This has been a helluva week for Second City news. On Wednesday, Financial Times first published reports of an imminent sale of the comedy behemoth to private equity firm ZMC, owned by Strauss Zelnick. Zelnick is the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, home of the Grand Theft Auto game franchise. On Thursday, those rumors were confirmed by ZMC; they declined to name the purchase price, but FT said that “the company was expected to fetch about $50 [million].”
Between those two announcements, however, came word in early October that the company was on the market for only the second time since its founding in 1959. In that announcement, Second City president Steve Johnston touted a growth plan that “leverages Second City’s unique position in the comedy ecosystem . . . to capture market share in the short to medium term, as well as accelerate a transition toward digital delivery of programming, which is already off to a great start.”
“We have been organizing since around last spring in an official capacity,” says Walters-Chapman. “Everyone was informed of exactly their rights, what we could ask for, were we totally crazy to be wanting to do this? And obviously, we’re not.”
Jack Bronis has been teaching at Second City for 22 years, and he identifies another element that helped make the argument for unionization. (He says that the serious discussions around the topic began in December of 2019.)
Walters-Chapman notes that, now that the cards have been filed with NLRB, it’s a waiting game, particularly with the imminent new ownership. “We have served our intention to Second City and begun our registration process, and so they can either say, ‘Hey, we think that’s great,’ speed through, and get the negotiations started, or they might take a step back and say, ‘We need to think about how to strategize.’” v
