Versant Media may own a portfolio of familiar cable brands, but it is not looking to buy more of them. Chief executive Mark Lazarus said Tuesday at the Axios Media Trends Live conference in New York that a large purchase of Skydance’s cable networks would not fix the company’s underlying problem: linear pay television is still shrinking.
Lazarus said buying cable “on a large scale would prolong our life but not necessarily make our life better” because the company would still face the secular decline.
The deal question
Skydance, formed by the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, closed earlier this month with more than 50 cable networks. That scale has fed speculation that the company might sell some of those networks, but Skydance has said it plans to keep its portfolio and use cable cash flow to reduce debt and invest elsewhere.
Lazarus drew a boundary. He did not rule out building “another vertical” around a pay-television business, but he said buying large networks to change the company’s trajectory is “probably not in our short-term future.”
Why Versant is thinking digital
Versant owns MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, CNBC and USA, plus digital assets such as Fandango and Golf Now. Executives want digital to become the primary source of total company revenue within three to five years. On Tuesday, Lazarus put the current digital share at less than 25%.
- Current mix: Digital is under a quarter of revenue; cable does most of the heavy lifting.
- Target: Digital becomes the majority revenue source in three to five years.
- Stock pressure: Versant shares have fallen 29% since the January debut, and Lazarus said the company must prove its thesis.
That pressure explains the caution. Buying declining networks adds cash but does not change the story: advertisers and audiences keep moving to streaming and digital video. A cable purchase would raise Versant’s exposure to the very trend it is trying to outgrow.
For media buyers, that framing matters. Linear cable inventory can still deliver broad reach at scale, but its audience is shrinking. Versant’s own plan shows how pay-TV owners are trying to convert that cash into digital assets before the decline steepens.
The NBCU relationship
Asked about a possible reunion with NBCUniversal, which Comcast is spinning out, Lazarus said returning to NBCU is not the plan for Versant. The company is also weighing its advertising sales arrangement with NBCU: renew it, move it to another large media company, or bring it in-house. He said the current deal is working well.
What to watch
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the signal is asset discipline. Versant is treating cable as a cash-flow business, not a growth engine. If Skydance does not sell, the market will not discover what 50-plus networks would fetch. If it does, the buyer pool may be smaller than the speculation assumes.
At the same time, Skydance’s keep-the-networks stance means cable inventory from those brands is not about to disappear. Buyers can still plan against those networks, but they should model continued audience erosion rather than stability.
The next proof points are Versant’s digital revenue mix, an ad-sales decision within about a year, and whether the stock stabilizes. None of them depends on buying more cable.
Source: Deadline
