Implications of A New HBO-Like Pay TV Network

Viacom, Lionsgate, and MGM announced that they will no longer sell their movies to Showtime (owned by CBS) and instead will launch a new, fourth pay TV channel. The announcement leaves Showtime, the current owner of rights to films from VIA, LGF, and MGM without the rights to output from any of the major movie […]

Box Office Turns Up. Finally.

After falling year-over-year, often substantially for eight of the past nine weeks, the weekend box office offered a respite. Led by better than expected openings for the top two films, The Forbidden Kingdom from Lionsgate and Forgetting Sarah Marshall from GE’s Universal Pictures, the top 12 films grossed 12.4% more than the same weekend a […]

Thinking About Mobile TV

At the recent National Association of Broadcasters conference, one of the more popular topics was mobile TV. Mobile TV is the ability for consumers to watch live TV on their cellphones. Standards are still being set but according to SNL Kagan, MobiTV has 4 million subscribers of various global wireless companies using its platform. For […]

CE “TV” Does Radio

Central European Media Enterprises (CETV), recommended by Jim Cramer last Friday on Mad Money announced that it is acquiring two radio stations in Romania. Until this point, CETV has been 100% focused on TV other than developing an internet presence in each of its TV markets (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia). The […]

Terrible Quarter For NY Times

New York Times reported terrible 1Q08 results. Adjusted EPS of 4 cents missed the consensus of 14 cents. Revenues of $748 million were a little short of the $752 consensus. 1Q07 EPS were 17 cents so this quarter represents a total collapse in profitability. Making matters worse, March advertising revenues decelerated further even after for […]

Catching Up With Cable Stocks

Cable stocks have acted pretty well this year. Comcast is up a bit and Time Warner Cable is down slightly. Both have easily outperformed the S&P 500. The other large cap cable stock, Cablevision, is down about equal to the market but at year end it was still in the process of being taken private, […]

News Corp Catches A Downgrade

News Corporation shares traded down 4.6% on Monday in response to a downgrade from Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson. Nathanson lowered his rating from outperform to market perform, cut his price target from $24 to $21, and lowered his earnings estimate by 7% for FY08 and 4% for FY09. Prior to this downgrade, Nathanson shared […]

Wall Street Journal Trashes American Apparel

The Wall Street Journal wrote a damning and extremely damaging article about one of Northlake’s long positions. The story on American Apparel (APP) appeared on the front page of the Saturday edition. As someone who had done his homework and read the filings, most of negative news in the article was nothing new to me. […]

Checking In On Disney

I remain long Disney across Northlake client accounts including my own accounts. Down just 3%, the shares have acted fairly well this year compared to many other media investments, particularly those with significant advertising exposure. Performance of the shares in the near future is a battle between the possibility that the economy drags down earnings […]

AOL Still Dragging Down Time Warner

Time Warner (TWX) shares are down 10.8% so far this year, lagging most other large cap media stocks. News Corp (NWS) is down 6.1%, Disney (DIS) is down just 3.7%, and Viacom (VIA) is down 5.2%. The largest single component of TWX’s valuation is Time Warner Cable (TWC), whose shares are down less than 1%. […]