TS News - German Deal Detailed

• from: owner-ts-news@tele-satellite.com
• Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 10:57:49 +0900

TELE-satellit News, 17 July 1997

German Deal Detailed
  BERLIN, Germany, 97/07/17 (SatND) -- The German business magazine
"manager magazin" reports in today's issue that CLT-UFA was paying DM850
million (US$477 million) under the recent agreement with its rival Kirch
Group on a common digital TV platform.

  In detail, CLT-UFA has to pay DM400 million for the acquisition of a 12.5
percent in pay-TV channel premiere. Taking over a third of Kirch's
technology unit Beta Research is in the range of double-figure millions of
DM, and on top of this CLT-UFA has to pay for a 50-percent stake in sports
channel DSF (so far 66.5-percent Kirch-owned) as well as a respective
proportion of the initial losses of Kirch's DF1 and UFA's Club RTL digital
TV ventures.

  The regional publishing house WAZ, Essen, also plays a role in those
deals. WAZ teamed up with Bertelsmann/UFA when they were still quarrelling
with Luxembourg's CLT over the country's most successful free-to-air
channel, RTL Television. The move terminated the predominance of CLT in
RTL. Following the merger of UFA and CLT, Bertelsmann had agreed to set up
a new TV holding with WAZ, called BW TV. WAZ will hold a 20 percent stake
but has to pay DM565 million for it, 'manager magazin' reported. Neither of
the companies involved so far has commented those figures.

  By: Peter Klanowski
(c)TELE-satellit 1997. All rights reserved.

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