Another Attempt To Take Cablevision Private

I finally had a chance to review all of the news stories and analyst reports about the Dolan family’s latest attempt to take Cablevision (CVC) private. My conclusion is that I think this deal will get done with a small sweetener. On the one hand, I can see good reason for the special committee of […]

Volatility in NTL On Recent News

NTL Incorporated (NTLI) shares have sold off the last few days, giving back most of the gains achieved after several management presentations at media conferences in the US during September. Investors responded favorably to the presentations in which management indicated that 3Q06 results would be satisfactory. This was welcome news following published reports of the […]

Newspaper Industry Outlook Remains Bleak

Newspaper industry fundamentals continue to look pretty bleak. According to Citigroup, August was the worst month so far this year for advertising growth with industrywide year over year declines averaging 1% against an easy comp. In fact, Citigroup states that the ad revenue growth in August was the worst since 2002. Help Wanted advertising continues […]

October 2006 Model Signals

The weak growth signal given by Northlake’s Style model for September turned into a weak value signal for October. As a result, I swapped all client holdings of the Russell 1000 Growth (IWF) into the Russell 1000 Value (IWD) at the open yesterday. The one month swap from IWD to IWF for September turned out […]

Third Quarter Box Office Wrap

Following three straight weekly declines, the box office rose 6.6% vs. a year ago this past weekend. The weekend is actually the first one of the fourth quarter. Consequently, I wanted to look back at the completed numbers for the third quarter. Despite the weakness exhibited in the final three weeks, the third quarter still […]

Near-Term Good News For Disney

Yesterday, in the post immediately below, I mentioned that Disney (DIS), News Corp (NWS, NWS.a), and Time Warner (TWX) were all trading at 52 week highs. Departing from the doom and gloom that Dominates most discussion of media stocks, I laid out some big picture thoughts that might be driving the bullish action in the […]

Nothing But Static in Radio Stocks

The New York Times and Goldman Sachs were both out recently with analysis of the radio industr. Commentary in both reports was generally negative, noting the lack of advertising growth and the loss of usage share to other media such as the Internet radio and iPods. The Goldman Sachs report had some very interesting data. […]

Big Media Stocks Performing Surprisingly Well

Wow! Time Warner (TWX), Disney (DIS), and News Corporation (NWS, NWS.A) all made 52 week highs yesterday. On the one hand I shouldn’t be surprised because the Dow and S&P 500 are at multiyear highs. On the other hand, media stocks as a group have been pretty poor over the last few years with key […]

Time Warner Gets Good Price For AOL Germany

Investors have responded favorably to the nice price that Time Warner (TWX) received for its AOL access business in Germany. Citigroup is projecting total proceeds of $2 billion once all of the European access business is sold in the next few months. I consider that a good price, better than I expected, and enough to […]

More Apple Cell Phone Rumors

ThinkSecret.com is reporting that Apple Computer (AAPL) will be launching a cell phone through Cingular early in 2007. The report says that Cingular will have a six month exclusive. This report is just a rumor and based on my own perusal of the ThinkSecret website I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in it. However, […]