Time Warner-Turner Talks : A Summer of Duels and Deals

If Time Warner Inc. and Turner Broadcasting System Inc. complete their $8.5-billion merger, it will top off the entertainment industry’s summer of Hollywood-style upheaval and melodrama. A chronology of the past few months’ more memorable events:

* April 9: In a deal spearheaded by Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr., Seagram Co. pays Matsushita Electric Industrial Corp. $5.7 billion for 80% of entertainment conglomerate MCA Inc. The merger marks the end of several years of frustration for MCA, which had futilely sought in Matsushita the financial means to compete with media giants such as Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Viacom Inc. Bronfman has appointed Ron Meyer, a co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, president and chief operating officer of MCA.

* July 31: Walt Disney Co. offers $19 billion in cash and stock for Capital Cities/ABC Inc., a deal that would unite the nation’s premier film producer and largest television distributor and network. The proposed merger, second only to the $25-billion acquisition of RJR Nabisco Inc. by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 1989, would create an unprecedented entertainment empire with combined sales of $20.7 billion. The deal would allow Disney to supersede the current entertainment leader, Time Warner, which has $16 billion in revenue.

* Aug. 1: Only a day after Disney announces its plans for Capital Cities/ABC, Westinghouse Electric Corp. offers to buy CBS Inc., the last of the independent networks, for $5.4 billion. The proposed new company, to be called Westinghouse/CBS, would sell industrial assets to concentrate on broadcasting. Together, CBS and Westinghouse would own 15 television and 39 radio stations, which would reach a third of the nation’s listeners and viewers--more than either NBC or Cap Cities/ABC.

* Aug. 14: In a move destined to dramatically alter the entertainment community’s balance of power, Disney hires talent agent and Creative Artists Agency Chairman Michael Ovitz as its president. Ovitz’s move triggers the sale of CAA, Hollywood’s largest talent agency, to a group including several of the young, aggressive agents he had mentored.

Researched by DAVID NEIMAN / Los Angeles Times