In a nod to the growing importance of electronic TV listings, especially as television becomes interactive, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said Thursday that it's agreed to sell TV Guide for about US$2 billion in cash and stock to the owner of the ever-scrolling Prevue Networks cable-TV listings channel.
News Corp. executives said the future of television listings was on TV and the Net and that they saw the deal as a way to meld the magazine's strong brand recognition with the cable operations of the buyer, United Video Satellite Group Inc., which is controlled by cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc.
The deal takes on additional meaning considering the current software-hardware battles over the next-generation set-top boxes, which will transform regular old televisions into fully interactive boxes that let people surf the Web and watch television on the same screen.
"The key to this deal is that we wanted to look at how TV Guide looks in the future rather than how it looked in past," said Anthea Disney, head of News Corp.'s News America Publishing Group. "It cannot just be a print vehicle. It has to have other platforms as well."
"Those [next-generation] boxes will be a new distribution [point], a big part of our business," said Jim Platt, spokesman for News Corp. "This is saying more and more people are going to have more useful boxes. We will be there to provide more useful information for them. The cable systems are deciding that they want to have more channels, and in doing so the guide becomes all the more important."
Platt said such a scenario combines the best of TV Guide's print and electronic versions and would let users check on any type of programming they want at any time.
TV Guide, which has 13 million subscribers, the most for a weekly magazine in the United States, will continue in its print incarnation. The magazine has been focusing on an online version, TV Guide Entertainment Network, or TVGEN. TVGEN is the most popular TV-listing site on the Net, according to Web research firm RelevantKnowledge. Platt said TVGEN will still have a link to the News Corp.'s Fox News Online for now.
Disney said combined entities would be a "very compelling proposition for advertisers who can reach millions more consumers."
Indeed, United Video Satellite Group has quite a reach. Spokesman Scott Knowles said the company has deals with about 30 cable operators, including TCI and Comcast, to use their software to run the Prevue channel.
Prevue Networks offers TV listings and other information that reaches more than 50 million households in the United States and an additional 3 million households overseas.
Murdoch bought TV Guide in November 1988 as part of a $2.9 billion purchase of Triangle Publications from billionaire publisher Walter Annenberg, which included The Daily Racing Form and Seventeen magazine.
Under Thursday's deal, News Corp. will retain a small stake of TV Guide and gain a 48 percent interest in United Video.
Reuters contributed to this report.
