Media business types love nothing more than working on merger jigsaw puzzles of the companies they watch every day. Google and Time Warner? Time Warner and Cablevision? DirecTV and DISH? The pieces may not always fit so well, but the fun is in the game.
SIRIUS Satellite Radio chief Mel Karmazin thinks there are two pieces that never got together and should have: CBS and CNN.
“I thought CBS News and CNN, to this day should be combined,” Karmazin said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. “I was hoping that Dick (Parsons, CEO of Time Warner) would buy Cablevision and need the cash, because Cablevision was much more strategic (to Time Warner), and then sell me CNN.”
He added, “I would be candid and say when I was CEO (of CBS), would I have liked to have owned CNN? Yeah.
“Youve got a reporter sitting there from CBS News. Youve got a reporter sitting all over the world from CNN. Maybe one reporter, one sound guy, one driver of the van, and thats just the cost side.
“The value you create from putting these reporters that youre not putting redundantly, putting these reporters in other parts of the world where you dont have news bureaus or doing things you dont have. I think M&A is fun.”
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[...] CNN: the Couric News Network?Reuters - 13 hours ago… CNN. I thought CBS News and CNN, to this day should be combined, Karmazin said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. I … [...]
- Posted by autoinfonow.info » Experts skeptical about most of Krasnoyarsk news agencies[...] Sirius to Offer Live TV in Cars Sirius Satellite Radio expects to offer a live television service for the back seat of cars by late 2007, says chief Mel Karmazin. “We have three content deals that are very close to being finalized.” Also: CBS News and CNN should be merged, says Karmazin. [...]
- Posted by Make Them Accountable / Media