LOS ANGELES: At least one media mogul is expecting to see a lot more deals like AT&T Inc’s US$85.4bil purchase of Time Warner Inc, and the seeds for such mega mergers could be planted this week in a resort town in Idaho.
Pay-TV providers and phone companies like AT&T are realising they need exclusive programming to set themselves apart in a crowded media landscape, said Discovery Communications Inc chief executive officer David Zaslav, one of the first bigwigs to arrive at the annual conference in Sun Valley, hosted by Allen & Co.
He cited the Time Warner deal and Verizon Communications Inc’s purchase of Yahoo! Inc’s Internet business as examples, along with Discovery’s own deals to provide sports programming to European TV providers.
“There’s more pressure on cable players around the world, satellite and mobile players, to merge or figure out how to offer all those together,” Zaslav told reporters.
“Two to three years from now you’ll buy that all from one person. We have great, exclusive content to provide, so they’re going to need us.” — Bloomberg
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