Finance

In agreeing to buy a 50% interest in TV Guide, parent of the TVGN cable network and website TVGuide.com, for an estimated $100 million, CBS hopes it has found a low-cost way to broaden its content-distribution alternatives while providing TVGN with added firepower for carriage renewals.

Liberty Media chairman John Malone re-entered the U.S. cable market in a big way last week, agreeing to invest $2.6 billion in Charter Communications, and taking a 27% stake in the Stamford, Conn.-based MSO.

But as with all deals involving the cable legend, Wall Street and the cable industry are wondering what his next step may be.

DirecTV chairman and CEO Michael White received $18 million in total compensation in 2012, more than three times his take in the previous year, but nearly half the $32 million the executive gained in 2010.

White, who joined DirecTV in 2010, received a slight increase in annual salary from $1.5 million to $1.6 million for the year, but his biggest windfall came in the form of option awards -- $12 million in 2012 versus none in 2011. White also bagged $4 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation in 2012, slightly higher than $3.9 million received in 2011.

Viacom added TV journalist Deborah Norville and Christiana Falcone Sorrell, wife of WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, to its board of directors.

With the two new women members Viacom's board expands to 13 members from 11.

Falcone Sorrell is senior adviser to the chairman of the World Economic Forum and serves as principal consultant, office of outreach and partnership for the Inter-American Development Bank. Her husband's company is one of the world largest advertising and media agency businesses.

While most of the attention surrounding the spinoff of News Corp.’s publishing business was about the new unit’s nearly debt-free balance sheet (and $2.6 billion in cash), the split also provides nearly $7 billion in cash to the broadcasting and cable businesses that could be used for share repurchases and acquisitions.