Businessman and philanthropist Haim Saban was born in Alexandria, Egypt. When he was 12, he moved with his family to Israel, where he attended agricultural school and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. He first demonstrated his business acumen by building a tour promotion business in Israel; in 1975, he relocated to France, where he started an independent record company.
In 1983, Saban moved to Los Angeles, where he built a chain of recording studios that supplied music for television programs. He launched Saban Entertainment in 1988, and after a business trip to Tokyo, he began his endeavor to bring the Japanese series Super Sentai to Western audiences, which eventually spawned the global TV hit Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
Eight years after Saban Entertainment’s creation, Saban merged the L.A.-based company with Fox Children’s Productions to form Fox Family Worldwide. That joint venture with News Corp. — which included Fox Family Channel, Fox Kids international channels in Europe and Latin America and Saban Entertainment’s library of 6,500 episodes of animated and other family programs — was sold in 2001 to The Walt Disney Co. for $5.2 billion.
Saban and his wife, Cheryl, started the Saban Family Foundation in 1999. It supports medical, children’s and education programs across the United States and Israel. The Saban family has been featured on BusinessWeek’s list of the 50 most generous U.S. philanthropists, and in 2019 The Hollywood Reporter recognized Haim and Cheryl as Philanthropists of the Year. The couple have provided generous funding for numerous projects in the United States and abroad, including the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Center for Health and Wellness at the Motion Picture Television Fund and the Media Center at the Television Academy.
Saban was interviewed in January 2024 by Jodi Delaney for The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, a program of the Television Academy Foundation. The following is an edited excerpt of their conversation. The entire interview can be screened at TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews.
Tell me where you were born and a bit about your family.
I grew up in Egypt until the age of 12. Then, after the Sinai Campaign in 1956, we moved to Israel in 1957, where I lived for some 17-plus years. Not because we wanted to move, but because we were told you either move or … the rest was pretty clear. My father sold pencils door-to-door. And we all lived — five of us, with my blind grandmother — in one room.
I was quite a troublemaker. I didn’t want to do anything but make money. It was the only thing I was interested in, because living like we lived, hand-to-mouth, sometimes there was nothing in the hand when it went to the mouth. I wanted to fix that. But my father wanted me to graduate high school, and I had the utmost respect for my father, so I graduated high school.
Did you go straight into the military after that?
Yes. I participated in the ’67 war — the Six-Day War. And in the Yom Kippur War in ’73. Something I’m really proud of.
What brought about your move to Paris?
Together with my partner, may he rest in peace, we became managers-agents. We started bringing bands from outside Israel. Over time, we also developed to be the country’s leading promoters. We brought 24 harpists from Japan to tour Israel. In October 1973, they were booked, and then the war unexpectedly broke out and there were no shows. We had another instance when we brought a group of majorettes to Israel, then there was a devaluation of the pound, and we lost a fortune.
So, you were in debt.
This is when I said, “This no longer works for me.” $600,000 in debt, in 1975, I moved to France. One of the artists that we toured was Mike Brant, an Israeli who was very successful in France. I went to him and said, “I have this 9-year-old kid [Noam Kaniel] that sings like an angel. I would like you to listen to him and see if there’s something you want to do for him.” He heard him and said, “I’m going to send my producer from Paris to make a deal with you.”
I never produced a record in my life. But now I’m a record producer with a record deal, and I moved to France.
With The Lions of Judah, the first band Saban (right) managed / Photo: AP
And that record ["Difficile De Choisir"] was a big hit there?
Monster. We got in the studio, recorded a song, and got him booked on a TV show that had the power of turning an unknown into a star. I paid back the $600,000 in one year.
Wow. Noam also sang the theme song to an animated Japanese series, Goldorak?
At that point, he had multiple hits. I got a call from a publisher: “I need Noam to sing the theme song for this Japanese cartoon.” I said, “Why would I want my artist to sing some Japanese song?” He said, “Who gave you his latest hit?” “You did.” “You owe me.” I said, “I don’t feel that I owe you, but I’m going to do this for you as a mitzvah.”
We go to the studio. The guy plays the song, the kid says in Hebrew, “That’s the worst song I’ve ever heard. I’m not singing that.” I say, “Yes, you are.”
