Karmazin Would Have Liked CBS + CNN

SIRIUS Satellite Radio chief Mel Karmazin‘s remarks at the Reuters Media Summit:

“I thought CBS News and CNN, to this day should be combined. I was hoping that Dick (Parsons, CEO of Time Warner) would buy Cablevision and need the cash, because Cablevision was much more strategic (to Time Warner), and then sell me CNN.

I would be candid and say when I was CEO (of CBS), would I have liked to have owned CNN? Yeah.

You’ve got a reporter sitting there from CBS News. You’ve got a reporter sitting all over the world from CNN. Maybe one reporter, one sound guy, on driver of the van, and that’s just the cost side.

The value you create from putting these reporters that you’re not putting redundantly, putting these reporters in other parts of the world where you don’t have news bureaus or doing things you don’t have. I think M&A is fun.”

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