Despite the incessant pounding of investment bankers on his doors, anxious to regale him with their latest takeover deal for premium channel Starz, CEO Chris Albrecht said the channel will focus on creating original content, with an eye toward 75 hours of programming per year in the future.
Starz, which was spun off as a separate company from Liberty Media in January, has been a target of merger speculation ever since the split. At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference in New York Tuesday, Albrecht said "investment bankers of every shape, color and size have come to us to talk about their best ideas." So far, he added, "there hasn't been anything yet that seems to make sense to us."
So Albrecht, who had headed premium channel Home Box Office before joining Starz in 2010, continues to focus on beefing his network's original programming, adding that next year Starz should have about 50 hours of original shows, with an eye toward 75 hours -- is about the same original programming load as HBO and Showtime – in three-to- five years.
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