Time Warner Inc. chief executive Jeffrey Bewkes said he isn’t interested in NBC Universal, the owner of cable channels, a film studio and the NBC broadcast network.
A low percentage of larger media mergers and acquisitions “have delivered what they said they would,” Bewkes said at a conference Friday in Washington.
Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable-television company, and General Electric Co. are in talks to form a joint venture that would own GE’s NBC Universal, a person with knowledge of the talks said this week.
Comcast, based in Philadelphia, would own more than 50 percent of the venture, said two people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.
There aren’t significant benefits from combining cable systems and networks, Bewkes said. Time Warner, the owner of the CNN and TBS channels, spun off its cable-systems unit earlier this year.
Separately, Bewkes said the Time Inc. magazine unit is “not for sale.”
