Mr. Roberts had long wanted to control not just the pipes into people’s homes, but the television shows and movies that flow over them. But since 2004, when he sought and failed to buy the Walt Disney Company, the media industry’s economics had cratered. Broadcast television was suffering through ratings declines, and a falloff in DVD sales had dented profits in Hollywood. But cable channels, of which NBC Universal has many, were flourishing.
I am pretty confident that regulators will ensure that Comcast has to play fair with other cable providers, and direct competitors like DirecTV.
The scary part is — what will this do to derail the shift to what so many of us want, a-la-cart programming. Will Hulu, Apple, Amazon On-Demand, etc still be able to re-sell the shows (or in Hulu’s case, give them away)?
I hope this doesn’t go through, but this would make it seem it’s all but a certainty:
Mr. Immelt, after attending the state dinner last month at the White House, flew to Paris to persuade Vivendi to complete the deal. An agreement was reached over the weekend after he offered to pay Vivendi $2 billion even if the Comcast deal collapsed.
Bummer
December 03, 2009, 5:43pm Comments
