Chuck Saftler, FX's Longest-Serving Executive, Leaves Disney After 32 Years
Chuck Saftler, the acquisitions executive who helped build FX from a pre-launch startup into a cable powerhouse, is leaving Disney after 32 years. His last day in the office will be 16 October.
Saftler joined FX in December 1993 — seven months before the network even went on air — as Director of Scheduling. He was the longest-tenured employee at FX and a member of its original launch team, according to Deadline.
He is not retiring. Saftler said he decided to step down to consider a new professional chapter. Disney Platform Distribution President Jimmy Zasowski announced the departure internally.
Most recently, Saftler served as Head of Acquisitions for ABC, Disney Kids and Family, FX and Nat Geo within Disney's Platform Distribution group. After a transition period, his duties will be absorbed by Sean Cocchia, EVP of Global Entertainment Networks, Research and Business Operations at Disney Entertainment Television.
Saftler's career traces the entire arc of cable television. He helped launch the Fox Movie Channel in its original incarnation as fXM in October 1994. He rose through the ranks to become President of Program Strategy and Chief Operating Officer of FX Networks, a promotion that gave him oversight of scheduling and acquisitions, as The Hollywood Reporter noted in 2013.
The deal that put him on the map came that same year. In 2013, Saftler landed The Simpsons in what was then the biggest off-network deal in television history — a contract estimated at $750 million to $1 billion, won in a five-network bidding war. Off-network syndication means buying the rights to air reruns of a show that originally aired on broadcast television, and Saftler's picks in that category, including Two and a Half Men, helped FX's viewership take off.
He was also a pioneer of movie output deals in cable — agreements where a network pays a studio for the TV rights to films before those films have even been released, betting tens of millions of dollars on box-office outcomes that were far from guaranteed.
When Disney reorganised its networks group in November 2020, Saftler took on business operations for ABC and Freeform alongside his FX responsibilities, as Deadline reported at the time. From 2020 to 2023, he served as Head of Business Operations and Acquisitions for ABC, FX and Freeform inside the DMED division led by Kareem Daniel, where he was Debra OConnell's top lieutenant.
In his departure memo, Saftler acknowledged two former bosses: John Landgraf, Chairman of FX, and OConnell, now Chairman of Disney Entertainment Television. Landgraf and OConnell issued a joint statement praising Saftler's contributions over three decades.
What stands out about Saftler's run is how much of what viewers watched on FX for years — the reruns that filled the schedule, the movies that premiered on the network, the programming strategy that decided what aired when — bore his fingerprint. The executives and the deals change, but for 32 years, one person kept showing up to make those calls.
