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."
30 Rock (Score:3, Funny)
Kabletown
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Jack Donaghy
Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming
-l
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Too much concentrated power (Score:5, Insightful)
These people will become the 'federal government' of the internet.
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I think we may generally be past that point, however the government and corporations have gotten so intertwined with their political game of twister-fellato, that the public will have a lot of trouble overcoming them merely by voting in a system where they are convinced that a vote other than for a primary party, is a wasted vote.
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Of course, voting for a non-primary party will in fact be a wasted vote until such time as that party garners enough votes to challenge the primary parties, at which point we'll have three primary parties which are all just as bad as one another, instead of the two we have now which are just as bad as one another.
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except it cannot get enough votes to challenge the primary parties, unless people start voting for it first.
And, with more primary parties, the 'entry point' to becoming a primary party becomes lower. Hopefully, sooner or later the tide will turn and we can get more than 2 primaries, and have some faster cycling of parties.
catch-22
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> and we can get more than 2 primaries, and have some faster cycling of parties.
Unfortunately that won't solve the problem as the system is fundamentally flawed.
The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo [youtube.com]
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California now has a nonpartisan blanket primary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#Use_in_California [wikipedia.org]
The top 2 vote recipients in primary elections go to the general election, regardless of party.
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No, we'll have two, just a different two: our electoral system structurally makes it so that a new party being competitive means (and usually follows rather than leads) an existing major party ceasing to be competitive.
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That is why corporations are focusing and concentrating mass media first and foremost. Propaganda is the power of control of the masses. As long as critical mass isn't reached, no one important cares about fringe thinkers understanding the reality. Propaganda will just discredit the thinkers, hide the atrocities committed to them and tell everyone that they have the best place to live in the world.
So to answer your question: most likely never unless some major catastrophe happens that will massively upset t
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Consider how few people bother voting in primaries. Or even the general election. When so few people express an opinion in a meaningful way, it's pretty easy for one interested party to dominate. If 51% of the country voted against telecom interests, it would take an armed coup on the part of the telecoms to stop it.
It's okay, good even, to
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These people will become the 'federal government' of the internet.
Don't be daft. There's already no difference between a company of that size and "the government".
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Aircraft carrier groups?
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.
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This is absolutely not unprecidented. Ask your parents. This is an attempt to return to the "golden days" of broadcast monopolies/oligarchies.
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then invent some BS reason for it
My bet is that they'll throw the "security" card, as in "The reason we have to restrict our users to our walled garden is to protect against malware and cyberwarfare."
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Restriction isn't what your job is about. You're not in marketing or management.
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I'm worried about who writes your checks and the implications that holds.
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Comcast along with other companies like Disney, ClearChannel, etc. are not to be trusted. Be wary, my friends.
Nonsense! Comcast is my broadband provider and they've never once stopped me from criticizing them. For example, I've been critical of them in the past for%%NO CARRIER
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Add Time Warner, a subsidiary of Turner broadcasting (CNN, etc) to the list as well.
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Yeah, TW scares the hell out of me, I know too many people who are stuck with TW since they are in areas with TW monopolies.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHRMozyOVtk [youtube.com]
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So, you are saying the ability of people or groups to influence others in arbitrary ways, is linked to the idea of video games influencing individuals in specific ways (specifically to cause violence).
It can just as well be argued, that that video games reduce violence by providing a vicarious outlet for violence, so people don't actually go around doing it for real. Sorry to break your false association/link there.
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So, you are saying the ability of people or groups to intentionally influence others in the mannor of their choosing, is linked to the idea of video games incidentally influencing individuals in one way that is against the will of industry, bad for bussiness and grounds for lots of expensive lawsuits..
It can just as well be argued, that that video games reduce violence by providing a vicarious outlet for violence, so people don't actually go around doing it for real. Sorry to break your false association/link there.
goodbye channels (Score:1)
Say goodbye to certain channels on other networks in a few years...
Re:goodbye channels (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast already killed off what little was left of TechTV on G4. Now it's going to be the "Esquire Channel" is some shit like that. All the good tech shows are online-only now.
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True, perhaps, but is that a problem? For instance, I've been very impressed with the programming from Revision3 [revision3.com] - an online-only "TV" studio whose lineup is heavily aligned with the /. crowd. They even have their own "channel" on Roku devices.
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TwiT [twit.tv] has its own full studio now too. I generally prefer it to Revision3 (less all over the map and more consistent in their weekly programming). But the two are closely aligned, so to each his own. I do love me some Techzilla [revision3.com].
why do you think they call it "programming"?! (Score:2)
And jocks.
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It's what I like to call TV Entropy, and it's what turned the History Channel into Jesus'n Alienz, and SciFi into Wrasslin'.
