Eric left Long Island on September 14th and went to White Plains, north of Manhattan, to discuss the production of "Shrek" with the Blue Sky Studios team. After returning to Manhattan, he attended ABC Group meetings for several days in a row, listening to Senior executives of the Group's TV department reported on the operating conditions of the TV business in all aspects in the first half of the year.
Last year, it signed an 8-year, 9 billion-dollar broadcast contract with the American Football League. The group's executives were originally worried that ESPN would suffer losses due to the huge broadcast rights fee.
But in fact, ESPN has monopolized the right to broadcast football games, which is the most popular among American people. ESPN has seen a substantial increase in both cable TV revenue and advertising revenue this year. In the first two quarters, its net profit has exceeded 200 million US dollars. The net profit of the company may even eventually reach 500 million U.S. dollars, which is already equivalent to one-sixth of the expected profit of the entire Firefly Group in 1997.
In addition, the performance of the AE cable TV network led by Lifetime TV station has also seen a significant increase. Trump programs such as "Desire to Desire", "Project Runway", and "America's Next Top Model" not only continue to increase the popularity of Lifetime TV station, but also Bring continuous profits to the company. Other cable TV stations, such as the Disney Channel, are also developing very steadily.
The only disappointing thing is that the performance improvement of ABC TV network is far lower than that of several major cable TV departments. Due to the rise of cable TV stations, ABC's overall ratings have also declined significantly.
The shift of TV viewers from wireless to cable is the overall trend of the US TV industry in the future. Although Eric can provide enough excellent programs for ABC, it is impossible to reverse the development direction of the entire industry by himself. However, among the four major public television networks, ABC's performance in all aspects still firmly occupies the top position. In order to sell itself at a good price, CBS TV network tried every means to make its financial report look better in the second quarter of this year, but neither the turnover nor the net profit income can compare with the ABC TV network.
Remembering that the acquisition tug-of-war between Viacom and CBS Group has already talked about 33 billion, and the final transaction value is likely to exceed 35 billion US dollars, Eric can't help but gloat. The operation of the CBS TV network itself is not satisfactory. Although CBS Group also has some cable TV assets, none of them can compare with ESPN, which has brought huge profits to the Firefly Group. Not as good as TV. On the contrary, the cable TV assets such as MTV TV network and Showtime TV network that Viacom now owns are the most valuable in Eric's view.
Once the acquisition is completed, Viacom's life in the next few years will certainly not be easy.
In private, Eric and Chris also discussed in detail the first-stage profits of Firefly Investment in the Southeast Asian economic crisis. According to statistics, the principal of 700 million US dollars raised by everyone has increased to 1.3 billion US dollars, of which 300 million US dollars are excluded. In addition to being used to build positions against the Korean won, the other 1 billion US dollars will be recovered one after another.
Since Firefly Investment’s Yahoo, AOL, Amazon, Firefly Electronics, Qualcomm and other companies are still in the crazy money-burning stage, coupled with the subsequent acquisition of Apple, the 1 billion US dollars is hardly discussed, and it is easy to determine where it belongs. . Although Chris and Emily also decided to buy a plane with Eric, they are not in a hurry to pay for this.
On the other hand, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" has also been on sale for more than half a month. After the global sales of 116,000 copies in the first week, in the second week, with the further increase in popularity of the novel, The single-week sales have once again reached 150,000 copies, and HarperCollins Publishing predicts that the overall sales volume of this novel in several major English-speaking countries in the remaining four months of this year is likely to reach 3 million copies.
Prior to this, there were many Hollywood adaptations of popular novels, and the global sales of original novels were not too many. Therefore, after the first week's sales came out, Katzenberg couldn't wait to call Eric to ask if he could start preparations for "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" immediately.
However, Eric knew that the popularity of the "Harry Potter" series was far from fully erupted, so he naturally rejected Katzenberg's proposal, and planned to wait for the release of the second part of the series before launching the film project .
After finishing these things, New York Fashion Week has come to an end.
On the British side, under Eric's remote command, Simon Fuller has selected several girl candidates for the Spice Girls.
However, Eric was not able to rush to the UK immediately, and there were still a few interviews with Victoria's Secret Angels, which required him to participate in person.
