AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The Wall Street Journal

Cablevision Systems Corp. is close to an agreement to buy the Sundance Channel, jointly owned by General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, CBS Corp., and actor Robert Redford, in a cash and stock deal valued at close to $500 million, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

Terms of the deal may be announced as early as Wednesday morning. The deal could be the first of two half-billion dollar purchases for Cablevision, based in Bethpage, N.Y. The cable operator has also made a bid of as much as $650 million for Long Island newspaper Newsday.

A purchase of Sundance will strengthen Cablevision’s position in the independent-film programming arena as the cable operator already owns another film channel, IFC. At the end of 2007, IFC was available in 42 million homes compared with 28 million for Sundance, according to SNL Kagan.

The purchase brings Cablevision and Sundance full circle. In the mid 1990s, when Mr. Redford was preparing to launch the channel that bears the brand of his yearly film festival in the Utah mountains, he approached Cablevision about backing him. The talks didn’t progress, however. Instead Cablevision launched IFC. Sundance launched in 1996.

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