Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis told an
industry audience Tuesday that he expects retransmission consent revenue from
both its owned and operated stations and through reverse compensation from
affiliates to increase about five times by 2014 to about $200 million.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and
Telecommunications conference in San Francisco, Angelakis said that raising
retrans revenue is a top priority for NBC Universal, adding that the
programming unit had received "minuscule" retrans fees in past years.
Retransmission increases is part of the broader NBCU
strategy to close
the monetization gap between the programmer and its peers. Included in that
strategy is to attract higher advertising fees and CPMs at its cable networks.
At the conference, Angelakis said that NBC stations
attracted about $40 million in retrans fees in 2012, compared to the negligible
fees it received in prior years. And even with that increase, NBCU would lag
far behind the retrans leader CBS, which has said it expects $500 million in
retrans revenue in 2013.