Of course, the main work has already been done, so I can relax in the next few days.
In an apartment on the Upper East Side, it was only afternoon, but the curtains in the bedroom were drawn, and a faint light came through the gap.
On the big bed, Cindy Crawford buried her face in the pillow, panted for a while, struggled to get out of the man's body, and could only complain with a bit of ridicule: "Eric, Could it be that Giselle and Alexander, those two little girls, can't satisfy you, so they come here to torment me?"
Eric stroked Cindy's skin with great enjoyment, and said, "They've already gone to France, so they're not as leisurely as you."
Paris Fashion Week was held at the end of the month. Giselle and Alexander hurried to Paris after completing the New York show, and Miranda was also driven back to Los Angeles by Eric. Because of fashion week, Giselle and Alexander, who have already gained fame in the fashion circle, are busier than Eric. He still couldn't find a chance to eat these two little sheep. On to Cindy.
"I've just finished this season of "America's Next Top Model" and participated in a few catwalks. Next, I have to prepare for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. How can I be free?" Cindy twisted her body again, and finally walked out like a mermaid. Eric swam out, grabbed a piece of clothing and looked at it, it was Eric's shirt, put it on, tiptoed to the desk next to the window in the bedroom, and opened a notebook on the desktop Computer, said: "Since you are here, help me look at my stocks. It's really uneasy to go up and down during this period of time."
Eric looked sideways at the woman fiddling with her for a while, and walked back with the laptop dragging a network cable, thinking that he would urge Firefly Electronics to speed up the development of WIFI equipment next time, but he said with a smile: "You bought it back then. Those stocks must have risen a lot again, aren't you afraid that I'll make a fortune?"
Cindy put the laptop on the bedside, leaned beside Eric and gave him a charming sideways glance: "It's you who should be worried, Mr. Biggest, aren't you afraid that I'll make money?"
Eric pulled the quilt to cover the two together, pulled the laptop in front of him, manipulated it skillfully, and said, "Isn't it Jealous-Daddy, why did it become Mr-Biggest again?"
"Mr-Biggest was first called by Candace, and it has been several years. Jealous-Daddy was recently named by Linda for you. Speaking of which, Linda is also in Manhattan recently, why don't you bother her?"
There is a Mr-Big in "Sex and the City", and the Candace that Cindy said should be Candice Bushnell, the beauty author of "Sex and the City".
Eric heard what Cindy said, and replied: "Isn't she looking for a boyfriend? I'm still very ethical, and I won't destroy other people's relationships."
"That French businessman broke up a long time ago. Only a fool like Linda thinks that he will marry her."
Eric just smiled and said nothing.
Except for the few women who are deeply involved with him, Eric now treats the rest with a mentality of traversing the flowers, which is beneficial to both parties. Eric can enjoy the whole forest, and they can also You can live your own life, and everyone will not have any burdens. Therefore, when he heard that Linda Evangelista had a boyfriend, Eric let it go, and his attitude towards other women was probably the same.
Cindy also noticed Eric's thoughts, and said with a smile: "If Joanna or Virginia find a boyfriend, will you let go?"
"They are the mothers of my children, so they are naturally different."
Cindy's eyes flashed, and she said, "You seem to trust them?"
"certainly."
Eric nodded with a smile. He had already regarded the two women as his wives all these years, and the three of them had already formed a tacit understanding.
Although Eric only stays in the Hamptons for two or three months a year, the two women living together, plus three children, do not seem deserted at all. A few days ago, when Eric went back, he was teased by Virginia that the two of them no longer needed themselves.
Chatting casually, browsing the Yahoo homepage casually for a while, Eric opened the stock operation software on the desktop, Cindy reached over, pressed a string of passwords without any concealment, and entered her account.
At the end of April, Cindy also said that the value of the stocks in his hands was close to 50 million US dollars. At this time, although there are still only four stocks of Microsoft, Cisco, AOL and Intel, the total value of these stocks has reached 7690. In total, it has risen by more than 50% in five months.
Eric opened each stock with great interest to check the detailed stock trend chart.
Among the four stocks, Microsoft has the highest increase. The market value of this company has risen from 120 billion at the beginning of the year to 177.3 billion US dollars now. Followed by Cisco, the market value has risen from 33 billion at the beginning of the year to 46.9 billion now. Eric calculated that this also means that Firefly Investment's 26% shareholding in Cisco has increased in value by 3.6 billion US dollars in half a year.
