Posted on 10/01/2009 7:04:27 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable network, is in talks with General Electric Co. to buy a stake in NBC Universal Inc., Bloomberg News reports based on three people with knowledge of the discussions.
Negotiations for the Philadelphia-based cable giant to buy about 50 percent of NBC Universal have been under way for at least two months and a deal would depend in part on Vivendi SA making a decision to sell its 20 percent holding, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private, the news service said.
Comcast, with about 24 million cable TV customers, is one of the largest buyers of Hollywood content.
It owns regional sports networks, the E! entertainment channel, the Versus national sports network, and the Golf Channel, among others.
GE, based in Fairfield, Conn., controls 80 percent of NBC Universal, which encompasses NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, USA, Bravo, Universal Pictures, and theme parks. It has been considered in play for several years.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Comcast Corp. top executive David L. Cohen raised $6.1 million at a record-setting fund-raiser dinner in the executive's home for then-candidate Obama and the Democratic party
Wow, Comcast and NBC? Get some physicists together, I’m worried such a merger could create a black hole of “suck” from which no quality can escape.
1.) GE and NBCU aren't only interested in finding a buyer for the 20 percent stake owned by Vivendi, but perhaps a buyer for everything...
2.) Even by entering into talks, GE has signaled that it's about to go in a different direction, and away from the biz that it's been on-and-off allied with since the '20s (though of course bought NBC via its purchase of RCA in the mid-80s.)
3.) That GE, perforce, has lost confidence in current management's ability to ever turn around this badly leaking ship, and by "ship" I mean the most visible portion of this empire, the network - although everything else seems to be in good shape.
4.) That the broadcasting business is faced with so many uncertainties, why would GE need to have just one additional burden on its already-over-burdened balance sheet?
5.) That a sale, or even talk of a sale, might significantly boost the stock price, because I suspect investors might like to this burden lifted as well as a nice infusion of cash.
6.) That a sale to Comcast would finally put the Philly company in the spot it's wanted to be for year - as a major content provider to rival rivals Time Warner, Disney and News Corp. - latter controls DirecTV. Such a deal would or may put the onus on CBS to find a partner, too, since in the eyes of the street, a standalone broadcaster would seem to be out-maneuvered and outflanked. Comcast is run by Steve Burke, a particularly bright fellow who was once a rising star at Disney before he had some sort of falling out with Bob Iger; he's always been preaching the benefits of content, much as John Malone did so many years ago when that seer was a huge Denver-based cable operator.
7.) That a sale would also test the Obama Justice Department rather significantly. I believe - though will check further - that a major cable operator can own TV stations, BUT that the FCC has in place a so-called horizontal cap that limits how many viewers the operator can reach in an individual market. I don’t know how that’d work across the country, but if this deal were to ever happen, Comcast would instantly be a major player in the city that never sleeps, not to mention tri-state area, where Time Warner and Cablevision have long divided most of the spoils.
Leftists buying from leftists. nothing to see.
"Comcast in the past has been downright hostile to MSNBC, removing it from its basic tier of cable packages and placing it much more expensive tiers in some parts of the country such as the Northeast. Unfortunately, it has not provided the same benefit to Fox News, keeping it on its basic tiers everywhere..showing favoritism to conservative "new" outlets would be extremely hurtful to the progressive cause, despite the excellent ratings that these shows are pulling in".... "champions in the form of Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, and Rachel Maddow, are many progressives daily dose of reality" .
(stop laughing!)
This would be bad news for all other cable nets and sat providers...they will be at Comcast's mercy for program fees.
Maybe that will finally fire that idiot olbermann and the other tingle of their legs libs over at MSNBC because of their horrible ratings.
They can't be any worse than Cox.
Go ahead Obamacast, buy half of a loser.....lol!
That's weird, we've had the exact opposite experience.
Since cable was first laid in our development and we hooked up, we've had at the least, 'excite@home', 'attbi', and now Comcast. Comcast has been the most reliable. For both Television and Internet, but especially Internet. With the others it was always going out and that was a given on a 3-day holiday weekend. When Comcast took over the constant Internet outages disappeared.
But what does suck about Comcast is the way they nickel and dime you to death on the TV rates. Every couple months its a $1.00 here, a $1.00 there. Pretty soon it's $10.00 more a month and you didn't even notice. My MIL in Chicago has Comcast and only for TV, no Internet. It's the same with her Cable bill.
I got fired from Comcast a few years ago. I was on the phone with a client and had to turn down the volume of a nearby TV. It had one of the “hip-hop gangsta” movies on Showtime where every third word was the f-bomb. Some black women complained (and they were hardly watching). I got fired as a result, and got called a racist mother effer by the area manager.
I refuse to do business with Comcast.
Whoever wrote that must be kidding. MSDNC, Commie News Network, and Headline News are firmly located in the middle of the channel line-up, while Fox News is still found at the very top of the channels. This despite vacant channels (that have been for some time) which now sit idle, showing no programming.
The company was finally scrapped & disappeared.
White Star Lines, that is.
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