The sun has darted in and out behind clouds all day. I woke up fairly early but had decided not to take my regular train into the city but the one after that; after a long Memorial Day weekend, much spent on the deck watching the creek flow by, I got up, had my morning cup of coffee and started perusing the news.
Pushing to the head of the news today was that Charter Communications will acquire Time-Warner Cable in a deal that is worth about 78 billion dollars, only a few weeks after Comcast withdrew its bid for Time Warner Cable because it looked like it would not receive regulatory approval.
This time the chances are better. Why? It’s not Comcast that is doing the acquiring but Charter. Comcast also holds lots of other assets besides its cable assets, including a small company called NBC Universal.
In the interesting and byzantine world of cable, Charter’s largest shareholder is Liberty Media, a company controlled by John Malone, a cable pioneer who built the nation’s largest cable company, TCI, and sold it to Bell Atlantic back in 1994 for $55 billion.
John Malone’s TCI financially backed and gave carriage to a number of struggling cable networks, including Discovery which has gone on to being its own small behemoth.
In those days, he earned the sobriquets of “Darth Vader” and the “King of Cable.” He dominated the cable business from his office in Denver. Liberty Media is a conglomerate with interests in lots of companies here and abroad. John Malone is personally worth about $8.6 billion and is the largest landowner in America.
The combined companies will be the number two cable and broadband supplier in the country, after Comcast. But the fact that it will only be number two and won’t control about 50% of broadband connections is what will make it easier for regulators to say yes to this while having said no to Comcast.
In the days when cable customers are beginning to shift their loyalty to streaming services such as Netflix, cable operators are seeking partners to bulk up to face the challenge.
Recently, European operator Altice purchased Suddenlink, a smaller cable company. It will be interesting to see who is where when the music stops.
The music stopped for ITV’s purchase of The Weinstein’s TV division. Too caught up in the movie business of the Weinstein brothers and ITV has no appetite for the film business.
This story is days old but keeps repeating. Media bosses make good paychecks, especially if you work with a company that has John Malone on the board. Several of the companies that Liberty is invested in have CEO’s who have rich compensation packages.
David Zaslav of Discovery Communications, in which Liberty has an interest, is the highest paid exec of a publicly traded company. He earned something like $156,000,000 last year, after extending his contract.
Breathtaking.
As we move into the negotiations for advertising next year, in what is called “the upfront” there are a couple of trends to be noted. One is that traditional TV dollars are down while digital is growing strongly, 21%.
Big brands are having a tough time in packaged goods. Consumers are beginning to gravitate to smaller brands that feel more “authentic” than say P&G or Clorox. It’s going to be a tough fight out there over the next few years for the hearts and minds of consumers, particularly in latching on to young consumers who are consuming media in such different ways.
Kellogg is pulling advertising from YouTube until they get better numbers, a blow for the service. They want someone like a Nielsen to come in and verify the numbers. The trend is growing and Kraft Foods is saying its probably going to follow suit with some platforms.
Branded entertainment is growing but is still a fraction of traditional advertising. It’s still hard to get some buyers to buy.
Cowen and Company, a research company, is predicting that by 2020 Netflix will have one hundred million subscribers and about 17 billion dollars in revenue, domestically and internationally.
They have just acquired all the 1990’s episodes of “Bill Nye The Science Guy.” Go Netflix.
Being a Netflix fan I will probably go home after a bite or two at a favorite place and watch something off the service.
Have a good evening everyone!
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 05 27 15 FIFA in trouble with Germany “a bordello”
May 27, 2015It is a warm day in New York City, a day that started cloudy and is ending with sun shining down. In not so very long, I’ll be off to a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen to meet my friend Caroline Ely for a drink. It’s been awhile since we have seen each other and time to catch up.
While drinking my morning coffee, the news was being splashed all over the place that FIFA officials had been arrested early in the morning in Zurich, Switzerland. The Swiss made the arrests in an understated way, giving the men time to dress and gather their belongings and, in at least one case, had the hotel staff hold up a sheet to shield the arrestee from the news people who had started to gather.
It’s another blow to FIFA, an organization that has been dogged by rumors of corruption for years. American officials are seeking the extradition of a number of FIFA officials for having taken over $150,000,000 in bribes, “year after year, tournament after tournament,” according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
In Texas, hundreds have been ordered to evacuate after at least fifteen people have died in weather related accidents, as storms pounded the state with torrential rains. Oklahoma, too, is suffering from the pounding from Mother Nature, who, my friend and writer, Howard Bloom, has pointed can be a b**tch.
The Republican race for the Presidential nomination has become more crowded now that Rick Santorum, last seen in 2012, has thrown his hat into the ring also. There will be enough of them soon that they can form their own team though I don’t think they will want to as they’ve got some intense competition going on between them. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana set off a storm when he tweeted that Rand Paul was unfit to be Commander in Chief.
I don’t see the two of them cooperating on the field of play.
Jindal is only thinking about joining the Republican fray but it’s likely he will. Rand Paul is already in.
The Vatican has declared that the Irish vote to constitutionalize same sex marriage is a “defeat for humanity.” I feel a little defeated that they feel that way.
The Queen, Elizabeth II of Great Britain, arrived today in great pomp and circumstance to deliver “The Queen’s Speech,” which she has done sixty times during her reign. Before she arrives, the Houses of Parliament have their basement swept by the Queen’s Guard to ensure there is no Guy Fawkes in waiting. He led the Gun Powder Plot in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament. He has a day named after him in England.
What the Queen said was dictated by what Cameron wants but it gets said with such grand style.
Tony Blair, once Great Britain’s Prime Minister, has been, for the last eight years, the envoy to the Middle East. He will step down next month. He resigned to Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN. He had been working on the behalf of the Quartet [Great Britain, the European Union, the United States and Russia]. Diplomacy gets complicated.
Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes, ruling a country that has now become known as “the bordello of Europe.” Germany legalized prostitution in 2002 and a huge sex trade has built up worth $16 billion a year. There are fancy places for the prostitutes to practice their trade and sex tourists load onto busses and head for Germany. It doesn’t seem to bother Angela much.
Also in Germany, there was an evacuation of part of Cologne today when WWII bombs were found undetonated while working on a construction project. Apparently happens not infrequently. Something like a thousand bombs were defused last year. They are a hazard out in the North Sea where wind farms are being built. Clearing bombs is more than a cottage industry in Germany.
I had coffee with a friend this morning who told me that Germany blew up two “dirty” nuclear bombs during the final days of the war. I had never heard that and when I attempted to research it, I found stories about it, including one that Hitler was a German traitor, actually an Illuminati and he did what he set out to do, break Germany’s back.
There is a lot out there on the Internet and it’s not all true or pretty. Beware.
And now I am going to publish this and head for drinks with my friend Caroline.
Tags:Adolf Hitler, Ban Ki-moon, Bobby Jindal, Caroline Ely, David Cameron, Elizabeth II, Fifa, FIFA Arrests, Germany's A-bombs, Howard Bloom, Loretta Lynch, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Opening of Parliament, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Texas Storms, Tony Blair, Vatican, Zurich
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