Viacom (VIA) competes with other media and broadcasting companies like Time Warner (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), CBS (CBS) and Disney (DIS) in the media and entertainment business. Our price estimate for Viacom's stock stands at $58.36, which is a roughly 10% premium to market price.

Viacom makes money through cable and satellite operators, such as Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC), and DirecTV (DTV) that pay Viacom a monthly fee for each of their subscribers that receive Viacom-owned channels such as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and TV Land. Viacom also sells advertising spots on its channels to advertisers like Coca-Cola (KO), Ford (F) and Procter & Gamble (PG). These revenues are partially a function of the total number of U.S. pay-TV households. The modifiable chart below showcases how changes to this metric affect Viacom's stock value.

Continue reading TV Channels Drive 79% of Viacom's Stock Value

TV Channels Drive 79% of Viacom's Stock Value originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The boobs who watch Comedy Central and MTV on Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) will not have their viewing pleasure interrupted. Viacom (NYSE: VIA), the parent of the two content networks, has come to a financial deal with TWC to keep the programming on the air. Viacom wanted more money for having its shows on the cable system. It looks like it got that additional cash.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Viacom had publicly threatened to pull its networks off Time Warner Cable's system on New Year's Eve in a bid to win higher payments from the cable giant in its negotiation over carriage fees."

Both parties can claim that they walked away with something good. Viacom gets more money for its programming. TWC keeps shows that are appealing to its paid subscribers. That means that what TIme Warner customers pay for the service over time will probably go up to offset the higher fees to Viacom, but not more than a dollar or two a month.

It is too bad that the programming was not taken down. People in front of their TVs, sitting in lounge chairs six or seven hours a day, might have been forced to get up and exercise or volunteer to help the poor. Instead they get the intellectual benefit of watching Beyonce and Britney Spears.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom cut a programming deal originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Ask not for whom the writers strike tolls

Ask not for whom the writers strike tolls originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

IAC planning a comedy news website called 23/6 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Jon Stewart extends 'Daily Show' contract through 2010 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) today reported second quarter earnings that exceeded Wall Street's low expectations.

Net income was $434 million, or 63 cents per share, compared with $437 million, or 61 cents, the New York-based company said in a press release. Revenue rose 13% to $3.19 billion. Excluding gains and charges, profit was 54 cents. Analysts had expected earnings of 50 cents on revenue of $3.07 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Advertising revenue rose 6% to $1.15 billion while affiliate fees jumped 15% to $577 million. Though profit was hurt by higher costs, revenue from its cable channels rose 10 percent to $1.92 billion, helped by a gain on the sale of MTV Networks' investment in Russia and an impairment charge from Amp'd Mobile.

Strong box office receipts from its Dreamworks SKG films "Shrek the Third" and "Over the Hedge" helped push up revenue in the Filmed Entertainment business by 20% to $1.31 billion. David Jones, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co., told Bloomberg News that the unit outperformed his expectations by about $100 million.

Shares of Viacom are down more than 7% this year as investors continue to worry about who will succeed chairman Sumner Redstone who reportedly is feuding now with his daughter Shari.

"Revenue was better than expected because filmed entertainment outperformed by about $100 million or so,'' David Joyce, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, said in an interview. He has a "buy'' rating on the shares and doesn't own them.

Viacom earnings exceed low expectations originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

USA Today's

Continue reading The future of television - online?

The future of television - online? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

The battle between CNN and Fox News isn't a question of liberals and conservatives. That debate was settled long ago and the conservatives won.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) makes a ton of money from Fox News, which continues to dominate. Its ratings have rebounded after slipping last year. CNN parent Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) launched Headline Prime in 2005 as a Fox without Bill O'Reilly, complete with rabid right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck.

One night for fun, I decided to compare O'Reilly and Beck. Boy was I lucky. I picked a night to DVR their shows when both hosts were at the the top of their games.

On his program, Beck railed against all sorts of people bent on destroying the America, including filmmaker Michael Moore, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, and pop star Elton John.

Elton John? Rocket Man? I was shocked too.

Apparently, Sir Elton is the "high priest of hypocrisy," according to Beck. The singer had a 60th birthday party at St. John the Divine, a big church in New York. Seems John, who has little use for religion, made some changes to the church building for the concert, including removing the pews. To make matters worse, John showed a background of a burning church at his show the next day at Madison Square Garden. Oh yeah, that was on a Sunday.

