Versant CEO Lazarus Rules Out Large-Scale Purchase of Skydance Cable Networks

Versant is unlikely to acquire Skydance's cable networks, CEO Mark Lazarus said Tuesday at Axios' Media Trends Live event in New York City, citing the industry's structural decline. "Buying more cable assets on a large scale would prolong our life but not necessarily make our life better because we still have the secular decline," Lazarus said. "But just buying big networks or a bunch of networks that don't necessarily change our trajectory is probably not in our short-term future." Versant, which spun out of Comcast earlier this year, will instead pursue opportunistic M&A and diversify revenue into adjacent consumer-branded businesses, such as golf. Its properties include CNBC, MS NOW, USA, Syfy and Fandango. Wall Street has speculated Skydance could sell assets as it restructures following its Warner Bros. Discovery merger.