AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Vairety

Negotiations were in the works since last year

John Malone’s Liberty Media and Conde Nast parent Advance/Newhouse are cleaning up the ownership structure of the Discovery cable empire in an effort to satisfy Wall Street’s demand for transparency and make it easier for the newly created public entity to do deals.
Liberty-controlled Discovery Holding Co. and Advance/Newhouse Programming Partnership announced plans late Wednesday to combine their existing stakes in the cabler to form a publicly traded company called Discovery Communications.

Discovery Communications will succeed Discovery Holding as the public company with full ownership of Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and a dozen other sibling channels. Advance/Newhouse previously held equity interests in two of those channels: It owned 33% of the Discovery mothership and 10% of Animal Planet. Company will swap those stakes for preferred stock in Discovery Communications.

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