The General Electric Company has
agreed to sell a controlling stake in NBC Universal to cable giant Comcast. Comcast will own 51% of a new joint venture with G.E. retaining 49%.
While
rumors of the pending deal have been swirling for months, the new
venture still faces a regulatory confirmation process that deal
watchers estimate will take anywhere from 9 to 18 months to complete.
Although what new media landscape might emerge from this deal is, at this time, speculative, Comcast has created a
microsite about the acquisition and
Chairman and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is blogging about the announcement.
The desire to own a media content creation company is not new for Comcast. In 2004 Comcast
attempted a hostile takeover of Disney that ultimately failed.
Comcast's
interest in this area is not difficult to discern. Television and media
watchers like myself have long seen some writing on the wall: winners
in the new world will be the ones that can deliver any and all content
to viewers on the device and at the time of their choosing.
Several solutions have been developing but none have been completely satisfactory. Comcast has developed its "
On-Demand" service, Netflix
has partnered with device makers in order to stream content directly to televisions, Apple makes its
Apple TV box and using iTunes you can purchase television shows to download to your iPod,
DVRs like
TiVo allow time shifting of recorded shows, sites like
Hulu and
Clicker
aggregate television content to facilitate one-stop online viewing of
free over-the-air and cable television without the subscription or the
television set, and television manufacturers are working on developing
internet enabled televisions that will cut out the service provider and device middlemen.
However
content creators still hold some important cards in this poker game for
the future. Mailing physical DVDs is not the future and no company is
more aware of this than Netflix (Full disclosure: I am a former
employee of Netflix). That's why they've been developing their
on-demand streaming services and what allows them to lead in this arena
is the existing relationships they have with studios, from their
original DVD-rentals-by-mail business, with whom they must negotiate to
get the rights to stream their content.
Each new change in
technology requires a new round of standards, permissions and deals to
be made. As both the content creator (Universal Studios, NBC Television
and the plethora of cable channels NBC and Comcast each own) and
deliverer (Comcast's cable and internet services) Comcast positions
itself to better take advantage of an ability to provide whatever
consumers want, wherever they gravitate as broadcast TV, DVD and other
media models rapidly decline. If they could manage to acquire a mobile
phone service provider and device manufacturer, Comcast could
completely dominate where I think we are headed: i.e., everything must
be accessible via a handheld device like a cell phone. And in
negotiation with themselves they can not only better control the
process but profit from it as well.
BlogHer co-founder and CEO, Lisa Stone, sees the potential for an exciting future with the new Comcast:
Full
disclosure: GE/NBCU are investors in BlogHer through the Peacock Equity
Fund. But that doesn't change my opinion that, from the outside, the
synergy of media assets between NBCU and Comcast is pretty exciting.
The joint venture will be a video powerhouse immediately, but it seems
to me that the sleeper opportunity is digital. Just imagine what one
could accomplish for women online with the multimedia and .com assets
of E! and DailyCandy to iVillage, BravoTV, and Oxygen, not to mention
MSNBC and CNBC.com.
No crystal ball is without
some clouds in the picture, however. The merger of AOL and Time Warner
in an effort to dominate the future media world provides an important
cautionary tale. Nevertheless it seems to make smart business sense for
both Comcast and G.E.. The potential for monopoly power, however,
frightens a number of observers, especially supporters of
net neutrality principles who are particularly concerned given
Comcast's previous troubles with the FCC over their perceived attempts to throttle the internet and to limit and control and, some believe, ultimately tier access.
As
a keen observer of television (content and hardware) and opiner on its
digital future (delivery, consumption and business models), I will be
watching this deal and how the changes it ultimately will bring about
play out. What possibilities do you see? Are you concerned about
regulatory, monopoly or net neutrality issues? What opportunities could
this deal create for women online?
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