Media News
Two interesting stories today. First, Comcast is closer to buying NBC:
General Electric and the cable giant Comcast have moved closer to a deal giving control of NBC Universal to Comcast, and a formal announcement could be made sometime next week, people briefed on the talks said Sunday. After a series of meetings last week, the two companies reached a tentative agreement on Friday over the main points of a deal, these people said. Comcast would own about 51 percent of NBC Universal, contributing several billions of dollars in cash and its own stable of cable networks to the new venture.
This is an interesting antitrust question. Comcast already owns a number of cable networks, like E!, The Golf Channel, Versus and various regional sports networks. Add the NBC/Universal networks and that certainly is going to be a lot of vertical integration. Most antitrust analysts view vertical integration antitrust issues as much less problematic (see also the Supreme Court.) Regulators and the Congress might consider whether this analysis is accurate.
The second story is about how the DVR is saving the big TV networks:
in what may seem a media business version of the Stockholm syndrome, television network executives have fallen in love with a former tormentor: the digital video recorder. The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 — helping some marginal shows become hits. It is also that more people seem content to sit through the commercials than networks once thought.
These factors combined mean DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue.“The DVR was going to kill television,” said Andy Donchin, director of media investment for the ad agency Carat. “It hasn’t.” [. . .] “It’s completely counterintuitive,” said Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC. “But when the facts come in, there they are.”
Almost across the board, the gains for playback are growing. The best preseason estimate for the current season, said David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for CBS, was about a 1 percent increase from playback over the live program for the networks combined. Instead, many are in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when DVR ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.
Law of unintended consequences.
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