Tim Kenneally
Rupert Murdoch Won't Be Buying Chicago Tribune or LA Times
Looks like there are a couple more companies that Rupert Murdoch won't be buying.
Fresh off the news that Time Warner rejected an $80 billion takeover bid from Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, Murdoch said that he won't be purchasing either the Chicago Tribune or Los Angeles Times. Murdoch cited “cross-ownership laws from another age” via his Twitter account.
Charlie Ergen, Dish Hit With $1.5 Billion Lawsuit
Dish Network and its chairman, Charles Ergen, have been slapped with a lawsuit over the bankrupt wireless company LightSquared. In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Colorado, Harbinger Capital Partners accuses Ergen, Dish Network and others of engaging in “an illegal scheme of involving mail and wire fraud, bankruptcy fraud, torious interference, and abuse of process.”
Harbinger and its co-plaintiffs are seeking more than $1.5 billion in damages in the lawsuit, which claims the defendants tried to strip the investment fund of its control of bankrupt wireless company LightSquared. According to the lawsuit, the alleged racketeering action was aimed at stripping Harbinger of its right to control LightSquared and to make decisions during LightSquared's Chapter 11 proceedings, rights that Harbinger claims to have acquired “pursuant to its multi-billion dollar investment” in LightSquared.
The lawsuit accuses Dish Network and others of withholding crucial evidence during LightSquared's 2012 bankruptcy proceedings, adding that the defendants engaged in a ‘troubling pattern of noncredible testimony'” and “wrongfully and deceptively created chaos in the bankruptcy proceedings so that investment fund Harbinger would lose control of the LightSquared board to which it was contractually entitled.”
The suit accuses Dish and others of surreptitiously acquiring LightSquared debt in violation of a credit agreement. The goal, Harbinger claims, was to “dominate the Bankruptcy Proceedings and direct a bargain-basement sale of LightSquared's valuable spectrum assets to Dish.”
ABC Wraps Upfront Sales With Slight Rate Increase
ABC has effectively wrapped up its upfront ad sales for the 2014-15 season, an individual with knowledge of the negotiations said.
With all but a bit of clean-up left, the network is finishing its upfront season with an approximate 5 percent increase in the rate for CPM, or the cost of reaching 1,000 people since 2013. (That figure excludes sports programming, which undergoes a separate round of ad-sales negotiations.)
ABC did not release any dollar figures.
The network also made some so-called “C7” deals which measure how many viewers see ads up to seven days from their original airdate. The current industry standard calls for C3 deals, in which advertisers pay based on how many people see their ads over three days.
Networks have sought a larger window in recognition of the fact that more and more viewers watch shows on DVR.