AOL Time Warner and Walt Disney have held talks about merging their CNN and ABC News divisions into "a stand-alone news powerhouse," the Los Angeles Timesreported this morning.
The newspaper said the negotiations got a lukewarm reception last week at an AOL Time Warner board meeting. The talks had been sporadic for 18 months but gained momentum in recent weeks, the Timesquoted sources as saying.
It is the closest CNN has come in its two-year effort to make an alliance with a rival broadcaster's news division in a bid to cut costs, the paper said.
The Timessaid both companies acknowledged ongoing discussions about a news venture.
Under the plan the two companies discussed, the two news divisions would be merged into a new company with revenues of more than $1.6 billion. CNN would account for more than $1 billion of that and ABC the rest, according to the Times.
AOL Time Warner would own from two-thirds to three-quarters of the new company, and Disney the remainder, the paper reported. It reported operational control of the joint news venture might be more evenly split, mitigating some objections from ABC.