Roger Fingas
Eddy Cue, Apple's head of internet software and services, raised the idea of his company buying Time Warner in talks with the media giant late last year, a report said on Thursday.
The topic came up during a meeting with Olaf Olafsson, Time Warner's head of corporate strategy, three sources told the Financial Times. The meeting happened at Time Warner's Manhattan headquarters, and was nominally focused on potential partnerships, such as Time Warner channels being featured in an Apple streaming video service.
Talks of a buyout didn't go beyond a preliminary level, and in fact didn't reach Apple CEO Tim Cook or Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, the sources said.
A Time Warner takeover would have given Apple instant access to a wide range of content, since the company owns channels like HBO, TBS, The CW, and Cartoon Network, as well as studios like Warner Bros., Castle Rock, and New Line.
It's not clear why the talks fell through, but sources told the Times that Apple is planning to ramp up spending on original content to "several hundred million dollars a year," and that it still hasn't ruled out buying a media company.
The latter option might be difficult if it doesn't want Time Warner though, since many other media corporations have dual share structures and are controlled by founders and their families. Disney is technically an easier an option in this regard, but likely far too expensive given a $162.52 billion market cap.
Rumors of an Apple video streaming service have all but died, with reports suggesting that content providers have been hesitant to exclude some of their channels from a "skinny" bundle costing less than $30 per month. In January, though, Apple was said to be keeping a close eye on Time Warner going up for sale, possibly with the intent of snatching up individual assets.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
53 Comments
So Apple can't successfully negotiate a skinny down cable like bundle but Eddy Cue thinks he could run an old media conglomerate? Even acquiring TW and leaving it as a standalone business....does Apple really need to spend that much money to get exclusive content? And no way a deal like this would ever get approved unless the content was available on all platforms. Seems to me Eddy has enough on his plate as is.
As much as we fans would like to see iOS device sales continue to grow exponentially common sense tells us that that cannot happen. The problem is determining what the next big thing is going to be in order to diversify. Artificial Intelligence? Maybe. Virtual Reality? Blathering nonsense. Autonomous automobiles? Could be. Software and services? Probably. Personally I see the hardware business becoming less and less profitable as miniaturization and automation lower production costs and margins greatly. When everybody can produce the same great hardware for the same cost there goes profit. I think Apple’s executive team is feeling more and more pressure every day to use that cash hoard for something.
funny, Time Warner buys AOL and destroys it, now Apple considers buying Time Warner. For the billions it would cost Apple to do this, they might be more successful putting that money into standing up their own studio and/or creating their own original content.
Apple could certainly buy a media company like TW but why would they? They would have to make everything available on all platforms like they are now for it to continue to be successful.
How about just making the AppleTV competitive? If I were after a new streaming box I'd go with the latest Roku, as it has both all the content I want and it's got better hardware.