Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 30, 1993 TAG: 9301300073
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVE MAYFIELD LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium
QVC PLANS FOR MAJOR VENTURES
In the not-too-distant future of 500 cable TV channels, QVC Network Inc. aims to be a multiposition player, QVC President Michael C. Boyd says."We think there will be a lot more applications for specialty channels . . . a lot more things you can do with them," Boyd said in an interview Friday as he and his boss, entertainment mogul Barry Diller, toured QVC's order-taking phone center in Chesapeake and its warehouse and distribution facility in Suffolk.
Diller, former head of Paramount Pictures and the Fox TV and movie empire, took over last week as chairman of West Chester, Pa.-based QVC. He has boasted that he'll use the network to launch into a myriad of new ventures linking not just TVs, telephones and credit cards, but someday, possibly, home computers, too.
Diller's not treading into the home-shopping industry lightly. Indeed, a company he's allied with, Liberty Media Corp., has proposed paying $160 million for an 80 percent interest in QVC's only significant competitor, Home Shopping Network Inc.
Home Shopping, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., operates an order-filing warehouse in Salem that employes nearly 450 people.
Industry observers have said that if that deal goes through, it's only a matter of time before QVC and Home Shopping - each with about $1 billion in annual sales - are merged into a single operation. Liberty Media already owns a large stake in QVC.
But such a combination may never happen. The Justice Department is reviewing the proposed Home Shopping deal on antitrust grounds. The new Clinton administration is widely expected to be tougher on such deals than the Bush administration was.
Boyd declined to comment on a potential QVC-Home Shopping merger. But he did say he expected Diller's Hollywood contacts to pay dividends for QVC.
He said he also looks to Diller to attract more upscale designers to QVC, which sells mostly mid- to lower-priced merchandise.
Diller has told interviewers that the success his designer friend, Diane von Furstenberg, had in pitching a new line of clothing in November helped convince him to invest in the network. In less than two hours during her televised visit at QVC's studio, von Furstenberg unloaded $1.2 million worth of apparel.
Boyd said he didn't know what specialty channels will be launched at QVC under Diller.
But industry observers have speculated there soon will be a Perry Ellis channel or a Calvin Klein channel, and QVC is in the best position to offer such programming. Besides its regular program, which reaches 45 million homes, QVC has only one other venture now: the 7 million-household Fashion Channel.