I can’t get distribution. I get a call from a guy at CBS: “I don’t think this song is any good. But it’s going to get a lot of exposure on TV, so maybe something will happen with it. We’ll do a distribution deal with the studio for 15%; you fund everything. We want you to take all the risk of the stock.”
I just said yes. Three and a half million copies of Goldorak sold. From there, we developed a whole industry of soundtracks for TV. We did American series like Starsky & Hutch and Dallas and Dynasty and a lot of cartoons. It was a very profitable business because nobody else did it, so we were able to get rights for peanuts and sell millions of records.
What brought you to L.A.?
What brought me to L.A. had nothing to do with business. My social life in L.A. was a lot more enticing than my social life in France.
And that's when your television career really started to kick in, in L.A.?
We started off by creating music for television, and that evolved into getting into the production of cartoons.
Why cartoons?
We were involved directly and indirectly with Inspector Gadget, He-Man, The Littles. There was a production company called DIC. We had an exclusive deal with them where we did all their post-production, all their music and all their international distribution. As part of that deal, if we ever did a show, we had to do it through them. The first show we sold was Kid Video, then another show called Camp Candy with John Candy, both through DIC. We didn’t have the right to produce ourselves.
Then, one day, DIC no longer wanted our services, and that contract was terminated. Now we were free to produce on our own, which at first was very worrisome because we had an international distribution platform, and without their shows, that platform was finished. I had a couple of sleepless nights. But then we started developing our own shows. The first show we sold was X-Men. The second was Power Rangers.
Let's pause at X-Men. You're partnering with Marvel Entertainment?
Yeah. Marvel did not produce at the time. They licensed their IP to production companies, so we bid and got the rights to produce the show. Margaret Loesch ran Fox Kids, the number one platform for kids, and we produced our first animated show on our own [for Fox Kids]. Call it luck, call it persistence, call it whatever you want to call it — we had a number one show with X-Men and followed up with a much bigger number one, Power Rangers.
I understand that a lot of people passed on Power Rangers?
Power Rangers took me eight years to get people on board. I was lying in bed in Japan, flipping through channels, and I saw these kids in Spandex running around kicking monsters’ butts, and I said, “Oh my goodness, this is fun.” I tracked down the production company. I thought maybe I could buy the rights.
From day one, Power Rangers had hurdles. They didn’t want to sell to me, because they didn’t know me. A guy that used to act as an agent for American companies introduced me, and they agreed to sell it to me.
I paid half a million for 50 episodes, worldwide rights for 10 years. Then, for eight years I tried to sell it. Created a pilot. For all the expensive stuff where they have the special effects and the fighting, they’re in masks, so you can put English voiceover over it, then shoot some faces with the masks off and put the two pieces together. Nobody had ever done anything resembling that. We created this pilot, and I went around for eight years hearing things like, “This is so bad” and “Nobody is interested in that.”
One day, Margaret is in my office, and I say, “I have a pilot I want to show you.” I show it to her, and God bless her heart, she says, “There’s something there. I want to test it.” I say, “Sure, please.” Finally, somebody is talking to me. She does a dial test. We start the episode. The dial is in the center. As the episode evolves, the kids start turning it to the right, and it stays there until the end of the episode.
That is rare.
Margaret says to me, “I have done umpteen tests like this. I have never seen anything like it.” I say, “I told you.” Now, all of a sudden, I’m the one who knew. It was pretty gratifying, I must say.
Margaret orders the show and tells me that she doesn’t have a budget. She will only pay me rerun fees. I say, “Perfect.” I make a toy deal and some merchandising deals and so on. We reshoot the pilot and shoot, I think, 40 episodes the first round. Then we have an affiliates mutiny. They will not air the show; it’s too violent. It goes all the way up to Rupert Murdoch. They tell Margaret, “You’re playing with your career. You can’t ever show this.”
Saban with the Power Rangers / Photo: AP/Invision
But it was her call, ultimately.
She has balls. She had done the test — she knows the kids are in one place, and the affiliates are somewhere else. She is there to cater to the kids, so she says to me, “I’m going to make one more phone call to the guy who represents the affiliates. If he says don’t do it, we’re not going to do it. If he says, ‘Your call,’ I will do it.” He says, “It’s your call.” Saved the day. But Margaret says, “I don’t want to put it in kids’ prime time, which is the afternoon. I’m going to air it for eight weeks at 7:30 in the morning.”