Jesus'n Alienz was five years ago. Now the H channel is nothing but truckers, loggers, pawn shops, and "pickers". It actually makes me long for their bygone days of Jesus/Aliens/Nazis.
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How about meeting you halfway with truckers/Aliens/"pickers"/Nazis?
I remember somebody derisively referring to the "Hitler Channel" back in the mid-90s. Seems like those channels have always been half-assed.
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Now if they would tweak the Hitler Channel to the Downfall Parody Channel, they'd have something.
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At least SyFy (sigh) is making robots fight in a couple of weeks. There's more of an element of sci-fi to that than there is with Wrasslin'.
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Does it want zero ratings in Cox/TWC-land? (Score:2)
Thank god for the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty soon a handful of companies will own every old media outlet out there. Well, at least we still have the internet.
My ISP? Oh, it's Comcas.....oh shit.
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And I really really hope I get to see them collapse under their own weight & finally get some decent service from the multitude of new comers that step in to take their place.
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Kind of like when AT&T collapsed under it's own weight in the 70's? Wait, our government stepped in and fixed that. Too bad our government is owned by the mega corporations now. I doubt we'll see anything like that again.
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Too bad our government is owned by the mega corporations now.
You can't buy what isn't for sale. When are people going to face the fact that the government's elite are taking in just as much as the corporations and finally set it straight?
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Well, see, I punched the button on the voting machine for "no corruption" and it read back THANK YOU FOR VOTING FOR CORRUPTION HAVE A NICE DAY.
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Just think of how much more efficient if will be when you only need to direct your rage and hatred at a handful of companies.
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Just think of how much more efficient if will be when you only need to direct your rage and hatred at a handful of companies.
Hell, I already do that now with MS, Sony, and Apple.
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Central Services?
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My ISP? Oh, it's Comcas.....oh shit.
For a while now, the mega-Providers have been threatening internet-based companies (like Google), seeing them as freeloaders making money off "their" pipes (never mind that as subscribers, we pay ISPs a monthly fee for them to get to Google's stuff, not their own crappy content portals). Being able to hold the last mile hostage -- that's the driver behind the lobbying campaigns against net-neutrality.
It's also the driver behind Google Fiber. Google doesn't have to actually build it out everywhere to be ef
Control == Profit (Score:1)
Controlling the content creation, performances and delivery of the content is very profitable.
Vertical Integration (Score:5, Funny)
Jack:The only thing I will be discussing with the House Subcommittee on Baseball, Quiz Shows, Terrorism, and Media is vertical integration.
Liz:What's vertical integration?
Jack:Imagine that your favourite corn chip manufacturer also owned the number one diarrhea medication.
Liz: That'd be great cuz then they could put a little sample of the medication in each bag.
Jack:Keep thinking.
Liz:Except then they might be tempted to make the corn chips GIVE you...
Jack:Vertical integration.
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Jack:Imagine that your favourite corn chip manufacturer also owned the number one diarrhea medication.
Shouldn't that be number two?
Re:Vertical Integration (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Largest military industrial complex member sells propaganda wing to oligopoly softcore porn distributor.
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30 Rock would have run with it.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHRMozyOVtk [youtube.com]
The only SNL segment censored by the board of GE.
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What? GE makes lots of weapons. They had a big stake in nuke manufacture. They also make a lot of the gatling guns in service, like the M134 [wikipedia.org] and the big gun on the A-10 [slashdot.org]. I wouldn't say they're the largest member of the military industrial complex, but they're in the club. Anyway, making engines for warplanes is just as important as making guns for them.
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Anyway, making engines for warplanes is just as important as making guns for them
Which, in the grand scheme of things, means it’s not important.
GE is massive. GE does not bother breaking out it’s government defense contracts which means it accounts for only a thin slice of it’s income. It’s ancillary to GE core business. They make jet engines – extending it the military is easy. This is unlike Boeing, which is much more reliant of military contracts to fund it’s R&D.
They also make a lot of the gatling guns in service, like the M134
The wiki article uses the past tense when talking about GE.
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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.
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Re:Syfy Channel Impact (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it: the Sci-Fi channel has been a rotting corpse ever since they mutiliated the name.
Re:Syfy Channel Impact (Score:4, Interesting)
Earlier than that. Unless there's some sci-fi aspect of wrestling that I'm unaware of.
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Well, both are base upon fiction.
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Wrestling is broadcast from a parallel universe where it's actually considered worthwhile entertainment?
Hell, look at all the wrestlers with goatees.
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Syfy won't go away. It'll just become the next SpikeTv....call it....AXE Tv.
Spike used to be TNN. TNN used to be The Nashvile Network. As they started showing less and less country/Nashville related programming, fewer outdoors shows, they started just going by the acronym more and more. Til people nearly forgot what TNN even stood for. Eventually, they just dropped even that, and now we have SpikeTV whos main claim to fame seems to be the 1000 Ways to Die show.
