| Topic Name: |
Why not #1 in TV biz news and ent |
| Message Name: |
As stated before, |
| Date Posted: |
02/23/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Yes, BB makes it's money off the terminals. It's more than $3.0 billion though. If you just do the math on the number of terminal out there times the monthly fee you get well over $4 billion. Throw in other secondary revenue sources (data license, Tradebook, TV, radio, magazine, book publishing, etc) and you're easily into the $4.5 - $5 billion range.
Why doesn't BBG sink more money into TV and radio? Why should they? It serves the purpose just fine as it is. As others have pointed out, it's primarily a promotional vehicle for the company. Why don't we do things like "Mad Money"? Driving up ratings and reaching Joe Investor is not the focus. Joe Investor isn't going to shell out $1700 bucks a month for a Bloomberg. The important thing is to reach the RIGHT people - financial professionals. Getting BB TV broadcast on Goldman Sachs' internal network - now that matters.
As for "spinning off" media - not feasible. It has no value with out the Bloomberg "engine" driving the content. Mike B realized many years ago the value of "repackaging" content. For example when a BB news story is written, it appears on the terminal, gets covered on TV and radio, could spawn a magazine article, might even end up on your PDA or cell phone. Many outlets for the same material. It's a beautiful thing. The whole is worth more than the sum of the parts.
As for Charlie Rose, I doubt he's "locked up" into anything. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. He gets to produce his show with almost no overhead, and BB gets a respected journalist (and the guests that come with him) under their roof. |
| Message: |
the radio, TV, publications were also directed to Joe Investor. Not to get them to buy a terminal, but to a lot of Joe/Jane Investors to say to their financial advisior/broker, "Hey I saw this on Bloomberg radio/TV/publication, what about it" and to force get the advisior/broker to get the terminal(s). They were never meant to make money, but to get word "Bloomberg" out to all. This came right from "Da Man's" mouth when the old radio station was being bought and the TV studio was being set up.
It was (probably) an ego trip, to add more toys to brag about.
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