[quote="Mr Q" pid="1076572"My guess is that the CBS-Ten tie up is driven by the money that Ten owes CBS in its programming deal. CBS is Ten's largest creditor (around A$800m is the claim I've seen reported), and CBS may see the acquisition as a relatively cheap way to recover what it's owed .[/quote]
Whilst it does have the whiff on "needs must", the spin is quite emphatic.
The opportunity to expand in the English speaking world is a big thing. The US TV market is heavily saturated. Growth opportunity there for a classic network must be very limited. As terrestrial networks command significant slices of the audience, when one comes within your grasp: you'd be foolish to walk by. Especially, as in this case, the very real possibility of liquidation would have cost you 800 million Australian bucks!
All countries are squeamish over somebody from elsewhere owning something significant in their broadcast estate. (We're (the UK) rather more confident, and hence less defensive). However, the Australian Government and Regulator wouldn't have relished the prospect of commercial television morphing from three networks to two. Potentially they may be very generous to CBS over how it regulates the off-shore nature of its offering. The fact that Labor isn't in power must help this.
CBS may even have the chance to shed a few costs. Having the TEN news operation under their control lessens the need for a bureau in Sydney; not a big cost item but a fair aggregator of content from all over south Asia. Perhaps even some programme making may move to Australia; they speak the same language (almost) and have lots of nice subsidies for film-making, with way lower costs than California. Also, wouldn't CBS's US sales operation be able to sell TEN into global corporates more sharply that TEN ever did itself?
Last edited by TedJrr on 28 August 2017 11:24am