The market value of America Online, which followed closely behind, has just reached 19.3 billion, an increase of less than 30% compared to the market value of 15 billion at the beginning of the year. The last Intel, whose market value soared from US$48.3 billion to US$113.1 billion between 1996 and 1997, more than doubled, but since March this year, Intel’s stock price has basically stopped growing. There was also a decline in the month.
Cindy watched Eric pause on the Intel stock data page for a while, and said: "I'm worried about Intel. I checked the information specifically, and it seems that the sales of the chips they released this year did not meet expectations. In addition, AMD and Both IBM and Motorola have released new chips, crowding out Intel's market. Eric, should I sell all of Intel's stock?"
Later, many people only knew about Intel and AMD, but in fact, in the 1990s, there were still many manufacturers producing CPU chips. The chip Apple uses now is the Power chip produced by Motorola. It's just that the later Wintel alliance became stronger and stronger, and most other brands of chips were squeezed out of the market, leaving only one AMD hanging half-dead.
Shaking his head, Eric said: "Actually, in my opinion, Intel's stock is the most valuable among these stocks. I remember that Intel's profit in the first half of this year has reached 2.5 billion US dollars. It can be more than the sum of the profits of the other three companies.”
"Then you mean, keep it?"
"Of course," Eric nodded, and said, "It doesn't matter if you don't sell them in the next ten or twenty years. With these stocks, you can get at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in dividends every year in the future."
Cindy thought for a while and said, "I'm not short of money now. According to your suggestion, can I keep all these stocks?"
"For everything, you should follow what I taught you at the beginning, wait for the timing of Yahoo's listing, and sell them together, so that you can get back all the dividends for decades at once."
After hearing what Eric said, Cindy guessed that some of these stocks must not be worth holding for a long time. However, since Eric didn't go into too much detail, she wisely stopped asking.
We fiddled with the laptop for a while, and before we knew it, it was already evening.
The light in the bedroom dimmed, and Cindy picked up the phone on the bedside table to check the time, and said, "It will be six o'clock soon, and the organizer of Fashion Week is holding a Fashion Week curtain call party at the Gramercy Hotel tonight, are you going? ?”
Eric didn't have any plans at night, so he nodded and said, "Go, um, let's go to dinner first, and then go there. You have been tossing me all afternoon, but I'm starving."
"It's obvious that you tormented me."
Cindy gave Eric a blank look, turned on the light, still wearing Eric's shirt, and walked towards the cloakroom in a charming manner.
It's never too late for a woman to dress up, and she found another restaurant for dinner. When Eric and Cindy arrived at the Gramercy Hotel, it was already past eight o'clock, and the party had already started. What's more serious, Cindy also forgot the invitation at home.
In the elevator, Eric looked at Cindy still looking through his handbag unwillingly, and said with a smile: "You said we can get in after we brush our faces?"
"Maybe the doorman is face-blind. You have to convince them that you are Eric Williams."
Cindy replied to Eric with a smile, took out her mobile phone from her bag, and when the elevator door opened, she quickly dialed a series of numbers and said a few words. An executive has already warmly greeted them and brought Eric and Cindy into the party scene.
There were about one or two hundred people in the spacious banquet hall, and the atmosphere of the party was very relaxed.
Eric is no stranger to the fashion industry now. In other words, although he is neither a fashion media executive like Anna Wintour nor a big-name designer, because he controls the world's largest media Group, Eric has more influence on this circle than anyone in the banquet hall.
Of course, Eric didn't come here to grab the limelight out of boredom. After chatting with the guests he was interested in for a while, Eric planned to drag Cindy to hide on the dance floor and dance.
However, as soon as he got to the dance floor, Eric saw a familiar Latin girl walking towards him with a smile.
Unexpectedly, Penelope would appear today. Eric was a little surprised, and smiled and stretched out his hands to the girl: "Hi, Penny, I'm so glad to see you here."
The expression on the girl's face froze, she stepped forward to hug Eric, and then explained with resentful eyes: "Eric, I'm not Penny, I'm Monica." (To be continued.)