Media On A Holiday Weekend

The media biz never rests. Even on a holiday weekend.
NBC Universal is buying The Weather Channel for $3.5 billion from privately held Landmark Communications. With NBCU buried in General Electric, the stock impact stretches to other media companies. First, Time Warner at one time was in the running. TWX has tons of cash coming its way due to its split with Time Warner Cable. Investors do not want that spent on acquisition so getting this potential deal officially off the table is good news. Second, the price was substantially less than initially rumored indicating that the deal market may be soft even for prized media assets. Much of the value in this deal comes form weather.com, however, which limited bidders as other cable network owners like Viacom, Scripps Interactive, and Discovery Communications did not have natural synergies….

….The box office fell 6% from the same weekend a year ago but comps are tricky because the 4th of July fell on a Friday, likely hurting weekend business. None of the major films are disappointing. Disney is feeling good about Wall-E which is tracking to be #3 or maybe even #2 for all Pixar films. Dreamworks Animation is relieved to see Kung Fu Panda fall just 36%, the best hold of the weekend, indicating that the brunt of the damage from Wall-E has been incurred. Panda is heading nicely over $200 million, still better than most analyst estimates but not quite as high as I originally hoped. Theatres are facing their toughest comps now as last July saw two $300 million movies, two others at around $200 million, and additional four between $118 and $140 million. Still too early to buy the very depressed theatre stocks but keep them on your radar screens.
AdAge reported last week that Anheuser-Busch was cutting way back on its radio advertising. BUD spent $38 million last year and is known as innovative and supportive ad buyer to the radio industry. BUD execs say it is not related to savings to fend off InBev. If that is true it is especially bad news for the radio industry as it means one of the top advertisers is almost deserting the medium. According to AdAge, Clear Channel and Emmis Broadcasting have already been informed of big cuts.