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Saturday, October 13, 2007

Is NBC for Sale

Why does GE want to sell NBC/Universal. Actually, why does GE even keep NBC. For a company whose core business is to "bring good things to life", GE does most of its business outside of media. Their investments are more likely to be found in defense, in jet engines and aircraft, in industrial and consumer manufacturing products, and in the financial arena. So as the owner of NBC, GE has never been seen as a good fit. Can you remember when David Letterman, once a staple of NBC's Late Night, when he tried to visit his new corporate owners after NBC was sold by RCA, and the GE security through David out of their building. Great TV and typical of the bad fit between GE and their new acquisition.

So now the talk is who the likely buyers of NBC might be. Two titans mentioned in the article are Time Warner and Google. I'm surprised to not hear Comcast mentioned given their run for Disney a few years ago. Certainly any one of these companies offer a better fit than GE, but is this best for NBC or the GE stockholder. Would it make sense for GE to spin NBC/Universal off as its own company? While some consolidation makes sense, I would hope that NBC and GE could be better served as separate entities and NBC have the creative freedom to grow in this new technological age without another corporate parent. And of the two possible new owners, if that is still the direction GE seeks, I hope for Google. Their business model offers more synergy while Time warner brings more overlap.