Media Curmudgeon

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June 22, 2007

Prediction Checklist

It never ceases to amaze me that all of my good friends and I are married to women that are much smarter than we are. After my blog on June 21, in which I made some predictions, one of these smart women suggested I publish a checklist of all of the predictions I made, so we can all keep track of how stupid or prescient I am.

So, below is the Prediction Checklist which I’ll update from time to time. But in the meantime, here is a response from Bill Grimes on my June 21, “Puzzlement” blog:

“Superb analysis and strategic forecasts. In particular I think GE sells NBC soon, and if the government lifts FCC regulations on foreign ownership of TV stations,which it surely should, we could have a large foreign company, Sony, for one, or the billionaire from Hong Kong (I forget his name, but he's in satellite TV biz) buy NBC, which would fetch a large premium. The sale price might be $20-25 billion.”

Prediction Checklist

1. Yahoo stock will decline over the next year.
2. Yahoo will be bought by or merge with News Corp.
3. YouTube’s traffic will continue to explode on a worldwide basis.
4. Google’s stock will continue rise above the current $514 a share as its share of search traffic continues to grow.
5. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. will buy Dow Jones & Co. and the Wall Street Journal.
6. GE will sell NBC, most likely to Time Warner, and the new owners will fire Jeff Zucker.
7. Microsoft will sell its Web businesses to News Corp., owner of a MySpace-Yahoo combination.
8. The MySpace-Yahoo combination will dominate Facebook, which will decline, and Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will regret not selling Facebook for $1 billion when he had the opportunity.

Watching what happens will be more fun than watching WWE Wrestling on the USA cable network, because the results won’t be rigged.

Posted by Charles Warner at June 22, 2007 11:59 AM

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