CBS, Time Warner May Team Up On Bid For U.S. Olympic TV Rights
CBS and Time Warner execs have "discussed joining forces to bid on rights to televise" the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, according to David Bauder of the AP. The collaboration would compete with NBC, Fox and ABC/ESPN, which have "said they expect to bid for the U.S. rights." Turner Senior VP/Corporate Communications Shirley Powell said that "no decision has been made about going forward with a bid." The IOC has said that it is "ready to postpone" rights talks until after the 2016 host city is named next October (AP, 12/17). The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's Paul Gough reports the two sides have held "preliminary conversations, somewhere between a passing conversation between executives from the channel and slightly more advanced discussions." But the talks are "nowhere near anything remotely resembling a concrete bid" (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 12/18). MULTICHANNEL NEWS' Mike Reynolds noted a joint bid would enable CBS and Turner to "run Olympic fare on an array of channels, much as NBC did with its various cable properties" with this summer's Beijing Games. In addition to "leveraging the full distribution of CBS, which also could put CBS College Sports Network into the mix, a combination with Time Warner could open up such widely penetrated cable networks like TNT, TBS and CNN, as well as other properties like Cartoon Network and TCM, to airing Olympic action." Reynolds noted through a "sub-licensing deal with CBS, TNT was the daytime cable home" for the '92 Albertville, '94 Lillehammer and '98 Nagano Games (MULTICHANNEL.com, 12/17).
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