Time Warner and NBC: Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Bewkes
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Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes once again made it clear that no means no.
Speaking at TV Week’s Innovation conference in New York today, Bewkes indicated Time Warner has no plans to make a move on NBC Universal. Cable giant Comcast Corp. is in talks to acquire a majority stake in General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, and since then speculation has been rampant about other bidders, but so far no serious ones are emerging.
Apparently the pain of Time Warner-AOL still stings after almost 10 years, according to Peter Kafka, the fine blogger at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital who covered the event.
Writes Kafka:
“Somebody has finally noticed that these things don’t work out so well,” he [Bewkes] said, adding “We love to see our competitors taking risks.”But just to hammer that point home, Bewkes compared the proposed deal to the one his company made nine years ago, when it embarked on an ill-fated merger with AOL. That deal (made when Bewkes was running Time Warner’s HBO unit) “basically made no sense” at the time, he said.The main talking point in favor of that transaction — that connecting Time Warner’s content with AOL’s Internet distribution would create synergy — was “nonsensical,” he said. But “these kind of arguments, you’ll hear some of them this week, in the other merger that we’ve been talking about,” Bewkes said.
We do hear from other folks at the event that Bewkes did go on to say there was some logic to Comcast and NBC, and he wasn’t necessarily saying that the cable company’s desire to acquire control of NBC was on par with what is considered one of worst mergers in history.
For Comcast, it does make sense to bolster its programming. Bewkes has basically made his bet on content and that is what Comcast is doing in going after NBC Universal.
-- Joe Flint
