US TV
Liberty Media is considering swapping its stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for a controlling stake in the media conglomerate's US Sky equivalent, DirecTV.
Subscriber growth at DirecTV has slowed recently as America's cable operators have resurged by rolling out high-speed broadband, video on demand, digital TV and unlimited phone call bundles. It is understood that, given DirecTV's relatively poor penetration numbers and lack of growth, Rupert Murdoch is keen to refocus News Corp's resources on internet businesses as exemplified by the conglomerate's recent acquisition of MySpace.
For its part, Liberty - which among its many media assets is the QVC shopping channel - is indicating that it would be prepared to swap its 19% stake in News Corp for control of DirecTV.
Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei said: "We were saying in the marketplace that we may exchange our roughly $11 billion stake in News Corp. for a controlling stake in DirecTV."
At one time, Liberty's strategy of growing its stake in News Corp worried Murdoch to the extent that he implemented a so-called "poison pill" strategy to make a takeover of News Corp prohibitively expensive.
Subscriber growth at DirecTV has slowed recently as America's cable operators have resurged by rolling out high-speed broadband, video on demand, digital TV and unlimited phone call bundles. It is understood that, given DirecTV's relatively poor penetration numbers and lack of growth, Rupert Murdoch is keen to refocus News Corp's resources on internet businesses as exemplified by the conglomerate's recent acquisition of MySpace.
For its part, Liberty - which among its many media assets is the QVC shopping channel - is indicating that it would be prepared to swap its 19% stake in News Corp for control of DirecTV.
Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei said: "We were saying in the marketplace that we may exchange our roughly $11 billion stake in News Corp. for a controlling stake in DirecTV."
At one time, Liberty's strategy of growing its stake in News Corp worried Murdoch to the extent that he implemented a so-called "poison pill" strategy to make a takeover of News Corp prohibitively expensive.
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