Or we could make the comparison to the lifecycl
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Unfortunately, mass media means mass, and every niche channel thinks they need to grow and get more viewers. That, and the grand view of someday cable would be 500 channels of everything going away as the truth was realized: it costs money
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they broadcast METV ota out here in oklahoma city, and it's actually not carried by Cox (that i've seen). I love it.
I can watch Maude and Jeffersons and Mary Tyler Moore like i did as a kid, and I gotta say, Big Bang Theory should absolutely be ashamed of itself. it just doesn't even compare, even though those shows are 40+ years old.
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You should rent the DVDs. You're likely missing around 5 minutes of every episode cut out for more commercials.
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Syfy is owned by NBC, and Comcast has already made changes there.
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.
I miss the days of MST3K, Farscape, BSG and Star Trek reruns on Sci Fi. I'd settle for SG1 and Dr. Who. But hey, aspiring actors need low budget, low quality movies to build a career, right?
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I miss the days of MST3K, Farscape, BSG and Star Trek reruns on Sci Fi.
Star Trek and BSG reruns are now on BBC America. Who knew that Star Trek and BSG were actually British-made television shows?
ST yes, those reruns serve a purpose. But BSG the second/third/etc time around is just violence without purpose. Once you know who all the human-looking Cylons are, it's really no fun anymore. It is kinda funny, though, a machine with an alcohol problem, who had his eye poked out by another machine.
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I think a lot of TV accountants have it wrong.
They think making a reality show for $100,000 that makes $200,000 (100% margin) is better than a professionally written/acted show that costs $1,000,000 making $1,500,000. (50% margin). When in reality they are giving up $400,000 to other media.
As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money. The typical MBA knows how to cut costs, but not how to build a business.
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I think there are several factors at work here, the first being the demographics and the fact that the people who watch the reality show are more likely to be the right kind of people (the people who are most attractive to advertisers). The second is that if the show is a flop and doesn't make the money they thought it would (or doesn't get the eyeballs/ad dollars they thought it would) their sunk costs are much smaller so their risk is lower.
Plus with a reality show, its easy to make changes mid-series if
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True, I did have the insight recently, that advertizing is targeted at people who are influenced by advertizing.
Network (Score:1)
That 40 year old movie predicted this problem spot on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFvT_qEZJf8 [youtube.com]
Content viewing limitations (Score:3, Funny)
Why buy it out? (Score:2)
Most corps these days don't pay out dividends.
At 51% they already controlled NBC.
So why spend billions just to buy the rest?
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What? Why not?
The board controls the company.
Shareholders elect the board.
51% gets you a majority of the board, which appoints the Chief Executive, who then "controls" the company.
What am I missing?
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Even Comcast doesn't have the balls to kill off the affiliate system. That ancient system would probably survive a nuclear holocaust.
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for that to work they would need to kill all old equipment and sdr (software defined radio) broadcasting tv and radio from terrestrial transmitters must, by law, be unencrypted with exemptions made for cellular telephone systems
Remember 480i? (Score:2)
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one company owning everything...
The Phone Company (TPC)?
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one company owning everything...
The Phone Company (TPC)?
ding ding ding!
I deduct that you are Dr Johhny Fever [wikipedia.org]!
You owe me a coke!
Re:Capitalism ends with... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a new name at least? I vote for "Weylan-Yutani."
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Comcast has a kind of monopoly as it is.
"A monopoly (from Greek monos (alone or single) + polein (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity (this contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly which consists of a few entities dominating an industry)." Technically Comcast is part of an oligopoly at best. Their is direct competition in Comcast markets with AT&T, Dish, Direct TV, Fios, and in some ar
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Plain internet is $50 and up, and I am envious of people I know who live somewhere with competition.
I have one choice for tv, one choice for a l
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Modern Anti-Trust law is a bit more nuanced then the Greek definition.
Currently you run into anti-trust issues if a company’s dominate position causes market abuse – i.e. extract rents (i.e. economic profits which are above ordinary profits.) Some companies have been able to remain monopolies by keeping prices low so there is minimal market abuse and thus escape the eye of the Justice department.
Also, to but a finer detail on your post, most of the firms you mentioned are not competitors, but ra
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ja [philly.com]...
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Which spent the 1990s-2000s buying each other up, including the biggest of them buying AT&T and taking its name.
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Last time I checked, there were other companies offering the same thing from the services side. Names like Cox, Charter, AT&T.
What percentage of Americans actually have a choice in broadband internet, where broadband is defined (by the FCC) as 4 Mbps or higher? I sure don't. I can get precisely one, and if I didn't have line of sight to the top of the local volcano I would have zero. And actually, they only offer a 3-6 Mbps plan, nothing 4+ Mbps, but let's just pretend that's 4+.
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