year seasons and also began skipping over Super Sentai series for the first time as well. Noam Kaniel, who had left the company in the late 80s to go back to his music career, and also started producing music for television shows including French-produced animated series Code Lyoko and Miraculous Ladybug, would return to provide new music for Power Rangers. Saban would also enter an agreement with home video company Shout! Factory to begin releasing full-season DVD sets of the entirety of the Power Rangers franchise beginning in 2012.
Saban Brands would also create a new programming block, Vortexx, to replace the previous The CW programming block after the bankruptcy of 4Kids Entertainment. This programming block would mostly feature reruns of animated programs and anime series picked up from 4Kids, like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z Kai, and Sonic X. Saban would return to dubbing anime by bringing over Digimon Xros Wars in 2014 under the title Digimon Fusion, adapting the first two seasons of the series, with the dubbing done by LA-based Studiopolis. Over its short two-year run, the block would also air reruns of Marvel and DC animated shows, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, and a WWE show. The CW, wanting to refocus its Saturday mornings to a different programming style aimed at pre-teens, would cancel Vortexx in the fall of 2014.
Between the presentations of Glitter Force and Saban's newer offerings of Power Rangers, the style of adaptation that Saban had been so successful with in the past now felt old-fashioned and sometimes even insulting to their target audience. Saban sat out of television production during the advent and rise of legal streaming, where anime, tokusatsu, and Asian dramas became more easily available in uncut forms in their original languages and could gain audiences without being “Americanized” anymore. Shout! Factory had also been releasing not just Saban's Power Rangers but also boxsets of many of the original Super Sentai series on DVD during this time.
The successful practices of the past with adapting anime overseas no longer worked like they once did, and shows from Japan specifically aimed at children now had fans of all ages who didn't feel the need to be convinced that they were not watching a foreign-made product anymore. As Haim Saban would state when he bought back Power Rangers, he wanted to bring it back to how it had been in 1993 when the series debuted. The times had changed, and children's entertainment had progressed in presentation and storytelling, but the sensibilities at Saban Brands had not evolved in the 2010s.
They would also take a gamble on trying to cash in on childhood nostalgia with the 2017 theatrical reboot of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, simply titled Power Rangers with Lionsgate Films. Claiming in press statements that they had a six-film story arc planned, the big-budget modern action film would fail to capture the campy nature of what made Power Rangers fun originally. Despite having some good performances from its lead cast, the mismatched tone of the film went between trying to be overly serious and just plain silly and didn't make for a cohesive film. The downright ugly design choices to revamp and modernize the series' iconic costumes and Zords also didn't endure much for kids or adults who grew up on the original series. It wasn't a surprise that the film was a financial flop.
Hasbro continued to release new seasons of Power Rangers with Nickelodeon until announcing the series would continue on Netflix in 2022. Hasbro had also received the rights to Glitter Force in the sale but declined to continue production of the series and, as of 2023, seems to have also abandoned the trademark on the name. In the Spring of 2023, Hasbro would release a 30th anniversary special celebrating the legacy of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Netflix, bringing back numerous original cast members. Many for the first time since they were originally on the show in the 1990s, celebrating the legacy of what Power Rangers was and honoring the memories of original cast members Thuy Trang and Jason David Frank. As much as Saban had touted in their reacquisition of the franchise in 2010 to plan to bring back Power Rangers as it once was, another company, much like Disney before them, created more engaging and thoughtful series under the long-standing brand and also delivered a way better anniversary special than ones done under Saban in the 2010s.
The legacy of Saban Entertainment sits firmly at a unique crossroads of how anime was released outside of Japan to various countries and television history as a whole. The legacy of Haim Saban himself is far more complicated. Those who know him will say he can be the kindest and most passionate man in the world but also one who will backstab you in a business deal if it means he'll come out on top. During the 1990s, he was definitely on top of the mountain in children's television with numerous money-making hits. Yet, a lot of it came at the burden of young actors, composers, and creatives who made it all happen while receiving not even a fraction of the reward. Despite no longer being in the television industry or localization of foreign animation and tokusatsu series, Saban has continued to use his wealth to influence a government regime he supports despite the continued international outcry against their military actions.
The cutthroat nature of the television industry can be a downright ugly affair more often than not, but behind all that are plenty of talented and creative people working to help make something engaging and memorable. Many of the shows either feature music or are produced by Saban and have a fond nostalgia for the audiences who grew up on them. Saban and Levy may no longer compose music, but their names are still showing up in the credits of recent films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie released in 2023. There also aren't many series out there that have endured as long as Power Rangers has for 30 years, with Hasbro and Playmates continuing to saturate the original Mighty Morphin' by recently announcing an unnecessary plan to AI upscale the original 1993 series in a weird attempt to make it relevant to modern kid audiences. Discotek's announcement at Otakon last year of releasing Saban's Digimon: The Movie, as well as dubbing the uncut versions of the short films that made it up with as many of the original cast members as possible; it goes to show just how long a Saturday morning show can still resonate decades later.
Saban Entertainment and Saban himself, for good and bad, helped open up the gateway of Japanese anime and tokusatsu to generations of kids who would become lifelong fans. While Haim Saban himself is far from an admirable man, the legion of creative voices who came up through the company in various ways are still working in different aspects of the anime industry today, and many fans can have access to some of their childhood favorite shows. While the business side of any creative industry is rife with the ugliness worth acknowledging for its history, it's also important to look at the talented creators who did most of the legwork that helped make the shows stay prominent in the minds of many still.
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