Aarrgghh!!
Rick!!! There is NO official press release indicating funding is NOT secured yet. Please stop making things up.
I NEVER SAID THERE WAS!!! I have only said, and I'll SAY it again, there is no offical release saying it IS in place and the only thing they HAVE said has indicated the funding is NOT in place. You can be as optimistic as you want to be but that IS a fact.
Why? Because Cablevision and Voom share the following: Managment, Equipment, Infrastructure, Employee Resources, Facilities, IS, Contracts, Liabilities.
Right, and I've worked for more than one company which was bought out/spun off and that is always an issue but, and I'll say it again, if the person/entity purchasing (taking ownership--however you want to put it) doesn't have enough money to run the show in place it IS an issue. If it's NOT an issue, why is it just about every release they've made has made mention of working on obtaining funding??? Sure, Dolan has enough money to do it but it doesn't mean he wants to (or intends to) use his own money on this. I'm NOT saying he can't or won't, I'm saying he hasn't officially done this as of yet. Again, other than the $10 million he pledged earlier this month.
This is the hang up, not money. You can believe what you want. You can THINK you know what you were talking about. But you are wrong. Chuck isn't trying to buy Voom from CVC, he's trying to extract it... It is actually likely that (in the scheme of things) very little money will change hands from Chuck to CVC.
Yes, you can also believe what you want. Doesn't make you wrong or right. You can call what Dolan is trying to do whatever you want. There may not be much of a transfer of funds. I've never indicated this was the sticking point. I'm sure someone could, "buy," Voom for (relatively) little money. It's the ongoing operations which cost the money, not the initial purchase.
You may think that I'm one of those head-in-the-clouds optimists. But I'm not... I'm actually very skeptical that this can be pulled off. But PLEASE, can you get it out of your mind that this is about MONEY. It's not.
No, I don't think you ARE one of the head-in-the-clouds optimists. Never said you were.
Why would the FCC have a problem? Because Cablevision holds the broadcasting licenses... You can't just reassign them at your leisure or on a whim. Just like E* needs FCC approval for the sale, a new company called "Voom HD LLC" would need FCC approval.
You are correct. From what I know (which is very little) about how the FCC works with these things they could sell these licenses/frequencies upon FCC approval. So, yes, they'd have to get approval but I don't know why the FCC wouldn't want this transaction to take place. They'd get what they want--another DBS provider. Now, there could certainly be other techncial issues I'm not aware of but, taken at face value, I don't see why the FCC would have a problem with a transaction like this.
You are also making a huge blunder in assuming they would "announce" their source of funding before a deal is done... Companies almost NEVER reveal these details while deal negotiations are ongoing.
You are correct and have just helped prove my point. If negotiations are going on then funding is NOT, by definition, in place. Thank you.
Now, you've stated at least twice now you're not overly optimistic this thing can be pulled off. Then what the heck are you arguing about??? I, too, am not optimistic it can be pulled off. I believe money is the issue because the facts the public knows about indicates this. Just because someone says, "they know someone inside," doesn't mean anything to the public. With the information available to the public in an official cpacity, all signs point to them NOT having funding. If they come out with an official announcement/FTC filing saying they have funding and it's all going through, then I wouldn't be able to say they don't have funding in place, would I? If that happened, I'd change my belief from thinking they can't get it done to thinking they CAN get it done.
The logistics of the whole thing, although slightly daunting, are not the types of things which, typically, kill these kinds of transactions. CVC does NOT want to keep Voom around. As far as they're concerned, they'd shut it down today if they could. Dolan wants it around. If Dolan comes to them and says, "I want Voom. I have the money to keep it going." I highly doubt CVC would say no. Why would they? Regardless of sharing facilities/staff (which I believe you're overstating just a bit since they had been preparing to spin off until recently) they would get it done. In the grand scheme of things these are minor issues (to them).
It's not like they're sharing installers with CVC or customer support with CVC or uplink facilities with CVC. So, at the end of the day, they would just take their people and CVC would keep their people. They may have to either sublease office space (I don't know for sure) or move to a different location. Not the end of the world from a logistical standpoint. They already contract out their installs/onsite support and they already contract out their customer support/order takers. So this wouldn't be tough to overcome.
The Rickster
