Paramount mulls $1.7B offer to sell BET to its CEO and NYC private equity firm: report
Shari Redstone has gone back to the drawing board to sell a piece of struggling media giant Paramount Global.The company reportedly entered exclusive talks to sell Black Entertainment Television network to a group of buyers headed by BET CEO Scott Mills — after calling off an auction last year that failed to generate the roughly $3 billion it was seeking for the cable channel.Now, Mills and Manhattan-based private equity CC Capital, headed by Chinh Chu, have offered around $1.7 billion, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.The Post has sought comment from Paramount and BET.“CC Capital’s policy is to not comment on these types of rumors,” a spokesperson for the private equity firm told The Post on Tuesday.This is the second time in the last year that Mills and Chu are making a run at the cable network, whose future is uncertain in the wake of the aborted merger between parent company Paramount and David Ellison’s production firm Skydance Media.Redstone, who owns a controlling stake in Paramount through her family holding company National Amusements, killed the Skydance deal last month over what she felt was a lowball price as well as possible shareholder lawsuits.On Monday, billionaire media mogul Barry Diller entered the Paramount saga by announcing he is exploring a bid to buy Redstone’s NAI stake, The New York Times reported.The stunning turn of events came ahead of next week’s Sun Valley Media Conference, which attracts many media titans.When asked whether he was looking for financial partners after Redstone turned down $2.25 billion from Skydance for NAI, Diller scoffed at the notion.
“Absurd, IAC has cash and liquidity in excess of $4 billion,” he told The Post on Tuesday.Meantime, Paramount — whose entertainment holdings include CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon and the Hollywood studios — has once again turned its attention to selling BET.Last December, Bloomberg reported that the investment group fronted by Mills and Chu were prepared to pay jus...