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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Oct 11, 2014 9:26:50 GMT -6
variety.com/2014/biz/news/report-starz-acquisition-discussed-in-talks-with-fox-1201312464/Report: Starz Acquisition Discussed in Talks with Fox Having abandoned his bid to swallow the parent company of HBO, Rupert Murdoch may be entertaining thoughts of absorbing another U.S. pay cabler. 21st Century Fox held preliminary talks with Starz on Tuesday about taking a stake in the company or owning it outright, according to a report published late Tuesday by The Los Angeles Times. The report suggests that Fox took the meeting with Starz as a “courtesy,” according to one cited source. Under the direction of CEO Chris Albrecht, who was reportedly in attendance at the meeting with Fox, Starz has been seen as a candidate for acquisitive companies, though Fox hasn’t been mentioned previously as a suitor. Such an acquisition would put Fox right back in the acquisition hunt after an aborted attempt to snap up Time Warner. Starz could be worth more than $3 billion. While Fox’s strategic rationale for swallowing up Starz may be entirely different than the one that guided Murdoch in his pursuit of Time Warner, he was reportedly very interested in the idea of owning HBO and potentially repositioning the network to compete beyond the pay-TV ecosystem with the likes of Netflix and Google. Buying Starz could put Fox in a similar situation.
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