Tim,
Great article or what!!!!
very interesting....sounds like some boxes needed?.......
"for gedd-a-bout it"...
Let me put it this way," said Jeff Marcus, chairman of Marcus Cable, which counts 1.2 million subscribers. "We're not taking any calls from the Fox sales force at this point. Why would one feed one's enemy?"
Added Bob Thomson, a senior VP at Tele-Communications Inc., the U.S.' largest MSO with 13.9 million subscribers: "There's a growing concern, at least in this company, about News Corp.'s business practices."
TCI's programming arm, Liberty Media Group, is partners with News Corp. in several ventures, most notably Fox Sports.
Last week's deal will give EchoStar access to News Corp.'s deep pockets and branding muscle. In return, News Corp. - which had planned to launch ASkyB in 1998 - gets a jumpstart into the U.S. DBS market thanks to EchoStar's 433,000 Dish Network subscribers.
Sound like a battle or what?
"Actually, the deal stabilizes the DBS marketplace," said Mickey Alpert, a Washington, D.C.-based DBS consultant. "If News Corp. would've come in as a late entry, you can bet Murdoch would've done something crazy like give away equipment for free. Everything would have been chaos."
And we're here harping about at few dollars in a chip price?
Oh, ...but the analysts say this ain't a growth market, ..sorry i forgot!
f |
