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Travel Channel proves too pricey for News

Scripps Networks Interactive had last week been the other frontrunner to acquire the cable channel, sources close to the transaction said.

Offers for the channel have climbed since Cox started a bidding competition by announcing in June that it had received unsolicited inquiries for the network.

Analysts have estimated that Travel Channel Media is worth $US600 million to $US700 million and is distributed in 94 million homes in America.

Scripps Networks and News Corporation led the bidding last week with offers of about $US800 million, the sources said.

News Corp is due to publish its latest quarterly results tomorrow, and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, is in Australia preparing to talk to investors about its performance. A spokesman declined to comment on its interest in the Travel Channel.

A $1.1 billion price tag for the cable business is more than the estimate of $US900 million to $US1 billion made by Thomas Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart in New York. That's going to be expensive [on an earnings basis] but not necessarily on a per-subscriber basis, Mr Eagan said.

The chief financial officer of Scripps Networks, Joseph NeCastro, said at an investor conference in September that the company was looking at the network because of its size and genre. He told investors Scripps Networks would be very reasonable, very rational in the bidding. We won't overpay for it."

Bloomberg