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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NY Stew who wrote (1776)	5/7/1999 8:47:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Stew and Jill, Regarding Gemstar, Why the bucks for the PR from the established Gorillas? Because Gemstar wants 90% of ad revenues and TV Guide wants less. Hmmm, now that's a business model I can admire if you've got the stuff that allows such a high percentage. (If you don't, it's deadly.) In the early days of AOL's business model almost all of their revenue was subscription-based. AOL kept 80% of the revenue and gave 20% to the content providers when their competitor kept 20% and gave 80% to the content providers. Their competitor was some company called Prodigy that no one hears about anymore. :) I love it when the TV Guide president mentions in the article that they want to compete in the marketplace, not in court. That might be fine so long as TV Guide isn't violating any patents. Surely the guy can be sensitive to the fact that the company his merged with already sued Gemstar and lost and tried to buy Gemstar and lost that battle too. It's not as if TV Guide's president put the whole story in context, yet we can't blame him entirely because that happened before his company merged with the other. Lastly, if Gemstar's CEO is a patent terrorist, I have to wonder why Bill Gates, the CEOs of all the major international consumer electronics companies and the broadcast companies don't fear him. Maybe it's because they aren't violating his patents. As a shareholder of Gemstar, I'm glad the company is defending the patents. And by the way, after that article went to press Scientific Atlanta sued Gemstar for patent infringement. What would Forbes have to say about that? --Mike Buckley