SE P T E M B E R/ OC T O B E R 2 0 1 2 reported that Zodiak was eyeing Toronto-based Entertainment One as a way of floating in a difficult market and accessing Canada’s generous tax credits for certain types of production. Both papers put Zodiak’s turnover at around $800 million, but Il Fatto pointed out that in 2010 losses were $127 million and, last year, $18 million. However, early this year Zodiak was able to obtain loans for $204 million from several banks, including BNP Paribas and Monte dei Paschi di Siena. BBC Exec Moves to NY Times Co. The New York Times Co. has tapped former BBC director general Mark Thompson as its new chief executive. The 55-year-old directed a 20,000strong BBC staff for eight years. He has moved to a company with less than 5,500 employees and annual revenues of $2.3 billion, compared to $5.5 billion at the BBC. Thompson is credited with shifting the BBC’s emphasis more onto the digital side. Many industry analysts credit the BBC iPlayer, aWeb application that allows viewers to stream content on-demand, as Thompson’s crowning achievement. Undoubtedly, that’s something the New York Times hopes to use to its advantage. According toThe Wall Street Journal “For Times Co., Thompson represents what the publisher wants to become: more digital, more social and more international.” Verizon-Cable Deal OK’d The U.S. Justice Department and the FCC, the federal communication authority, gave the green light to a $3.9 billion dollar deal between telco Verizon Wireless and several cable companies The deal allows Verizon to expand its 4G LTE broadband network through unused portions of the airwaves allocated to the cable companies. Running broadband lines into homes is expensive and thus telcos are expanding their wireless coverage by renting spectrum whenever they can. New York Citybased Verizon also operates a triple-play broadband telephone fiber cable service called FiOS, which competes with TV coaxial and fiber cable. In an effort to encourage competition, the Justice Department ruled that Verizon and its cable partners must limit the amount of cross-marketing agreements they make. Among the cable companies involved are Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. Bellevue, Washington-based and German-owned T-Mobile will also benefit from the deal — since the cellular company entered into a deal with Verizon to improve its 4G Network and kick off its expected LTE roll-out next year. Bertelsmann’s CEO Confronts Potentials During a company meeting, Bertelsmann’s new CEO, Thomas Rabe, told some 500 executives that the conglomerate was growing at too a slow pace. Bertelsmann, which is controlled by the Mohn family, owns RTL Group (which in turn owns London-based FremantleMedia), among other media companies. The Financial Times reported that during the meeting held last month at its headquarters in Gütersloth, Germany, Rabe complained about low growth and low growth potential. The 46-year-old Rabe, an economist, joined RTL in Luxembourg as CFO in 2000 and in 2006 became Bertelsmann’s CFO. Last year revenues fell to 15.2 billion euro (U.S.$19.6 billion) from 19.3 billion euro in 2006. According to FT, Rabe wants to “attract the kind of talent the company needs to push existing business online,” and “expand faster, become more digital and more international over the next five-to-10 years.” Looking at Bertelsmann’s annual reports fromthe past six years, the average revenue fell 4.5 percent a year, with the largest drop in 2008 (13.9 percent) and a gain in 2011 (1.3 percent). Famous Quotes “E.T. cost a million dollars and we created it in three months. If we wanted to do the same thing with computers, it would take at least 200 people a minimum of five months.” Oscar Winner Carlo Rambaldi (1926-2012), creator of the E.T. character for the 1982 film (Continued from Page 6) V I D E O • A G E 8
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