English Entertainment
Time Warner eyes purchase of Colorado-based cable co. Adelphia
MUMBAI: Time Warner Inc., is considering buying the bankrupt Colorado based cable operator Adelphia Communications Corp.
Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons was recently quoted in the media saying, “Adelphia is obviously a situation that anyone interested in expanding in the cable space will want to look at. We’ll certainly take a look to see if there’s a way that we can do something that’s good for our shareholders.”
He also said that he might add to Time Warner’s cable unit because it was growing faster than any of the company’s other businesses.
Time Warner can be “a little more aggressive,” Parsons said, now that its net debt is down to a three-year low of $18.8 billion. One media report said that Adelphia may fetch more than $20 billion in a sale.
Parsons also said that he would avoid spending too much purchasing other companies. Time Warner’s interest in Adelphia was reported last month by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources it didn’t identify.
A sale may value Adelphia, the fifth-largest US cable company, at as much as $20.5 billion. Adelphia’s cable systems have more than 5.3 million subscribers.
The media report said that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two years ago, claiming more than $18 billion in debt. While on the other hand, Adelphia founder John Rigas is on trial on fraud charges in US.
Parsons was also quoted as saying that he wanted to expand in the cable business because of its multiple revenue streams and because owning cable systems helps Time Warner’s entertainment-content businesses.
Owning cable systems assures Time Warner a means of distributing Warner Bros. movies and TV shows and programming from Time Warner’s cable networks, which include HBO and CNN.
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
