Word: corpe
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...what was once a simple French water utility, acquiring a hodgepodge of cross-border assets, from phone companies to film studios, that at some point were supposed to connect seamlessly and gush money. But he was late to the Big Media theory. Firms like Disney, AOL Time Warner, News Corp. and Viacom had already spent billions connecting content with distribution. To catch up, Messier became a serial acquirer, buying the Bronfmans' Seagram Co. and its Universal movie studio, theme parks and music group for $34 billion in stock. Last year, in the U.S. alone, he agreed to buy book publisher...
...lineup of soccer matches, Formula One races and Hollywood movies, yet it has managed to lure only 2.4 million paying subscribers. After losing $1.4 million a day, it ended up dragging its parent company into bankruptcy, and buzzards from four continents have converged--among them Bertelsmann, Liberty Media, News Corp. and Sony--to pick at the carcass. In Italy, where stealing satellite service is pursued with the same ingenuity and gusto as is tax avoidance, two competing pay-TV services, Vivendi's Telepiu and News Corp.'s Stream, have fared so poorly that they have had little choice...
...shares and controls the company as its chairman. Liberty owns the Starz and Encore premium movie channels, plus 50% of Discovery Communications (which includes Discovery, Animal Planet, Learning and Travel channels) and 43% of the home-shopping channel QVC. In addition, it holds valuable stakes in Vivendi (3%), News Corp. (18%), USA Interactive (20%) and AOL Time Warner (4%), the parent company of this magazine. Liberty also invests in cable and programming companies in Latin America and Japan, where its Jupiter Communications is the largest cable provider (though still a money loser...
...consolidating, there's not much room left for a maverick like Malone. Stripped of the enormous leverage his cable empire once gave him, Malone can no longer dictate the terms at the bargaining table. AOL and Comcast are now the gatekeepers, and content players like Disney, Viacom and News Corp. carry much more weight. Malone has effectively acknowledged the corner he's in, indicating that lucrative Liberty stakes in certain closely held assets like CourtTV, E! and QVC will, within a couple of years, probably be sold to whichever media behemoth will pay top dollar. As he puts...
About 30% of Western European homes have cable, compared with 68% in the U.S., and powerful satellite players like News Corp.'s BSkyB and Vivendi's Canal Plus feed signals to 20% of the Continent's TV sets. Gross margins in the cable business hover at about 12%--about a quarter of those in the U.S.--and subscribers outside the U.K. bring in only $13 a month in revenue...