You think you’re paying too much for cable TV? Check out this nugget, buried in satellite TV provider Dish Networks’ quarterly filing: The company has spent $328 million in its legal battle against Tivo this year, and that bill could keep growing.
Maybe this is why Comcast rushed to knock down a story that said it bought NBC Universal from GE: It knew Wall Street would hate the idea.
More upbeat–but not too ecstatic–chatter about the state of the Internet advertising market this morning from Wall Street: Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth is raising his estimates for Google, citing “improving macro conditions [and] a stronger ad market.” Other online advertising bulls: Investors, who have been pushing up Google stock for months, and CEO Eric Schmidt, who has declared that the worst is over.
The traditional publishing business is grim, but if you broaden your perspective and look at the rest of the media business, things are starting to look… not horrible.
Granted, “not horrible” doesn’t equal “good times are here again.” But I keep hearing that the sickening decline in advertising spending has stopped, at least, and that some marketers are actually spending money again.
Sure, $489 for Amazon’s new Kindle DX textbook reader may seem like a lot. But if you take the long view–and keep your Kindle DX away from thieves and keg parties–it should pay for itself in a couple of years argues Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth.
Things looked a little rough for cable giant Comcast at the end of 2008, but they seemed to have righted themselves again during the first three months of this year: The company outperformed Wall Street’s revenue and earnings expectations and signed up more subscribers than analysts had expected in at least some of its offerings.
You don’t need a particularly good crystal ball to foresee that big media are in for a bad year (at least). But Wall Street singled out Sumner Redstone’s Viacom and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for special treatment this morning, by whacking estimates for the next few quarters. The short story: The lousy ad market will be even worse than people think.
Yesterday, two of the world’s biggest media companies fired 1,350 people. Which just means there are many more to go. Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente predicts that Disney will follow in the footsteps of Viacom and NBC and will focus the brunt of its cost-cutting/firing at its ABC network.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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