Turner Buying Liberty’s Stake In Court TV For $735 Million

Time Warner now owns Court TV in its entirety. It will operate as part of Turner Broadcasting System, within its entertainment division, under the direction of entertainment group president, Mark Lazarus.
Turner gets some good online assets with the sale as well: CourtTV.com, which is an adjunct to the TV network; the popular site TheSmokingGun.com; CrimeLibrary.com, collection of fiction and non-fiction stories on criminal justice; and Court TV Extra, an online subscription service which offers viewers multiple live trials online.
Staci adds: Just got off the conference call with Lazarus and Turner Chairman and CEO Phil Kent. Not a lot of detail but Lazarus confirmed that CourtTV’s management will continue to run the digital side. Turner sees “enormous potential” in CourtTV’s off-air activities. Lazarus: “As we are learning more about the capabilities here, there’s a tremendous opportunity to take what they’ve been doing and the copyrights that they own; the ability to exploit that in the non-linear environment is tremendous. We’re looking forward to doing that. In terms of exact product, we haven’t sat down and developed that but we know that they — the CourtTV group that’s been working on this now — has been developing plans and we hope to add any value from the Turner organization to that and to make them more productive and more valuable” to consumers, operators and advertisers. At its upfront presentation, CourtTV execs discussed summer plans for a broadband channel based on its action block and for web-only documentaries.
— Asked about TheSmokingGun.com, Lazarus said he was very excited about bringing the site into Turner and sees it as a great opportunity. Again, no details.
— As anticipated, Chairman and CEO Henry Schleiff no longer will have a role on the business side; he will be non-executive chairman for the next six months. President and COO Art Bell will stay on, reporting to Lazarus.

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