All of this was too much for the talk show host to take.

"If he wants to drop a few million to desecrate your church than who am I to judge, right? Wrong!" he said of the pop star.

Continue reading CNN vs. Fox News: Battle of the Brands

CNN vs. Fox News: Battle of the Brands originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If the current tussle between Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) is really a business negotiation as Google CEO Eric Schmidt argues (and I agree with him), then two companies will now have more to discuss.

Viacom chose Google rival Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) for a multiyear search advertising deal on almost three dozen Viacom web sites. Though this won't make much of a dent in Google's overwhelming market dominance, this deal is too important for Google to ignore.

Yahoo! has the option to extend that agreement to include search activity and text advertising all Viacom's properties, which includes an additional 140 sites. That's more than 175 sites that Yahoo! could be displaying relevant text ads on -- the same magic formula that Google has employed to build itself into being the kingpin of all online advertising.

The numbers do hold some pretty decent figures, though. Traffic to Viacom's Nickelodeon website (www.nick.com) and ComedyCentral.com each had roughly 10 million unique visitors in March. Add a few more top-performing websites into that mix and Yahoo!'s presence in serving text ads at those properties starts to look significant, yes?

Viacom joins with Yahoo! for text ads, spurns Google originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Question for people who post large chunks of their favorite TV shows on YouTube: do you think you're going to get sued?

Now that Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA) is suing Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) for $1 billion that's not a far-fetched scenario. Google has tried and failed to cut deals with other big content providers. Unless Google pulls off a miracle, it's probably a matter of time before another big media company joins Viacom and another one after that

Although people hated the music industry's campaign against Napster and other file-sharing services, the message got out that you should pay for music that you download. Why is video sharing any different? Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban, a critic of YouTube, called the site "a haven for pirates." It's hard to disagree.

It took me 20, maybe 30 seconds surfing YouTube clips from "Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report." "American Idol", "Lost" and" Family Guy" that would probably give lawyers from big media a fit. Reuters came to the same conclusion. YouTube can be that oblivious.

Many of the YouTube clips I found were multi-minute chunks of hit shows. They were the funny moments, the highlights that fans enjoy. Some were as long as 15 minutes. Media companies would be insane to give that away for free. How is that legal?

Legal experts are divided over whether Viacom has a case against Google, according to The New York Times. The safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may offer Google protection against people posting videos they don't own. As Melly Alazarki pointed out yesterday, the DMCA was enacted during the Internet's Stone Age. Copyright holders have to flag objectionable content and ask sites like YouTube to take it down.

By the time that happens, the illegal content has spread to every corner of the Web. Remember it was still wrong to post other people's conent in the first place.

Some sort of balance has to be struck that doesn't stifle creativity and respects the rights of copyright holders. But if YouTube is to survive, it will have to figure a way to stop pirated content and punish those who post it.

So party on, YouTubers. The fun may not last.

Media World: Should YouTubers hire lawyers? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Viacom sues YouTube originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Kudos to a reader named Kathleen for pointing out that we missed "vetted" in our list of the most overused buzzwords. I also agree with her that the mashing together of celebrity couple names like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Brangelina) has got to stop.

We probably should have vetted our buzzword list with Kathleen (who didn't give her last name) before publishing it. Vetted, like all buzzwords, is a fancy-sounding word that describes something simple. It started out meaning reviewing or checking out for accuracy as in the qualifications of a nominee for a cabinet position on an article for scientific journal. Now, it's being bandied about to describe every type of review. For example, officials in Louisville are vetting a dog ordinance. When words like vetting get overused, their original meaning becomes diluted.

Finally, please dear God, when will the name mashing madness end? I mean first there was Bennifer, now Brangelina. I think Stephen Colbert created the ultimate celebrity couple when he merged William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman into Filliam H. Muffman. With the 2008 presidential election gearing up, I'm afraid the name mashing will only get worse. I'll get the process started with Hillbama (Hillary Cilnton and Barack Obama).

--Jonathan Berr is the editor of http://www.desperateinvestors.com

Vetted deserves a place in Buzzword Hall of Shame as does Brangelina originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.