Teetering premiere
Kirch pay web has 4 months to get cash or fold
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Kofler said he had spoken to media giant Bertelsmann as well as other potential investors about taking a stake in the web.
Company needs an investor to inject cash into the ailing web, which continues to bleed €2 million ($1.77 million) a day, in order to stave off bankruptcy.
Premiere's failure to attract subscribers was largely to blame for the recent bankruptcy of Kirch Media, which supplied it with content and had costly output deals with Hollywood studios.
Premiere dealt with only two major studios, DreamWorks and Fox, according to the Financial Times Deutschland. All other Hollywood agreements went through Kirch Media.
According to Kofler, Premiere will be free to negotiate new deals directly once Kirch Media's insolvency proceedings are wrapped up in coming weeks -- if it finds financial backing.
Speculation regarding potential investors has ranged from major Hollywood studios to cable guru John Malone and Barry Diller. Diller is already in business with Kofler and Thomas Kirch, son of Kirch Group founder Leo Kirch, with their Home Shopping Europe web. Kofler also said he would be ready to take a stake in Premiere himself.
Industry experts have long predicted Kirch PayTV, which controls Premiere, would follow Kirch Media, its free TV sister division, into insolvency.
Springer tug of war
Meanwhile, the Kirch Group's 40% stake in German newspaper publishing house Axel Springer appears to be causing a tug of war among the publisher and potential buyers.
Insolvency administrators are looking to sell off Kirch Media's noncore assets, including the Springer stake, which is held by shareholding division Kirch Beteiligung.
Majority shareholder Frieda Springer, widow of the publisher's founder, plans to increase her share by 5% and has said she wants the remaining 35% of the Kirch stake listed on the stock market. But rival newspaper publisher WAZ is bidding for the stake, currently held as security by Deutsche Bank against a $622 million loan to Kirch.
A banking consortium led by HypoVereinsbank (HVB) has offered to buy the stake for $1 billion, but WAZ is said to be offering more.
Springer exercised in January a $682 million put option it had on its 11.5% stake in Kirch's ProSiebenSat 1 broadcaster. It remains unclear whether Springer may now up its stake in the network. The move was another factor that led to Kirch Media's insolvency.
Springer publishes a number of leading newspapers, including Bild, Germany's bestselling daily.
