CBS - KARMAZIN SAYS HE TRIED THREE TIMES TO BUY CNN

KARMAZIN SAYS HE TRIED THREE TIMES TO BUY CNN

When Mel Karmazin presided over CBS and later, when he was the the No. 2 man at Viacom, he made three efforts to combine the network with CNN, he said in an interview on Fox Business Network. "The first person I tried to do that transaction with was Ted Turner. I subsequently tried to do it with Gerry Levin. I subsequently tried to do it with [Richard] Parsons. All of them felt, at that time, that they did not want to sell CNN," Karmazin said. Noting that neither CBS nor ABC has a cable news outlet today, Karmazin added that if he were running either network, "how could I not be thinking about the benefits that could be accrued for shareholders by combining CNN with one of those news organizations?"

31/10/2007