Ronald Grover
Fox-Time Warner deal could bring the game to ESPN
Twenty-First Century Fox's plan to buy Time Warner could create an upheaval in the sports television world, creating the first meaningful challenge to Walt Disney's ESPN.
Time Warner's board has rejected an $80 billion bid, but Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch is unlikely to walk away quickly. A deal would bring him college basketball's "March Madness" championship tournament, prime time National Basketball Association (NBA) games, and Major League Baseball (MLB) games.
Fox's sports rights include National Football League games, professional baseball games and NASCAR racing. In 2015 it gets the rights to women's World Cup soccer and in 2018 the men's World Cup.
Murdoch's ambitions may take center stage in Sun Valley
Rupert Murdoch will jet into Idaho's Sun Valley for the year's most exclusive tech and media industry gathering, armed with both the money and the appetite for a major deal.
The 83-year-old Twenty-First Century Fox chief executive officer, a regular at investment bank Allen & Co's annual gathering, is in the midst of a deal that would give Fox the firepower to buy a content company.
Fox's 39 percent-owned British Sky Broadcasting Group is negotiating to buy Fox's Sky Italia and its Sky Deutschland subsidiary in a deal that could net Fox as much as $13 billion. Sun Valley will be teeming with CEOs whose companies might fit the bill. Among expected attendees are Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.
Comcast deal may offer media companies leverage on fees
Media companies plan to press Comcast for higher fees in 2015, seeing an opportunity to squeeze better terms from the US cable company as regulators review its planned takeover of Time Warner Cable.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable paid nearly $14 billion to content companies in 2013 for rights to distribute their films, television shows and sporting events. Broadcasters and cable television networks have "assignment clauses" in their contracts with Time Warner Cable that require the networks to sign off before Comcast can merge the two cable operators' agreements, according to people who have negotiated agreements in the past. Media executives say most programmers will push for higher rates in return for expanding their deals to cover digital distribution of their content.