Liberty Media

All you want to know about Liberty Media

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Please improve this article if you can. (January 2007)

The Liberty Media Corporation is an American media conglomerate and the control is exercised by engineer Dr. John Malone, with a majority of the voting shares.

The company is divided into three tracking stocks:

Liberty Interactive Group (NASDAQ: LINTA,NASDAQ: LINTB)
Liberty Capital (NASDAQ: LCAPA, NASDAQ: LCAPB)
Liberty Entertainment (NASDAQ: LMDIA, NASDAQ: LMDIB)

1 Liberty Interactive Group
2 Liberty Entertainment
3 Liberty Capital
- 3.1 Former assets
4 History
5 Governance
6 Atlanta Braves
7 External links

Liberty Interactive Group

Attributed to Liberty Interactive Group are:

QVC, Inc.
Provide Commerce (operator of proflowers.com)
Bodybuilding.com
BuySeasons (operator of buycostumes.com)

and Liberty's interests in:

Liberty Entertainment

Attributed to Liberty Entertainment are:

Liberty's 48% interest in The DirecTV Group
Starz Entertainment (including Starz! and Encore)
Liberty's 50% interest in GSN
FUN Technologies, including Fanball
Liberty Sports Holdings: Owners of FSN Pittsburgh, FSN Rocky Mountain, and FSN Northwest

On September 3, 2008 Liberty Media decided to initiate the process of spinning off Liberty Entertainment to Liberty Media shareholders (leaving Malone with a majority ownership of the new company). [1]

Liberty Capital

Attributed to Liberty Capital are:

Marginal shareholdings in companies including Time Warner and Viacom
TruePosition
Atlanta Braves
Starz Media
Overture Films
WFRV-TV 5 and WJMN-TV 3: CBS affiliates for Green Bay, Wisconsin and Escanaba, Michigan
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions (67%)

Former assets

Court TV (now truTV) (50% stake with Time Warner). On May 12, 2006, Time Warner bought the other 50% of Court TV for $735 million. [2]

History

On August 4, 1994 Liberty Media Corp. merged with TCI, an American cable television group. Before this, Liberty had been known as Liberty Communications Inc.

On March 9, 1999 TCI merged with AT&T for approximately $54 billion. It was spun-off from AT&T on August 10, 2001, subsequently spending $5 billion on nine German regional cable networks. Apart from television distribution it holds major interests in other groups. For example it is the largest shareholder in News Corporation (though the founding Murdoch family owns more voting shares), and has a 4 % stake in Time Warner. As of December 2003 it has never paid a dividend.

In May 2006, Time Warner acquired Liberty Media's 50% stake in Court TV for $735 million.

On May 16, 2006, IDT sold its IDT Entertainment division to Liberty Media for "for all of Liberty Media's interests in IDT, $186 million in cash and the assumption of existing indebtedness." IDT Entertainment's assets and Starz Entertainment Group's popular line of premium TV channels will combine to produce content for all distribution platforms. [3]

Liberty negotiated an asset swap with News Corp. and Time Warner that would give it control of DirecTV and the Atlanta Braves baseball team. [4] On February 12, 2007, the deal was completed with Time Warner wherein Liberty would receive the Atlanta Braves, a group of craft magazines and $1 billion in cash in exchange for 60 million shares of Time Warner stock (valued at $1.27 billion as of market close on February 12, 2007). [5] The deal was approved by Major League Baseball on May 15, 2007.

Liberty has also purchased Green Bay, Wisconsin, television station WFRV-TV and its sister station in Escanaba, Michigan, WJMN-TV, from CBS estimated at about $234 million. CBS will swap the stations and $170 million in cash for 7.59 million shares of CBS common stock held by Liberty Media. The purchase was announced February 13, 2007, The sale was completed on April 18, 2007. [6]

Governance

Members of the board of Liberty Media are: Robert R. Bennett, Donne Fisher, Paul Gould, Greg Maffei, John Malone, David Rapley, LaVoy Robison, and Larry Romrell.

Atlanta Braves

Liberty Media agreed to buy the Atlanta Braves from Time Warner in February 2007 for US$1 billion. The deal needed 75% of owners and Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig for the deal to go through. The purchase was made official on May 16, 2007.