I’m not sure how to feel today…is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? NBC has been through the ringer these past few years and this final chapter…GE agreeing to sell 51% of the company to Comcast (pending approval from minority owner Vivendi). As many of you know, I spend my first few years at NBC following college. First as an NBC Page (one of the best jobs of my life), as a production assistant with NBC Sports and then as a coordinator on NBC BO&E (Broadcast Operations & Engineering). It was a wonderful few years for me…working at the mecca of the broadcast industry…30 Rockefeller Plaza. The home of Bob Hope,

So…here we are…2009 and Brian Roberts is about to add another piece to the Comcast Empire…the company that created network television as wel know it. And if I am reading the trades correctly, all he really cares about are the cable properties. What does this mean for the Peacock? The home of Bill Cosby, Hill Street Blues, Fraser, ER and Seinfeld to name a few? Will they destroy it or will the make it better? And why…of all things are they keeping Jeff Zucker on board?

I guess I am just getting old and crotchety. Now when I walk by Rockefeller Plaza it won’t look the same or feel the same. It will be a different place…a place that will be very different from the day I started as a page in 1979. I wonder if pundits are right when they say “The more things change the more they remain the same” or do they?

From The Associate Press:

Broadcast pioneer NBC prepares for cable takeover

By DAVID BAUDER, 11.14.09, 10:40 AM EST

NEW YORK — Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television’s decline.

Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. ( CMCSA – news – people ) is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as this week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.

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