The Peacock is not Dead Yet POSTED BY VINNIE BLESI, January 29, 2011 Share Cable TV providers, as well as the telephone companies, have long been the industries consumers love to hate. This past week the crumpled peacock feathers of NBC, the first major broadcast network started in 1926 by RCA; a network that has been in rehab since its primetime collapse after relying on Law and Order for almost two decades, was adopted from the network television sanctuary by fat cat media giant Comcast. Comcast just happens to be the largest cable TV and Internet provider in the US.
Comcast now controls 51% of the media conglomerate known as NBCUniversal. AOL and Time Warner tried this before and laid a big fat peacock egg, forcing both companies to ultimately have to restructure, and almost destroying one of the biggest media brands at the time, AOL.
In the last decade, NBC Universal, seemed to lose focus of its prime brand NBC. Instead they concentrated their energy on creating successful and popular series on its cable networks, including shows on USA, SyFy, Bravo, Oxygen, and creating new cable networks Sleuth and Chiller, which mainly rebroadcast the shows from their other networks.
The question that I have is what is Comcast's endgame in this media shuffle? Is it to turn some quick profit? Do they really have any interest in revitalizing the NBC network, which is on life support relying on their Thursday night comedies and Sunday night NFL game to survive at this point? The best thing to happen to NBC lately has been Betty White, and it took social media to bring that about.
Unfortunately I think this will end badly for consumers, as Comcast will now control the signals to a significant number of major cable TV networks. In this greedy, profit-driven world I predict other cable network providers will be held hostage, which has happened with Fox and others, for higher fees to carry these popular cable networks, while Comcast owns them. In the end consumers will pay more and the fat cat media giants will be drinking champagne and putting out their cigar butts on the poor peacock.
Could we see NBC become the Comcast Broadcasting Network? I don't believe so, because I think Comcast has its eye on the cable networks and their original programming. I would not be surprised to see Comcast try to spin off the NBC network, after all, the network's lifespan has far surpassed the average lifespan of a real peacock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC
http://www.richsamuels.com/index1.html
"Death By Culture" is ©2011 by Vinnie Blesi. All contents of Nolan's Pop Culture Review are ©2011 by Nolan B. Canova. Share This Article on Facebook! Subscribe to Crazed Fanboy Message Board | Email
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