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Last Sunday, over a late dinner at New York City's Plaza hotel, Pierce and Goldenson briefed ABC's division presidents about the impending merger. The next morning, the word went out to two dozen other top management people, and finally the deal was revealed. Up until the formal announcement, Murphy and Goldenson had insisted that the proposed merger be kept a secret in order to prevent premature speculation in ABC's stock. Said Goldenson: "We were fortunate that there were no leaks...
...long sculpting process to make the new company fit FCC regulations governing concentration and numbers of stations. It is certain that properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars will have to be sold off. The possible complexities are numbing. Because Buffett will be a major shareholder in Capital Cities/ ABC, his ownership of a chunk of the Washington Post Co. could result in the new company's having to sell two Washington radio stations. An FCC rule prohibits common ownership of a radio or TV station and a newspaper in the same city. Capital Cities has already decided to sell...
What Capital Cities is buying is the TV network that, despite its laggard ratings, is America's most consistently profitable. From 1977 to last year, ABC led CBS and NBC in pretax earnings and revenues, a sharp improvement from its early years of being the network everyone joked about (see following story). In 1984 ABC's pretax profits were $428 million vs. $409 million for CBS and $218 million...
...everything was going so well economically for ABC, why was it vulnerable to takeover? Answer: the buy-out climaxes years of erosion of the networks' influence in U.S. commercial television. During that time, they have lost viewers to suppliers of cable programs and direct satellite broadcasts and even to producers of videocassettes for home TV tape players. From 1979 to 1984, the networks' audience share dropped from...
What lies ahead for ABC in its new marriage? Known for its careful cost cutting (see box), Capital Cities will doubtless attempt to trim fat from ABC. It will look with disdain, for example, on the network's habit of sending several executives, when one would be sufficient, on expensive business trips. Money-losing departments like network news might be vulnerable, although Capital Cities generally leaves high-quality journalistic operations alone. Still, as one concerned ABC middle manager fretted, "A lot of people are walking around worried." A producer for ABC News's 20/20 program said, "Capital Cities...