Word: seagram
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...placed upon the earth these tools--movie studios, television networks, telephone companies, record labels, cable companies, Internet providers--and then stood back and waited for silly mortals to figure out how they all fit together. Last week's talk of a $35 billion purchase of Canada's Seagram by France's Vivendi represents the latest human attempt to make some of these pieces click into a seamless, revenue-generating new-economy Tinkertoy. The toy boys in this deal, Vivendi CEO Jean-Marie Messier, 43, and Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., 45, can't resist the urge to merge Vivendi...
...sprawling Internet, pay-TV and software-publishing properties. Classics from Universal's library of 24,000 TV episodes and more than 3,000 films, including such blockbusters as E.T. and Jurassic Park, could run on Vivendi's majority-controlled Canal Plus subscription-TV service, the Continent's largest. And Seagram's Universal music group, currently the biggest on earth, could deliver Limp Bizkit and Sting to millions of European households via Vivendi's 50%-controlled Vizzavi Internet portal. Such synergies will be enshrined forever--or at least until the next deal--in the proposed name of the merged colossus: Vivendi...
...merged Seagram, based in Montreal, would also shed some assets, bidding adieu to its wine and liquor empire, which features brands like Captain Morgan rum and Chivas Regal Scotch and could fetch anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion. Bottled spirits are much too ancien regime--and besides, you can't download rum. The likely buyer: Britain's Allied Domecq...
...least of national pride. It's worse than McDonald's, Coke and Nike all rolled into one, because even the Europeans know that high-tech telecom is the future of the world economy, and they're determined that globalization not mean - sacre bleu! - Americanization. (Maybe when Vivendi finishes Seagram's and gets into Hollywood, the French, at least, will feel better...
NOVEL ADVERTISING Bill Fitzhugh's book Cross Dressing, out in June, will be the first work of fiction to contain paid product placement (for Seagram liquor). How might famous works have been changed if other authors had come up with this idea...