(Broadcasting & Cable) – Cable giant Comcast Corp. is in talks to buy the remaining stake it doesn’t own in E! Entertainment Television from partner Walt Disney Corp., according to people familiar with the deal. The purchase would bolster Comcast’s growing position in cable programming, which is composed pri-marily of smaller networks outside of Nielsen’s top 30 channels. With 80 million subscribers, E! is the big-gest of Comcast’s holdings, programmed with a fluffy mix of entertainment news, celebrity reality shows and clip shows. Ratings have been mixed lately, but E! President Ted Harbert has pushed them into an upswing in recent weeks, with the average prime time audience up 11% in February. One big driver is the recent acquisition of reruns of Fox reality show The Simple Life, featuring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. A sale probably wouldn’t trigger dramatic changes at E! or sibling channel Style Network, because Com-cast already manages the operation. Since 1997, Comcast and Disney have been in a partnership in which Disney initially put up all the cash but still gave the cable operator authority over day-to-day opera-tions. The partnership – Comcast Entertainment Holdings – owns 79.2% of E! and Style. Comcast owns an additional 20.8% outside of the partnership. The relationship got rocky when Comcast launched an attack to take over Disney, but industry executives say there have been no particular problems between the partners in recent months.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Comcast in Talks To Buy E!
(Broadcasting & Cable) – Cable giant Comcast Corp. is in talks to buy the remaining stake it doesn’t own in E! Entertainment Television from partner Walt Disney Corp., according to people familiar with the deal. The purchase would bolster Comcast’s growing position in cable programming, which is composed pri-marily of smaller networks outside of Nielsen’s top 30 channels. With 80 million subscribers, E! is the big-gest of Comcast’s holdings, programmed with a fluffy mix of entertainment news, celebrity reality shows and clip shows. Ratings have been mixed lately, but E! President Ted Harbert has pushed them into an upswing in recent weeks, with the average prime time audience up 11% in February. One big driver is the recent acquisition of reruns of Fox reality show The Simple Life, featuring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. A sale probably wouldn’t trigger dramatic changes at E! or sibling channel Style Network, because Com-cast already manages the operation. Since 1997, Comcast and Disney have been in a partnership in which Disney initially put up all the cash but still gave the cable operator authority over day-to-day opera-tions. The partnership – Comcast Entertainment Holdings – owns 79.2% of E! and Style. Comcast owns an additional 20.8% outside of the partnership. The relationship got rocky when Comcast launched an attack to take over Disney, but industry executives say there have been no particular problems between the partners in recent months.
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