Mike,
The story goes on. Here is the latest on TV Guide and TCI.
How would you like us to serve you in Florida so that you may have an extended stay? You will need a BT to properly communicate. As you know,I have one. Quite a handy device, but you and I know the story of that debacle very well.
Here is the story:
"Friday February 26 6:34 AM ET
TV Guide Aims For Global Internet Advertisers
By Terence Gallagher
NEW YORK (Reuters) - TV Guide, publisher of the best-selling U.S. weekly magazine, hopes to jolt its transition from print to the Internet by offering advertisers global one-stop shopping, key officials said Thursday.
''We are ... bringing what TV Guide was as a magazine to life on the screen interactively,'' NewsAmerica Publishing Group president Joe Kiener told Reuters. ''We have the ability to offer our advertising partners very attractive solutions that span the various platforms,'' Kiener said.
TV Guide issued $400 million in bonds this week to help fund its realignment with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. . In the deal, News Corp. is selling TV Guide to a unit of Tele-Communications Inc. (Nasdaq:LBTYA - news) but getting a powerful stake in the buyer.
TV Guide's print circulation of 12 million is flagging. As it shifts its business to the Internet from supermarket magazine racks, it is banking on electronic commerce, international expansion, and interactive services in its quest for growth.
TV Guide is looking to new means of electronic delivery, including cable channels and digital set-top boxes to build its powerful brand and lure advertising dollars.
That is how it aims to position itself for the broadband media of the near future, when television and the Internet will be integrated, accessed by one device from one network.
News Corp. announced last June it would sell TV Guide to a unit of cable television giant TCI, which is itself now in a $48 billion merger with AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news)
The News Corp. deal was initially expected to close by the end of 1998, but was delayed for tax reasons, and is now slated to close Monday.
''When this deal is closed, (a major advertiser such as) Coca-Cola can buy 35 million weekly readers of the magazine, 28 million viewers of the channel, seven million page views of the web site and nine million readers of the monthly product. That's just domestically,'' said Pete Boylan, president of United Video Satellite Group Inc. (Nasdaq:UVSGA - news) (UVSG).
UVSG is the TCI unit that will be renamed TV Guide Inc. when the deal is closed. Its annual revenues are projected at $1.3 billion.
Murdoch is receiving an estimated $800 million in cash and $1.2 billion in stock for TV Guide, but the stock will give him a powerful stake in the buyer.
After the shuffle, News Corp. and TCI's Liberty Media Group will each have a 44-percent economic and a 49-percent voting interest in the new TV Guide.
The merger is not without pain. TV Guide laid off 10 to 15 employees, about one-third of its online group last week due to redundancy, Silicon Alley Daily reported.
Boylan said Murdoch has satellite investments in all the world's continents, reaching 66 percent of the global population, giving TV Guide unparalleled reach.
''In the future, we will be able, because it's digital, to customize that spot for Coca-Cola to run in the U.K., in Australia, in Japan, in Latin America and in Asia,'' he said.
For Coke to make a similar media buy today would be extraordinarily expensive and the soft drink maker would have 50 or 60 middlemen to deal with, he said.
Observers say TV Guide will have to act quickly if it is to survive. ''Their core business is essentially eroding. The future business for any information-based company is the Internet and they're finally acknowledging that,'' said Chuck Martin, author of Net Future.
''TV Guide, if it did nothing, is in position to be annihilated, so it has to do something dramatic,'' Martin said.
While the print magazine's sales have drooped, the Web site TVGuide.com boosted its ''unique audience'' to 1.8 million in December from 1.3 million in June 1998, NetRatings says.
Unique audience shows the number of individuals viewing the site, rather than the number of ''page views'', many of which can be generated by a single individual.
The audience dropped back to 1.6 million in January, but TV Guide says it doubled its page views since the product was relaunched February 1. "
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
