Comcast Buys Out GE's Remaining 49% Stake In NBC 149
Bob the Super Hamste writes "On Tuesday Comcast announced that it would accelerate its acquisition of NBCUniversal and purchase the remaining 49% owned by GE for $16.7 billion. Previously GE and Comcast were expected to operate NBCUniversal jointly until mid 2014 with Comcast having the option to extend that out until 2018. So far there are not details on when the deal with be completed but the article indicates that Comcast's complete acquisition of NBCUniversal will be completed years earlier that initially thought."
Unprecidented control over US mind-share (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been dealing with and reading about Comcast for a long time. This scares me. Already the country has forgotten about the obvious and egregious conflict of interest at the FCC [latimes.com]. Face-palm. Comcast now has unprecedented access to the mind-share of the American public, from pre-production to eyeballs.
Comcast along with other companies like Disney, ClearChannel, etc. are not to be trusted. Be wary, my friends.
Syfy Channel Impact (Score:5, Interesting)
Syfy's Eureka series debuted in 2006. I was never a big fan, but it looked like it had promise, gained a following and did well. They'd throw out occasional references to things like the LHC and CERN, had Joe Morton (who played Miles Dyson in Terminator 2) as a regular character, and even brought in our buddy (and by that I mean he reads and posts [slashdot.org] on Slashdot) Wil Wheaton toward the end.
Comcast purchased a majority stake in NBC in January 2011. By August, Eureka was cancelled. The show had good ratings, good viewership, and was considered "the golden child" of Syfy, but Comcast killed it [wikipedia.org] because it was not profitable enough. It wasn't losing money, but Comcast decided that if you have to spend money on special effects to sell the show to viewers, there are lots of cheaper, more profitable ways to get viewers' attention.
With Comcast poised to take full control of NBC sooner, expect more of the shows that drive Syfy's viewership to be cancelled in the next couple of years, and if they take it far enough eventually Syfy may go away.
Re:Syfy Channel Impact (Score:4, Interesting)
Earlier than that. Unless there's some sci-fi aspect of wrestling that I'm unaware of.