The Aspers loaded Canwest with debt, which now is about 4 billion Canadian dollars, to expand cable television channel offerings and to move into publishing.
On Saturday, when KCET-TV stops broadcasting PBS programming after four decades as the primary PBS outlet in Los Angeles, most programs will move to another quickly revamped public broadcasting station in Orange County, KOCE-TV, which has rebranded itself as "PBS SoCal" and scrambled to expand cable system carriage.
In the late 1990's, the biggest issuers of junk bonds were rapidly expanding cable and telecommunications companies, many of which ultimately defaulted on their debts.
Almost as soon as the TCI deal closed, AT&T began looking to sell the newspaper so it could focus on expanding cable services.
With the Dodgers, Greinke joins a team flush with cash from expanding cable television revenue and an aggressive new ownership led by Mark Walter, Stan Kasten and the Basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.
I turns out that both Verizon and Cablevision are locked in a dispute with the Tennis Channel over fee increases and the issue of placing the network on basic rather than expanded cable packages.
Marketing Television In Midtown Manhattan last week, lawyers were putting the final touches on a new television contract, one with far fewer hours on network television but with all the riches and promise of the expanding cable market.
The reason is, largely, that they could: years of huge DVD profits and an expanding cable-television universe meant studio bosses could operate on autopilot, to a degree.
But today, this line of thinking goes, media competition is stronger, thanks to the fact that consumers have a dizzying array of new choices to turn to, including greatly expanded cable-TV offerings and Internet-based news and entertainment options.
NBC is also believed to have a strong hand, though it is unclear whether NBC, a unit of the General Electric Company, would want to expand its cable business beyond its core cable networks, CNBC and MSNBC, a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft.
In the report, Mr. Greenfield said he believes that the underlying reason behind Time Warner's move to hive off its cable division was to allow the unit to expand its cable system footprint.
