Liberty Media Chief Executive:DirecTV CEO Replacement Is Coming Soon

Liberty Media Corp. (LMDIA, LMDIB, LMCB) Chief Executive Greg Maffei said Thursday that an announcement about a new hire to run satellite TV provider DirecTV Group Inc. (DTV) will be coming in the next few weeks.

Also, it's unlikely that Maffei himself will take the job.

"I have a job I like, and I'm probably going to stick with it," said Maffei at the Media and Money Conference in New York hosted by Nielsen and Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire and The Wall Street Journal.

Liberty is in the process of splitting off some of its entertainment assets and merging its majority stake in DirecTV with the satellite company's publicly traded equity, a deal that's viewed as paving the way for a potential sale of the company to a telecommunications company like AT&T Inc. (T). Liberty shareholders are scheduled to vote on the transaction Nov. 19.

Meanwhile, DirecTV needs a new chief executive after Chase Carey recently left the company to join News Corp. (NWS, NWSA), owner of Dow Jones, to be chief operating officer.

At the conference, Maffei echoed earlier comments made by Carey about the landmark deal being negotiated by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) to take a majority stake in NBC Universal. Both executives said it's a smart move for Comcast, and that it sounds like a well-structured deal for the cable company.

"It's a good hedge against rising programming costs for Comcast," said Maffei, noting that the fate of the deal in a regulatory review in Washington would be a test for the industry of the new administration's attitude toward large media deals.

Maffei said Liberty has long seen cost and strategic benefits to combining media distribution and content assets, but he said Time Warner Inc. (TWX), the media conglomerate in which Liberty holds an equity stake, made a good decision in spinning off its cable arm.

"The culture at Time Warner wouldn't allow that [combination] to work," said Maffei, noting that the same could be said about AOL, which Time Warner is expected to spin off around the end of this year.

"AOL is unlikely to prosper under Time Warner the way it could on its own," said Maffei.

Whatever Time Warner does about its declining magazine business, Time Inc., Maffei said the new iteration of the media company is likely to succeed from here, with a cheap stock price and 80% of its profits coming from cable networks, the most prized assets in today's media landscape.

"[Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes] is laser-focused on shareholder value, and that's a good thing," said Maffei.

He said Liberty Media is also more focused on shareholder value than other media companies, but the company is often forced to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid heavy tax bills when it exits investments because it doesn't enjoy the same tax flexibility that a private equity firm has.

Nonetheless, Maffei said Liberty remains "relatively negative" in its outlook on the economy, due to continuing high unemployment, high consumer debt levels and home foreclosures.

The economic downturn is weighing on the company's e-commerce businesses, but he said its media businesses are largely concentrated on subscription models, which are holding up better than advertising businesses and have more sustainable business models as the disruptive rise of digital media accelerates.

Maffei was particularly bullish on Sirius XM Radio Inc. (SIRI), in which Liberty acquired a stake through an emergency financing deal the company provided for the satellite radio provider last spring when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

"Sirius is the best investment Liberty has ever made," said Maffei, noting that a warrant to buy a 40% stake in the company that Liberty got in the deal for $12,500 is now valued at around $1.7 billion.

"Sirius has a monopoly position that was legally obtained through the merger [of Sirius and XM], and it has 18 million paying subscribers, many of which are addicted to the product," he said.

-By Nat Worden, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2472; nat.worden@dowjones.com

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