liz: viacom arguably our competitor. why do you like them? them. >> again, they took in entity, news corporation to the same thing with fox. but with viacom they took cbs and a they have went from 722 just under 400 million and they leverage their debt it is still under three times and they continue to incrementally do that so it will be worth one of the $75 a share it is selling at 80 they will have over $10. so all they have to do is stay the course. some of it has done a good job. liz: what about $70 a share? >> 14% per year. liz: and rich with discovery? >> also the same model to take cash flow glooally. in terms of the near-term dynamics but on balance is using cash flow because it is cheap and we have the same thing with a radius and directv and automation -- although nation and of ozone. liz: q watch honey boubou? rebecca will bite to. [laughter] >> you think i watch everything i recommend? [laughter] who would know that was such a huge hit along with duck dynasty? >> also "breaking bad" now i have to do been interviewing to catch up.

these are the folks who provide the shows, amc, viacom, those people are also in fierce negotiationsith each other. and this combination will tilt the power towards comcast in a fairly substantial way. one market is competition for the actual shows that we watch. >> so somebody who is willing to pay say for espn, the deal that espn, that disney strikes with comcast could essentially change for them what they may see or perhaps what they may pay on a monthly basis? >> well, yeah, so comcast can come to the table now and say we want to pay less, and we have seen these battles, including with time warner. cbc, the network, was off time warner in new york and los angeles and dallas and some other cities because cbs and time warner cable couldn't agree on how much they should pay cbs. when you combine the two companies, they have a lot more bargaining power. >> we saw in that piece -- we had one of the analysts say they didn't think there would be much dramatic changes for customers in terms of pricing. do you agree? >> i think the pricing will continue to go up. the ceo said this is proc

viacom the parent company of m.t.v. paramount nickelodeon c.b.s. owner of the c.w. and showtime or news corp which owns fox news new york post and the wall street journal and finally time warner parent company of c.n.n. h.b.o. and warner brothers together these six companies control ninety percent of all media in america just for comparison consider that in one thousand nine hundred three that same ninety percent of the media was controlled by fifteen companies for their more courting the website frugal dad just two hundred thirty two media executives are responsible for providing information to two hundred seventy seven million americans yes that's one media exact for every eighty eight hundred fifty thousand people not to mention that many of these same exacts also sit on corporate boards of every company from one santo to general dynamics so it's no surprise that this type of system results in egregious conflicts of interests such as when sixty minutes aired a false report on the bengazi embassy attack in order to promote a book on the subject by their publishing

years than cable companies have so in fact more of the increases that you're paying are going to the viacom and did news of the world than they are to comcast bottom line so i think comcast is doing this to give itself more negotiating power but it's also going to mean more regulatory scrutiny it's going to be more trouble from the f.c.c. it's going to be more trouble from the f.t.c. focusing on their advertising which has been a theme lately at the trade commission so i think for comcast this doesn't really give them any more pricing power with consumers it just lets them extend the same pricing power they have to a larger set of consumers alternately the real competitive problem in cable lies with the townships and states that regulate hauling fees these cable companies pay for between three and five percent of their revenues to the townships for exclusive monopolies and that is what's limiting competition in a lot of towns and a lot of cities around the world if the f.c.c. were to step in and prevent towns from rating attacks on polling we'd see significantly more competition and we'd se

what about cable-only outfits like viacom, does it give them more bargaining power for that, will that actually keep, you know, those prices in check? so there are a lot of questions to be asked. this will take the better part of the year if not more than a year to resolve. >> guest: and i think that's right, already a lot of questions to be asked, but i'm having trouble seeing the benefits of merger like this. and i think because it will comcast so much power the many so many places, you know, they're going to be able to -- right now time warner cable is a local monopoly. i don't think that's a good reason to create an even bigger monopoly, the fact that we've carved out a cable cartel all across the country, but in their own way, time warner cable isn't a programmer anymore, so they had some reason to rye to keep down the cost of -- try to keep down the cost of programming. comcast doesn't. if the cost goes up, they just move it from one pocket to the other. so i think there are so many -- and i see why comcast wants to do this deal. there's amazing economies of scale for them. but f

when they talk to hbo or viacom ,nd you see the programming guy this is the scale they get in terms of the fees they have to pay. that does not change until you hit a much bigger array of customers. nu are hitting 25 million, you might get a slight discount. comcast already gets that. and 10ion customers million customers, not a big difference. you still have to pay more you would have gotten in the time warner cable deal. he was trying to downplay the fact that he did not get it. they were not going to get that much cost savings on programming. some, but not much. he makes a valid point. the other point was, the set-top box, they are trying to create their own cloud-based set-top up that might rival or catch to what apple tv offers, or amazon. working on a webtv box. the competition is, who is going to own the set-top box? will they lose subscribers to apple tv or some other digital type box? amazon now, they have original comic -- content. with the set-top box, they have something apple does not have. amazon could be a big player there. apple hadrded that been talking with time warne

