Viacom Notching Double-Digit License Fee Gains: Dauman
CEO Reports Double-Digit Growth In Affiliate Contracts Sans Ties To Retransmission Consent Hammer
By Multi Channel News Staff -- Multichannel News, 9/18/2007 7:11:00 AM
NEW YORK - The split up of Viacom in 2005 may have freed broadcaster CBS to go after its own retransmission consent deals with cable and satellite operators, but it also made life easier for the cable networks, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said at an industry conference Tuesday.
Dauman, who became CEO of Viacom about a year ago, after former CEO Tom Freston was fired, said that while CBS has said in the past that it was prevented from doing retrans deals in the past because of its past ties to Viacom’s cable networks. CBS has to forgo retrans in deference to carriage for Viacom’s other less popular networks.
While some have speculated that Viacom could run into trouble in future carriage negotiations because it no longer has that retrans hammer to wield, Dauman said the opposite is true.
“We are finding that not having retrans is eliminating a source of major friction.” Dauman said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference here.
Dauman would not talk about current carriage negotiations, but said that affiliate fees for the most part are increasing nicely, and could get significantly higher.
“We have enjoyed double-digit growth rates and expect that to continue for some time to come,” Dauman said, adding at the same time Viacom believes its networks are under-priced.
Viacom networks represent about 25% of viewership on ad-supported cable, Dauman said, yet its affiliate fees are in the single digits.. The CEO added that some deals are extremely old – he used its Comedy Central carriage agreements as an example, which in some cases go back to the days the network was a joint venture with Time Warner.
“As deals come off, we’ll see more opportunity,” Dauman said. “We see this [affiliate fees] as a good steady source of growth for us.”
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