@ UBS Media Week: News Corp’s Carey: Olympic Bid Would Have To Be ‘Prudent’
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We tend to focus a lot on News Corp.‘s desire to get paid for its online content but the “pay plus ads” refrain is being sung elsewhere in the company, too. News Corp (NYSE: NWS) wants a dual revenue stream for Fox, too—aka retransmission fees. Or, as News COO Chase Carey told investors and analysts at UBS: “We need to create a business model behind it that recognizes that reality and let’s us get fairly rewarded. ... We’re not going to negotiate rates in public, but we believe we put on very valuable programming.”
Carey mentioned the once-hot notion that retrans could be used to leverage access for new cable nets: “In the ‘90s, that had more logic to it. (Now) it just isn’t something that makes sense.”
—On the Olympics: Carey didn’t dismiss the notion of bidding for the Olympics out of hand, but he piled on enough qualifiers to suggest a winning bid would be unlikely, reminding the room that News Corp. pulled out of a recent M&A deal (The Travel Channel) “because there wasn’t enough upside.” In an apparent reference to NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), he added, “There are others that historically have had greater appetites. ... We’ll be prudent and disciplined and would want to do it on a profitable basis.” He suggested that hasn’t always been the case for competitors.
—On advertising: “We feel pretty good. We’re meeting our plans. We continue to see a good solid market.”
Posted In: Advertising, Entertainment, Sports, Digital Olympics, Media & Publishing, TV, Broadcast, Cable & Telecom, Companies, News Corp.
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