At that point, I’ll take whatever I can get. This thing has been nothing but hurdles from day one, and I just won’t give up. She plays it at 7:30. It delivers unprecedented ratings. In the second week, it beats [Batman: The Animated Series], the number one show that aired at 4:30 p.m. It’s immediately moved to the afternoon.
Why do you think kids love Power Rangers so much?
We made sure that every kid in America, no matter his or her gender, no matter his or her color, would see himself or herself in it. It’s the first I know of a Black superhero [on TV], a female Asian superhero — in Power Rangers. We created stories that kids could relate to, and then they were super entertained by concepts like a monster that comes to eat all the food on Earth — we turned that into a food fight. Kids had so much fun with it.
And the music — there's a whole generation of kids that can sing that.
The theme song was very commercial. Power Rangers explodes to a level where I get a call from Rupert Murdoch, who I’d never met, and he asks me to come to his office and he says, “We need to find a way to do something together. I can do a lot of things for Power Rangers and help it build even bigger.” I say, “Like what?” “I’ll put them on the cover of TV Guide.” I open my briefcase. I pull out the TV Guide with Power Rangers on the cover. I say, “You mean like that?” He goes, “How’d you do that?”
I say, “We have helped them sell magazines. It’s not the magazine that’s helping us. We’re helping anybody that attaches themselves to us make money. I’m not interested in selling. I’m interested in a partnership. I don’t want any money. We’ll put in the Power Rangers and X-Men and all our other assets, and you’ll put in the network.”
A friend of mine, Gordy Crawford, at Capital [Research and Management] at the time, said to me, “It’s great that you have great content, but you need distribution.” That resonated with me. Rupert and I created a 50-50 partnership in Fox Kids Worldwide and started launching channels around the world. We ended up with channels in some 57 countries.
At this point, Nickelodeon started growing by leaps and bounds. I got very concerned that we were offering 19 hours, and they were offering 24/7 kids programming. I called Chase Carey, my point person on behalf of Rupert and Margaret: “Let’s go after this channel [The Family Channel] and buy it.” Pat Robertson controlled it. He wouldn’t budge about selling. Chase met with Tim Robertson, Pat’s son. There was nothing to be done. I said, “I’m going to have dinner with Tim. I’m going to say some outrageous things.”
I tried to convince Tim, in return for giving us daytime on The Family Channel to program for kids, we would open the Fox Vault to him for prime time, which he would retain ownership of. I said, “You know what we have in this vault? The Simpsons. Home Alone. Mrs. Doubtfire. We will change the face of your network if you give us this.”
Tim Robertson leaves. Chase says to me, “Everything you told him we can do, we cannot do.” Then Pat calls and says, “I’m willing to sell the whole channel.” “How much do you want?” “Two billion.” They used to make a hundred million, so it’s a multiple of 20.
We buy that channel and launch networks around the world. The channels’ ratings are below what we were hoping. As part of the deal, I have until December 2000 to put, and I’m going to put. [Saban’s “put” option triggered the sale of his half of the channel.]
Why did you decide to exercise that put at that time?
You have to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. And that day was the day to fold ’em. It’s as simple as that.
Fox Family Worldwide sold to Disney in 2001.
At the end we agreed to sell to Disney for $5.2 billion.
What advice would you give to someone entering the entertainment industry?
Advice that I give today might be completely irrelevant tomorrow. The speed at which the industry is changing every day, and with a big elephant in the room — AI — we don’t know where we’re going to end up, so just pray to God that he gives you the luck that he gave me.
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #4, 2025.
The contributing editor for Foundation Interviews is Adrienne Faillace.
Since 1997, the Television Academy Foundation has conducted over 900 one-of-a-kind, long-form interviews with industry pioneers and changemakers across multiple professions. The Foundation invites you to make a gift to the Interviews Preservation Fund to help preserve this invaluable resource for generations to come. To learn more, please contact Amani Roland, chief advancement officer, at roland@televisionacademy.com or (818) 754-2829.
