We got to press day this week and almost forgot to mention the idea that has been floated this week that Verizon might try to buy Comcast or Charter. It slipped our mind, because we put it down to the madness that has gripped the US market – as a new president comes into power whose “real” beliefs are not quite known yet. US markets are getting increasingly fanciful about what he will and won’t let happen. This is like sciences fiction – take an “if” and expand upon it, and don’t let reality get in the way.
The New York Post cited CEO Lowell McAdam telling friends at CES that he wanted to get into “big cable.”
Remember this is the New York Post – a publication made famous for headlines like “Headless Body found in Topless Bar,” and “TV Murder, Gunman shoots journalist during a live broadcast.” Sensationalist is not the word and it gets by on a diet of aliens and celebrity gossip, cast around the stone of conservative thought. We are shocked that some of our rivals have taken it seriously.
If you were a Verizon shareholder what would you think of a management team which has acquired Intel OnCue technology and content rights, a rash of OTT technology firms along with online advertising expertise and content relationships through AOL and Yahoo, launched Go90 and THEN spent the $190 billion it could cost to buy Comcast, over-writing all those deals with a player that already has everything they have? You wouldn’t think a lot and you’d drop the stock. Even if it went after Charter, currently valued at just $93 billion, you’d have to think very hard about whether or not you wanted to go along for the Regulatory hurdle ride.
Dish is a natural target at $28 billion, which is feasible and touches all the right content buttons and which already has an OTT head start, as are major content players like Viacom. If this was a leak from any other paper, we’d maybe take it seriously, but from the New York Post, we just assume that either it was made up or that Lowell McAdam saw the reporter coming and was having some fun with him.
We remember a tech industrialist telling us 20 years ago that he was bored in a meeting with a finance guy who wasn’t taking him seriously, and when he turned to him and said “And what do you think,” he chipped in with, “Yeah and once we’ve cracked this computer business, we’re going to build electric cars” and this got reported in the press as credible.