Dolans Finally Take Their Cable Company (and Their Garden, and Their Knicks, and So Forth) and Go HomeIf taking public companies private is the hot new thing in megabusiness, the Dolans just became the most fashionable billionaires out there: After three years and three failed attempts to privatize Cablevision, Chuck and Jim have just worked out a deal with their company’s board that will restore the family’s total control over their lumbering brainchild. Cablevision, which comes complete with holdings like the Knicks and the Rangers, Radio City Music Hall, and over $12 billion in debt, will change hands for $10.5 billion in cash. With the liabilities worked in, that adds up to almost $23 billion. The Dolans pledge to cash out the current shareholders at $36.26 a share, which is their highest offer yet — a hearty 11 percent over the stock’s actual value as of yesterday. We learn all this from the Times, of course, where the Sulzbergers are no doubt paying attention. One hopes.
Cablevision Agrees to Sell Itself to the Dolans [NYT]
in other news
A Brief Catalogue of the Aesthetic Sins We Believe the Dolans Wish to CommitThis morning brought the news that Empire State Development Corporation honcho Charles Gargano thinks James Dolan is behind the effort to delay the conversion of the historic James A. Foley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into the new Penn Station. Why would the Dolans — the family that owns Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden — mess with a very popular and once seemingly ironclad plan? Because they want to build a new Garden on the Post Office spot and use the current Garden space for more-lucrative office buildings.
Let’s consider, shall we, the number of awful consequences that would be wrought by that single construction project.
in other news
Dolans to Take Their Cable Company and Go HomeThat crazy, Oedipal media-mogul family, the Dolans of Long Island, seems determined to take Cablevision private. For the second time in sixteen months, chairman Charles and his CEO son, Jim, are offering their shareholders a buyout, this time upping their offer to $27 a share. (Shares in Cablevision — which includes not just the cable company but also trophy properties like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and the Knicks and Rangers — rose on the news.)
We at Daily Intel don’t claim to be financial experts. But we’re not bad at reading between the lines of a public statement. “We continue to feel that succeeding in this fiercely competitive environment requires a long-term, entrepreneurial management perspective that is not constrained by the public markets’ constant focus on short-term results,” the Dolans said, and it seems likely that this buyout is the senior Dolan’s bid to keep sinking money into his pet satellite venture, Voom, which has already lost over $600 million and whose launch almost tore the family apart — as chronicled by Joel Siegel a year and a half ago in a March 2005 feature for New York.
Sadly for the Dolans, though, this long-term investment strategy might be a boon only to Charles’s Voom. As for Jim’s pet project — throwing maximum money at the Knicks with no discernible positive effect — we have a feeling fans will always retain their constant focus on short-term results.
Oedipus at the Garden [NYM]
Dolans Try New Bid to Take Cablevision Private [NYT]
the morning line
Bollards and Gribbles and Photogs, Oh, My!
• NYPD and DOT realize, after five years, that concrete bollards don’t actually protect us from terrorism. They do, however, teach us new words like “bollard.” [NYT]
• The Dolans really want to take Cablevision private. So much, in fact, that they’ll be happy to absorb $11.3 billion in debt (the company is valued at $7.9 billion). [WCBS]
• Yanks bask in the ultimate humiliation: throwing the postseason to the Tigers and getting outlasted by the Mets. Steinbrenner is likely to fire Torre and replace him with Lou Piniella. [WNBC]
• The city’s operas try to freshen up their crowd by offering $20 or $25 orchestra seats. Giving quotes like “We were all amazed that out of the woodwork these people came roaring up” does not help the populist cause. [NYT]
• In a textbook case of good news, bad news, cleaner water in the Hudson nurses back to life an array of disgusting critters like shipworms and gribbles. Bring back the pretty petroleum slicks! [IHT]
• And finally, city photojournalists, sounding surreally combative (“We are not a group to be trifled with”), demand rights to shoot in Port Authority facilities. Once you’ve seen the Christopher Street PATH station at dawn, you’ll understand. [AMNY]
[Ed. note: Apologies, by the way, for the late start. The Morning Line should post about two hours earlier than it did this morning, assuming in the future we can figure out how to use Movable Type.]