DTV

Lost amid widely published speculation last week that Rupert Murdoch might divest his interests in DirecTV were definitive answers about what such a move would mean to the satellite TV industry at large: If Murdoch’s News Corp. were to sell its estimated $10 billion interest in DirecTV to Liberty Media for the latter’s 20 percent interest in News Corp., what might be the fallout?

"That’s a real hard question to answer," says Steve Blum, an analyst with Tellus Venture Associates. "In the near term it doesn’t have a major impact on customers or direct day-to-day operations of DirecTV."

While he suggested that any such deal would likely take months to finalize, Blum said the larger issue is how different Liberty would be as an owner than News Corp.? "Both are, at their hearts, content companies," he said. "They both have a history of leveraging to increase the value of their platforms as content companies. That said, the devil’s in the details. Liberty has not historically been friendly to satellite… Is their objective to enhance satellite business vis-a-vis cable? "They don’t have a track record for that," Blum warned.

"Whenever you have Liberty or John Malone involved, you have to ask how competitive is it versus cable, and how customer-oriented will it be? That’s a real issue for customers." Blum concluded that ultimately the deal might hinge upon an anti-trust standpoint. "There are a number of different issues that this impacts on," he said. "Laid out on paper, they both seek to own distribution platforms, [but] the execution and the strategies down the line would tend to be different."

BCE.TO

Telesat Holding Inc. and its shareholder BCE Inc. announced that a preliminary prospectus and registration statement have been filed for an initial public offering (IPO) of non-voting shares of Telesat Holding Inc., in Canada and the United States. The company plans to raise 400 million Canadian dollars ($354.9 million) through the sale of Class B shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Sept. 18 move came one week after Daniel Goldberg was named president and CEO of Telesat Canada; Goldberg previously launched a successful IPO as president and CEO of SES New Skies.

The planned IPO is part of a reorganization of BCE, Canada’s largest telecommunications firm. Prior to completion of the offering, Telesat will incur certain indebtedness, the net proceeds of which together with the net proceeds of the offering will be distributed to BCE. The offering will be underwritten by a syndicate led by Goldman Sachs & Co., Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking and RBC Capital Markets, acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

GEOY

Orbimage Holdings Inc., which does business under the name Geoeye, debuted on the Nasdaq Sept. 15 under the symbol GEOY. The stock debuted at $15.33 and reached as high as $15.80 during its first five days of trading. GEOY closed at $15.70 Sept. 21.

The company’s stock previously was traded as ORBM on the National Quotation Service Bureau, known as the over-the-counter Pink Sheets, since January 2004.