Time Warner and CBS “marriage makes sense”
April 23, 2013
By Chris Forrester
A “marriage” between media giant Time Warner and network broadcaster CBS “now makes more sense than ever” according to a Bloomberg report.
Investment analysts at Gabelli & Co suggest that buying the USA’s most-watched broadcast network would give Time Warner, owner of cable channels such as CNN and TNT, more negotiating leverage to win higher fees from pay-television systems that carry its programming.
The banks have even suggested a price tag for CBS and its impressive tally of assets, and is based on the price paid by Comcast for the NBC Universal bouquet of channels. But with CBS currently occupying the Number 1 position in the ratings, Bloomberg suggests a price of around $36 billion would need to be paid. CBS has a market cap of $29 billion, while Time Warner’s market cap is $56 billion.