Discovery to Spend Another $50M on OWN (update)

Amount of Discovery’s investment keeps growing from initial $100M

(Update: Discovery says OWN remains on target for 2011 financial goals.)

Discovery Communications plans to invest another $50 million in Oprah Winfrey's OWN, mostly on programming, it announced Friday.

The company initially committed $100 million for OWN, which debuted Jan. 1. It agreed in August to boost its investment by $89 million.

The company said it is still on target financially in 2011. Chief Financial Officer Brad Singer said in an investors' conference last month that OWN should be “Ebitda positive” this year, and the additional allocation won't change that, a company spokeswoman said. 

Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and is a standard measure of operating profitability.

Most of the $50 million will be spent on programming, the company said on an earnings conference call Friday.

Discovery reported a fourth-quarter profit Friday of $202 million, up 34 percent from $151 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

 

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