Industry Liabilities

Today’s topic is industry liabilities. Every industry has them, including the television industry. There are three articles that relate to industry liabilities. The first industry liability article comes from Bloomberg.com and concerns Sam Zell and his desires to buy Fortune.

Sam Zell, a real estate entrepreneur, wanted to buyout the private media conglomerate, Tribune. Tribune consisted of newspapers and television. He was going to buy the company for $8.2 billion, but now calls the deal, “the deal from hell”. The lawsuit was set against him by creditors and blames him for the company’s inability to pay $13 billion from the buyout in 2007.Two hedge funds were set up in order to reorganize the billions of dollars in legal claims. Tribune filed bankruptcy in 2008. Tribune has 23 television stations and eight newspapers.

People must take severe caution when buying a company. Buying a company is nothing but legal work. I suggest that Sam Zell should have taken small steps in order to buy the company. Buying the company all at once and quite fast proved to cause him billions of dollars in legal fees.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/billionaire-sam-zell-fights-to-avoid-legal-claims-over-tribune.html

The second article is about the Supreme Court decision on Internet content distribution. Mediacaster.com has an article on how the Supreme Court of Canada is deciding on how Internet service providers are broadcasters when they submit media and video online. In terms of their legal and copyright obligations, mobile providers are being seen as conventional broadcasters. If the Supreme Court rules that is it considered broadcasting, then the Canadian Radio-television and communications commission under the broadcasting act of 1991 will view the content.

This issue opens up a whole other legal door for the Internet and its contact with media. The Internet is nothing but media and videos, placing a constraint and attaching fees is only going to make the Internet a nightmare for those who are posting media.

http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000405845

The last article is from nzherald.co.nz. The article covers the right to express opinion in newspapers. The Press Council has discarded a criticism from a previous Feltex administrator concerning an article by Brian Gaynor. Peter Thomas objected to an article in the New Zealand Herald that was written by Brian Gaynor and stated that it violated Press Council principles connecting to balance, accuracy and fairness. Thomas also complained that the article was misleading. “The charges were that the directors had failed to disclose a breach of a loan agreement (a debt facility provided by the ANZ Bank); and that this loan had been classified as a "non-current" liability when it should have been "current".”

The issue at hand involves revealing news in public media sources. The newspaper is a common piece of literature and legal forms must be followed before the copies are issued.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10711788