Angelakis: Retrans a $200M Business for NBC by 2014

Comcast CFO expects retrans take to rise five-fold from 2012

By Mike Farrell, Multichannel News -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/26/2013 4:42:46 PM

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.