German media group Bertelsmann AG is in talks with Microsoft Corp on jointly acquiring part of Deutsche Telekom’s cable television network. It is true we are in talks with Microsoft on buying part of the Telekom cable network, said Bertelsmann Chairman Thomas Middelhoff.
Middelhoff said it was essential for the company, which is the world’s largest publisher of English-language books and has large programming holdings in its CLT-Ufa television unit, to find more outlets for its content. We have got to get our content on every available electronic distribution channel, he said. We’ve got to have access to television cable, to the internet, and to the broadband cable.
Middelhoff would not comment on reports that Bertelsmann was considering a price of between $4bn and $5bn for the entire network, compared to the $16.2bn Deutsche Telekom hopes to get. We are just at the beginning (of talks), he said.
Deutsche Telekom said in 1998 it would sell its loss-making network and put the business into a separate holding company as the first step towards a sale. Microsoft Corp has been engaged in a flurry of activity to take stakes in European cable operators as a means to ensure that its software is used in set-top boxes.