one thing when viacom was at war with time warner, right?e warner cable and just about everything because they pulled their programs like showtime and dexter, you name it. whatever, they had a lot of stuff. think about it this way, will they be able to play that type of hardball with this mega-company known as comcast with time warner? it changes the dynamic of the labette. they need the content, to have the access. but still, you have to think comcast has sharp elbows and when you have sharp elbows and you are strong and you are powerful, you can call more shops so it puts us and other content providers in a weaker position. liz: contract still in place, so we will see what happens when all that expires on after we have been fired. >> thank you for setting me up perfectly. liz: thank you very much. charlie gasparino. cisco planning to take networking to an entirely new level. working to win over investors disappointed with the stock price, this silicon valley company leader chairman and ceo with us to talk about why he believes the cisco is

a disaster and he signed an executive order to begin the withdrawal of our 16,000 appraisers and viacom bended johnson signs the executive order reversing night, giving the generals and defense contractors that they want. for a long time i did not think that was true. i thought that was liberal bull, that we were burnishing the image of camelot. robert kennedy in 1964 when he's asked about the withdraw time he says absolutely not. president kennedy was committed to fighting communism. the thing i sadly concluded as robert kennedy lied about a lot of things. i think he lied about this. the overwhelming documentation as jfk is moving towards the exits in vietnam. the cia proposes something called operations northport. killing americans, blaming it on the cubans is a false light to create a pretext to invade cuba. jack kennedy vetoes this crazy plan although i would argue the murder of kennedy may be the ultimate manifestation of their plan as jonathan goes to great things to bring the cubans. indeed, ambassador william would use a roommate at jfk at princeton has gone and say john kennedy

extt that comcast is able, to use its leverage to somehow maybe get a better deal from disney or viacom, number one, i doubt they will pass that along toheir customers. number two the content companies will make it up by charging more to other smaller cable providers left in the market. gerri: i have to take you to something i think y bothh ould respond to here. look at pay tv customer satisfaction index. these two companies are at the bottom of e list. americans think, oh, my goodness, these two people are geing married? i don't like either of them. i do want to go that wedding. >> they are two consenting adults here. the point is, ver possible if consumers don't like them, if they use other oions on line, netflix has the most talked about it. v show with "house of cards". gerri: >> that's right. >> these guys could be out of business in 10 years. this business of bundling a bunch of channels selling them as a package it could be going away. is is the opposite of entrenched market with huge power. >> john? >>hat's why this deal is all about broadband. i'm not sure how you watch netflix

meaning some big selloff, time warner, cvie ac viacom. >> and disney reporting after the bell.ney did and let me end on time warner, they did give us an adjusted eps base for 2013 of $3.51 that excludes time. remember, "time" is being jettisoned and that will take place in the next few months. the publishing part of time warner will no longer be, they'll still call it time warner but "time" won't be a part of it anymore. they are talking about low double digit increases in what they are calling diluted income per common share from continuing operations off of 351 base. stock down almost 2.5%. >> cash flow very good. if you want to think about where to go if the market bottoms remember the cash flow from this, cash flow from our parent comcast, these companies generate a huge amount of cash. >> yes, they do. >> and it's important because that is what creates real value. >> future cash flows. if you do pray in the church of amazon and you believe in mr. bezos he talks about future cash flows being way more important than report eed gaap earnings. >> are we going to once again sta

but better prices for it from companies like viacom, companies like discovery. the companies keep raising rent on them every month and usually passed to us as consumers f they're big enough, more than 30 million consumers they have together as combined entity, they are in stronger position to say to those guys, you know what? we're not interested in another year of double-digit percentage increases on rates. gerri: merrill, to you, when you look at whole thing, does it make they're combining? why do they need to combine at this point? >> look, the quarterly revenue of apple is about the same size as annual revenue of comcast. that is the world we're playing in. it's a world of apple. gerri: good point. >> it is whole different world. we're talking about future of digital platform. that is why how this all plays out is particularly important right now. gerri: james, when you look at this picture do you see a reality where these companies are trying to save money? they're sort of endgame solution? how would you analyze it? >> yeah, i absolutely. you have an indust

