Surf’s Up? News Corp. Mulling Sale of “Action Sports” Channel Fuel TV.
by Peter Kafka
Posted on October 29, 2009 at 11:52 AM PT
News Corp. is reportedly interested in purchasing the Travel Channel from Cox for something like $800 million. Here’s one way to help pay for a small piece of that deal: Sell off its Fuel TV cable channel.
(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the owner of Travel Channel as Discovery.)
Rupert Murdoch and company are mulling a sale of the “action sports” cable channel, prompted by inbound requests, industry sources tell me. No comment from News Corp., which also owns this Web site.
If News Corp. (NWS) does part with the channel, it won’t be a whopper of a deal: Fuel TV, which features skate- and surf-themed programming like “The Adventures of Danny and the Dingo” (I know. Me either.) boasts just 30 million subscribers–about half of what cable networks need to get taken seriously by operators and advertisers.
Just as telling, perhaps: I’ve queried three different Wall Street analysts to get a ballpark price for the network, and none had a clue–and only one had even heard of Fuel.
So here, for everyone’s edification, is some Fuel TV programming: Danny and the Dingo’s (who are snowboarding stars, apparently) most recent high jinks.
Comments
Uh, did your industry sources happen to mention that Travel Channel isn’t owned by Discovery, but by Cox? Nice reporting.
Posted by Manish Kalaria at October 29th, 2009 at 12:21 pmUgh. Thanks for catching that stupid error. Fixed.
Posted by Peter Kafka at October 29th, 2009 at 5:40 pm