Bertelsmann seeks commercial boost
TV chief wants to unite channels
Bertelsmann's TV topper, Michael Dornemann, told the paper that the company wants to acquire more in both family channel Super RTL, which it owns together with Disney, and in the second-generation web RTL 2, held in roughly equal shares by rivals Herbert Kloiber and publisher Heinrich Bauer Verlag.
In a family way
Dornemann said the company has been working for a long time on the RTL channels becoming a "family," and that they now plan to realize this.
Flagship web RTL, which would head the "family," belongs wholly to Bertelsmann affiliate CLT/Ufa.
With the sale Thursday of its stake in pay TV web Premiere to rival Kirch Group, Bertelsmann and CLT/Ufa made an after-loss "pure profit" of DM750 million ($419 million), Dornemann said, which they plan to use to expand the station, production and rights-trading businesses.
The stake was sold for $874 million and will see Bertelsmann depart from the pay TV market.
Dornemann said the family would provide stiff competition in the free TV market to Kirch and Mediaset's new European TV alliance, which launched last week, and plans to tap into the expanding Internet market, which Kirch and Mediaset also are prioritizing.
Regarding competition with Kirch, Dornemann said Bertelsmann wants to reduce the gap on the rights-trading and production fronts.
