This article was first published on TechCrunch. continue reading...
The NY Times has a piece on the NBC debacle and the declining fortunes of network television: continue reading...
If you like M&A, great article from NY Times on how Comcast courted and convinced GE to sell NBC.
Comcast had also undertaken an internal review to consider where the company could grow by acquisition. It considered buying another cable company, a mobile phone company or even Facebook. At one point, it considered acquiring Viacom, which owns several cable networks but is unencumbered by a broadcast network, but Sumner M. Redstone, the controlling shareholder in Viacom, was not interested in selling. continue reading...
Somehow*, I came across Paul Lee’s post on high valuations, he’s a founding member and Senior Vice President at the Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Capital:
A high valuation is problematic for a number of reasons. The first, and probably most important, is the impact on the company’s ability to attract quality talent. That’s not to say that you couldn’t (I’m sure the aforementioned microblogging site is seeing a flood of resumes). However, most people in the startup world join startups for the equity upside in a liquidity event or IPO (although the garage sale furniture and stale pizza at 1 a.m. is tremendously appealing). When a highly priced round is completed, guess what–the strike price of the options also go up. In effect, the hurdle for the options to be “in the money” has gone up and the value of the options has decreased. The motivation for the employees coming in after the financing has been materially altered. continue reading...
Could it happen? Sure, why not. Markets are looking for a catalyst and if any media company could IPO these days, NBC Universal could be it. See the interview with John Battelle here:
Some time ago, online media professional Dave Haber (and reader of this blog) emailed me an article from MediaPost, titled “How Can Independent Video Producers Compete In The Super-Premium Era?”
The article was written by Lewis Rothkopf, who is vice president of network development at BrightRoll, one of the pre-roll networks out there. As a side note, I really admire Brightroll’s CEO Tod Sacerdoti. Unlike most of the pre-roll intermediaries who seem to be either in denial or out of touch about that the pre-roll format, Sacerdoti is realistic about the pros and cons of the format, not insulting people’s intelligence about why his firm focuses on the unit. continue reading...
The techies still don’t get it (here, here, here, etc.): a better mousetrap (platform, box set, device etc.) is irrelevant, it all comes down to content, content and content.
It’s that simple. Figuratively speaking: Hulu is nothing without the content. Boxee is nothing without the content. Conceptually speaking, they’re great mouse traps, potentially a step in the right direction and a better mouse trap than the previous ones, but they are a means to an end. continue reading...
What, on earth, has happened to the media companies’ stocks and market caps?
In early summer 2007, we looked at media companies to determine who was the king of digital media and then used the multiples and figures from each of the publicly traded companies to forecast the value of NBC… continue reading...
According to eMarketer, the size of online advertising revenue is $1.35B in 2008.
Since launching WatchMojo.com in 2006, I’ve had some questions about that figure… so here goes: continue reading...
Hmm. Two and a half yars ago when I started WatchMojo.com, media companies didn’t bother replying to our overtures… looking down at us. When I say media companies: read all of them, but put a particular emphasis on print and TV companies.
Pretty quickly, continue reading...
