SUN VALLEY, Idaho – In what’s certain to be an unfamiliar role for him, NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker is expected to be the popular guy at the Allen & Co. media conference, which officially kicks off today.
Sources said Zucker will be as sought after as Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is on the dealmaking front, mainly because many of the entertainment and banking titans attending the confab plan on bending his ear about a merger or other combination with NBC or about off-loading some assets to the network.
“Zucker’s made it pretty clear that he’s looking to do deals and remake NBC’s overall approach,” said one source, who will be at the conference and plans on talking with Zucker.
Sources have said that General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is being coy when he says that NBC isn’t for sale. While Immelt might be opposed to an outright sale of NBC because of the large tax hit GE would take, sources said they think he’s interested in exploring a merger or spin-off – with Time Warner and Liberty Media mentioned most often as the likely suitors.
However, Zucker himself threw cold water on that notion earlier this week when on CNBC he said he doesn’t see either a sale or spin-off in NBC’s future.
Nevertheless, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Liberty Media’s John Malone are expected to be in Sun Valley this week, and the betting is they’ll be talking with Zucker.
Bankers, meanwhile, are also interested in getting face time with Zucker in order to position themselves for a piece of the action should NBC be forced into an initial public offering. French conglomerate Vivendi owns a stake in NBC, and can begin exercising its $4 billion transferable put right in November and force GE to either buy Vivendi’s stake or float it to the public.
Beyond a deal for NBC itself, there are a number of assets within the company that could be monetized.
One banking source close to NBC said the company is interested in exploring deals for its television stations, theme parks, Ion TV network and Shop NBC.
This source also said to look for NBC, Disney and Hearst to talk about ways to simplify – most likely through some sort of buyout – the complicated ownership structure the three companies share in cable networks A&E and History. NBC has tried for years to gain control of those channels, but has come up short, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Sources also said Zucker is looking to do a strategic deal with Spanish-language network Telemundo.
Indeed, NBC last year held exploratory talks with Televisa about a potential deal involving the Mexican group supplying programming to Telemundo as well as buying as much as a 49 percent stake in the network, sources involved in the situation said.
NBC has also been active as an acquirer, purchasing Oxygen and the Weather Channel in recent months, and Zucker is expected to hear a lot of sales pitches this week as well.