so everything from move and viacom programs, television, radio, print, and an extensive opportunity to engage with them in social media through key platforms where youth engage like twitter, youtube. >> woodruff: online. web sites and so forth. >> absolutely. >> woodruff: how, kathy crosby, do we measure whether this is successful? what do you do to find out if this is changing teen behaviors? >> so we have established a very comprehensive benchmark tracking study. so we just concluded interviews with 8,000 youth across the antitrust 5 markets and we will follow these same 8,000 youth to understand how the campaign has affected their attitudes towards the product and their behaviors towards the product. so hopefully at the end of this time we'll have done our job right, we believe that the message are inspiring, they're relevant, they're credible, they're meaningful and memorable and we believe over time we'll see how effective we have been. >> woodruff: but you'll have some hard data. >> oh, yes. f.d.a. is regulatory and everything is steeped in data. >> woodruff: kathy crosby with th

viacom's stock is up near 52 week highs. it could continue to break out. >> i'm with simon on sony.a lot of things right and are finally making a lot of money. when you have a guy like dan in there pushing the button, trying to make something happen, that actually could send the stock -- >> i just want to say from a sentiment standpoint, we are now five years from madoff and the financial crisis, and now you have a film that glorifies wall street corruption, greed and theft up for best picture and leading man up for best actor, and that's really surprising how quickly the pendulum has shifted to the point where we are willing to celebrate these guys. if they win it will just be an amazing turn-around. two years ago you couldn't get arrested if you were saying anything fun or kind-hearted or light-hearted about wall street at all. >> we will end on that. final trades for the month up next. (vo) you are a business pro. seeker of the sublime. you can separate runway ridiculousness... from fashion that flies off the shelves. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you c

wwe is talking with discovery and amd, viacom, fox. there is a lot of real estate.es down to, wwe down to how much wwe is asking for. >> talk about the demographics. they are young, they are male. are they smart and rich? >> no. in homes where the average income is $100,000 or more, the viewing is down. >> you do not have to have a ton of money for advertisers to care about you. mcdonald's, burger king, walmart, they may not be advertising to upper east side socialites, but everyone buys stuff. movie studios, video games, snacks foods, restaurants, automotive. a nice list of clients. what theyportant is command from advertisers. they do not command the top dollar that some of the top dramas get. i think they get $170 million in ad revenue, and they are asking million.$200 you can see why there could be a pushback. more thanu make 100,000 dollars a year. how do you feel about the wwe? >> i do not really watch professional wrestling. >> never? >> never had. i can see the appeal. are there pictures of wrestlers on shutterstock? >> yes, we have editorial imagery. >> you

years than cable companies have so in fact more of the increases that you're paying are going to the viacom's and didn't ease of the world than they are to comcast bottom line so i think comcast is doing this to give itself more negotiating power but it's also going to mean more regulatory scrutiny it's going to be more trouble from the f.c.c. it's going to be more trouble from the f.t.c. focusing on their advertising which has been a theme lately at the trade commission so i think for comcast this doesn't really give them any more pricing power with consumers it just lets them extend the same pricing power they have to a larger set of consumers alternately the real competitive problem in cable lies with the townships and states that regulate hauling fees these cable companies pay for between three and five percent of their revenues to the townships for exclusive monopolies and that is what's limiting competition in a lot of towns and a lot of cities around the world if the f.c.c. were to step in and prevent towns from rating attacks on polling we'd see significantly more competition and we'd

. >> the viacoms and disneys that level? >> yeah. >> sony?katzenberg on the sidewalk. >> it does bring to mind disney which raised ticket prices, again, i think for the second time in nine months, record highs. today on "good morning america" it was a big frozen sing-along as that movie has made almost a billion dollars. >> i went to the movie theater, and there were two "frozens" and i haven't sung along with a movie since "the rocky horror picture show." this franchise is exproceeded i exploding. >> i've seen the picture six times. from start to finish. >> six. >> and well, i got to tell you, this is one i've been talking about it on "mad money," the younger people if you listen to younger people you are making a lot more money than if you listen to older people. older people are buying general electric! my charitable trust buys general electric. it yields 3%. >> why do you own it? >> because i think the restructuring will be very good to buy back the financial. you don't sing with it. >> not anymore. >> i like the oil service business. >>

only autozone and viacom are up there in terms of the way they bought stock back. >> so much stock they bought back which has been a key in the media business. we are suffering through another winter storm in the new york area we're talking about snow and sleet and ice bombarding, by the way, the southeast before it got to us, hundreds of thousands without power, thousands of flights have been canceled. the storm also causing the senate banking committee to postpone today's hearing on janet yellen that's why i was unsure about today's show. no, not today, part two of her testimony on monetary policy will be rescheduled. >> and will retail sales be rescheduledle? the january number. >> we can just keep blaming the weather. >> i will blame the weather but we'll hear from whole foods which talks about weather and competition. we've got a lot ahead of us in this show. >> and we'll get reaction to the comcast/time warner cable deal from leslie moonves. you just heard jim mention it live and exclusive interview, an interview with walter robb. we'll be talking to him right here on "squawk on t