Comcast, GE, NBC oh My!

Today Comcast, GE and NBC released information about a new venture deal that will give Comcast 51% ownership in NBC. From GE’s site:

“GE and Comcast have signed a definitive agreement to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast, 49 percent owned by GE and managed by Comcast. The joint venture, which will consist of the NBC Universal businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, regional sports networks and certain digital properties and certain unconsolidated investments, will be well positioned to compete in an increasingly dynamic and competitive media and digital environment.

The combination of assets creates a leading media and entertainment company with the proven capability to provide some of the world’s most popular entertainment, news and sports content, movies and film libraries to consumers anytime, anywhere. The joint venture will provide consumers the broadest possible access to content, and support high-quality, award-winning content development across all platforms including film, television, and online. It will be anchored by an outstanding portfolio of cable networks and regional sports networks that will account for about 80 percent of its cash flow, including USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, Versus, CNBC and MSNBC. The joint venture will be financially strong with a robust cash-flow-generation capability.”

This is really big news for everyone. This shows you just how much the market is changing and shifting. With the proliferation of content online and new distribution avenues through the web with services such as Hulu, Netflix and even Comcast’s soon to be release TV Everywhere. I believe this shows just how much the video distribution is moving away from traditional ways and will be moving to online avenues where it is relatively cheap to distribute. It’s very smart for Comcast to buy up content producers. It’ll make it cheaper for them to offer it with their services and also raise the price for others who want to distribute it.

Why would someone pick your service over someone else if you both offer the same content and services at about the same price? It’ll be interesting to see how this in fact pans out.

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