经济学人下载:电影业

The film industry
电影业

Rated “P” for persistent
被评定为代表执着的“P”

Time Warner's boss may not find Rupert Murdoch's overtures so unwelcome
时代华纳公司的老板也许会喜欢鲁伯特.默多克的提议

RUPERT MURDOCH is a man who does not mind walking in his own footsteps. In the 1980s he tried and failed to gain control of the parent company of the Warner Bros. film studio. This week it emerged that Mr Murdoch's 21st Century Fox had made an $80 billion bid for the company's modern incarnation, Time Warner, which also owns cable networks such as cnn and HBO. He was rebuffed, but when has that stopped him?
鲁伯特默多克是一个不介意师心自用的人。在20世纪80年代他曾试图控制华纳兄弟电影制片厂的母公司，但失败了。本周有消息称默多克的21世纪福克斯公司出价800亿竞购该公司的现代化身—时代华纳公司，其同时拥有有线电视网络，如cnn和HBO。默多克被断然拒绝了，但是他什么时候才会死心？

Such a deal is simpler now than it would have been until recently. Last year Mr Murdoch split Fox from its former parent, News Corp, and earlier this month Time Inc, Time Warner's magazine arm, became a separate, publicly traded firm. A merged Fox and Time Warner would have more bargaining-power with its customers, from pay-TV operators like Comcast to online distributors such as Netflix.
直到最近，这一交易才变得比原来简单。去年默多克将福克斯公司从其前母公司—新闻集团分离出来，且本月初，时代华纳公司的杂志部门—时代公司转变为独立的上市公司。合并后的福克斯和时代华纳公司将获得更多与其客户讨价还价的资本，包括Comcast这样的付费电视运营商到Netflix这样的在线分销商。

However, a deal would put immense programming power in the hands of one company. Since Fox already has a cable-news network, cnn would reportedly be sold to make the deal more palatable. Even so, regulators still might not find the proposal “fair and balanced”.
然而，一个交易将使得强大的编程能力落入一个公司手中。由于福克斯公司已经拥有有线新闻网络，cnn将按照此前报道的那样被出售，以使这一交易更易被接受。即便如此，监管机构可能依然无法认可这一提案的“公平和平衡”。

If a marriage does occur, it will not necessarily be with Fox. Jeff Bewkes, the boss of Time Warner, may be playing hard to get while waiting to see if other suitors emerge. The head of a rival media firm muses that Mr Bewkes, who is 62, has been cutting off the undesirable parts of his apple, and has deliberately kept the most alluring bits with the hope of being able to sell it and retire. As for Mr Murdoch, who is 83, he may yet get one of the apples of his eye—after 30 years of trying.
如果合并真的发生，也不一定是与福克斯公司。时代华纳公司的总裁杰夫比克斯也许是耍了欲擒故纵的把戏，等待着是否有其他的求购公司出现。作为竞争对手的一家媒体公司的负责人揣摩62岁的比克斯正切除其公司的不良部分，故意保留其最诱人的部分，以期能将其公司卖掉并退休。至于83岁的默多克在奋斗了30个年头后，也许还未曾得到任何一样他梦寐以求之物。