The Hollywood Reporter:

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman acknowledged Tuesday that the conglomerate is seeking a minority investor in Paramount.

While Viacom paid $9.8 billion for the film and TV studio in 1994, analysts suggest it’s worth just $5.5 billion today, and only that much to a foreign investor willing to pay top dollar for a stake in a major U.S. studio.

Dauman’s desire for a “strategic” minority partner seems to suggest he isn’t interested in a private equity investor that would simply bring in cash and not much else.

And:

The giant new-media company behind iTunes, iPads and iPhones is also rapidly expanding its Apple TV initiative, and the company run by CEO Tim Cook has already been floated as a potential bidder for Time Warner, should that company be for sale, as is rumored. But if Apple is simply seeking more content for a future version of Apple TV, why pay more than $80 billion for all of Time Warner (the price it already turned down when offered by 21st Century Fox) when it could get a stake in Paramount for less than a 20th of that?

This is conjecture, but interesting nonetheless. Does it make sense for Apple to acquire content in this way? Even if Apple bought a stake in Paramount, they’d be a minority investor, at best. Not sure they’d get enough decision making power to make it worth their time.

But that said, this does touch on a deeper issue, that of buying content as a discriminator for Apple TV. Would it make sense for Apple to own a movie studio? A TV Network? How about Netflix? Does Apple need to compete with Netflix and Amazon to make the Apple TV compelling, to strengthen that part of the ecosystem?

I’m struggling to see the win here for Apple. Especially with an investment that would further sap their attention from their core business. Interesting, though.