Mr. Zucker would succeed Jim Walton, who has run CNN for nearly a decade. Mr. Walton announced in July that he planned to leave at the end of the year. The management change follows years of ratings declines that often put CNN, a pioneer in cable news, in third place behind its more opinionated rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. Mr. Walton said when his departure was announced that “CNN needs new thinking.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The pair will apparently say he is departing for “personal reasons.” Sources said that Thompson will be claiming to be leaving due to a serious illness that he recently discovered he had.

But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is the key reason for the abrupt end to his tenure as a CEO.

Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources.

The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company.

But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently.

And it’ll also be a stunning victory for Loeb (pictured here), since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw.

The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections.

Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board.

Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January.

Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week. In those gatherings, according to numerous sources, he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe.

That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back last week with an internal memo, noting that Thompson’s claim was “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume that Thompson had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it.

That memo, impugning Thompson’s credibility, was one of many that piled on to create an impossible situation for the Yahoo board, related to his leadership ability going forward.

Thompson had also previously issued a Yahoo statement, in which he apologized for the “distraction” caused by the problematic resume, but not for the mistake itself.

And, initially, Yahoo — under his direction — had called the borked resume an “inadvertent error.”

Such fumbling to fix the situation was among the many other issues that the board has been considering relating the ability of Thompson to remain in his job. Also of importance was the sinking morale of Yahoo employees, who had largely rejected Thompson’s excuses in the ResuMess scandal.

Internal message boards at Yahoo lit up all last week, with staffers largely rejecting his explanations. In addition, a number of top execs and engineers approached the board calling for Thompson’s firing.

While that’s not precisely what happened here, it’s close enough to describe Thompson’s departure as inevitable.

All this change comes in the wake of a massive restructuring he was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.

Thompson was pushing forward a vision of adding a much more significant data and commerce element to Yahoo’s largely ad-based business.

That is likely to be less stressed under media-focused Levinsohn, who will be essentially trying out to be the permanent CEO.

Well known in the media and advertising communities, he has worked at a number of big online efforts over many years.

According to his bio at Yahoo, where he arrived in 2010:

He previously served as the President of News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategy and acquisitions that helped transformed the company into a leader in digital media. He also held senior management positions with AltaVista, an early pioneer and leader in search, CBS Sportsline where he oversaw all content and development for the top rated sports site, and HBO where he launched and oversaw a unit developing new programming and revenue streams. Levinsohn also was the co-founder and managing director of Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm focused on investing in and building digital media and communications companies.

Levinsohn sits on the board of Freedom Communications and the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The American University.

So far in my checking, Levinsohn’s resume is accurate.

More to come, obviously.

I have emails and texts and calls into everyone for comment, but apparently they are all out at a Mother’s Day brunch (except me).

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Yahoo leadership, betting it can stave off a challenge from activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, has been stepping up efforts to name three additional new board members to replace directors that are leaving.

Yahoo has already named two of the five open slots — former Rovi CEO Fred Amoroso and LiveOps Chairman (and former CEO) Maynard Webb, who was once COO of eBay.

But now, the company is pushing harder to get the last three on board in light of Third Point’s ever-increasing proxy pressure.

Several sources said that Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson has told people inside and outside the Silicon Valley Internet giant that the threat from Third Point, which owns almost six percent of the company, is not as worrisome as some think it could be.

Thus, Yahoo’s headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles has been contacting a number of high-profile media players about joining the board, including former News Corp. execs Peter Chernin and Tony Vinciquerra, as well as former MTV head Judy McGrath.

Both Chernin and Vinciquerra, sources said, have turned down the prospect of joining the Yahoo board in the midst of a possible proxy battle, along with other massive changes taking place.

Yahoo has not yet been successful at landing the remaining directors.

Meanwhile, Loeb, via saucy letters and filings, has been aggressively making a case that Yahoo should add his alternate slate of directors, including former NBC head Jeff Zucker, to the board. He recently submitted preliminary proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That’s because his cursory discussions with Thompson have apparently led nowhere, causing him to also publicly call for Yahoo to pay more attention to Third Point’s board selections.

If Yahoo names more directors to replace outgoing ones, it will be a slap in the face to Loeb, followed by inevitable ground battle war for investor votes.

Yes, that too.

Here’s a video from the WSJ.com’s “Digits” online tech show I did on the topic:

Yahoo just got yet another poison-pen letter from activist investor Dan Loeb of Third Point, which says the company has been “dismissive” of his alternate slate of board members, including former NBC head Jeff Zucker.

It is another doozy, full of all kinds of interesting details and signals, which I will go into more detail about below, although the main message is: Perhaps it is actually time for a proxy fight.

Wrote Loeb to Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson: “The Board’s stonewalling, apparent insouciance and decision not to engage with us in a serious manner, has left us no choice but to directly approach our fellow owners with the Shareholder Slate. Accordingly, we hereby notify you that we intend to file our Preliminary Proxy Statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the week.”

Before the battle begins, let me just note: Who uses the great word “insouciance” anymore? Kudos, Dan! (It means indifference, Cliff Clavin.)

In an e-mailed statement, Yahoo said: “As previously stated, in order to achieve the best possible outcome for all Yahoo! shareholders, the Board’s nominating and corporate governance committee continues to review a wide range of highly qualified candidates. The committee has included Third Point’s candidates in its thorough review process and will make its recommendations to the full Board in due course.”

The Silicon Valley Internet giant also sent this turgid (look it up!) explanation of how proxy fights go down:

Yahoo! will be filing a proxy statement with the SEC in connection with the solicitation of proxies for its 2012 annual meeting of stockholders. Stockholders are strongly advised to read Yahoo!’s 2012 proxy statement (including any amendments or supplement thereto) when it becomes available because it will contain important information. Stockholders will be able to obtain copies of Yahoo!’s 2012 proxy statement, any amendments or supplements to the proxy statement, and other documents filed by Yahoo! with the SEC in connection with its 2012 annual meeting of stockholders for no charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

Yahoo!, its directors, executive officers and certain employees may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in connection with Yahoo!’s 2012 annual meeting of stockholders. Information concerning the ownership of Yahoo! securities by Yahoo!’s directors and executive officers is included in their SEC filings on Forms 3, 4 and 5, and additional information is also available in Yahoo!’s proxy statement for its 2011 annual meeting of stockholders filed with the SEC on April 29, 2011. Information regarding Yahoo!’s directors, executive officers and other persons who may, under rules of the SEC, be considered participants in the solicitation of proxies for the 2012 annual meeting of stockholders, including their respective interests by security holdings or otherwise, also will be set forth in the definitive proxy statement for Yahoo!’s 2012 annual meeting of stockholders when it is filed with the SEC.

Got that?

One interesting part of the Loeb’s much more sassy letter is a suggestion at the bottom about Yahoo’s lack of a chairman when current head Roy Bostock steps down later in the year. Loeb’s idea is to keep on Gary Wilson, former CFO of Disney and Marriott, who was also leaving, in that role for one year.

“We believe this role should be for one year only, with the explicit understanding that Mr. Wilson would recruit his replacement prior to the end of the term,” wrote Loeb, who appears to be sending a none-to-subtle smoke signal that this might have been discussed already. “We suggest this in the spirit of continuity and compromise, and believe it would be in the best interests of all shareholders. We encourage the Company and Mr. Wilson to strongly consider this idea.”

The letter is a bit of a olive branch, followed by a swift kick, presumably an attempt by Loeb to get Yahoo to start taking him more seriously.

“Scott, it is not too late for you to take decisive leadership action and avoid the costs and distraction of an expensive proxy contest fighting the Shareholder Slate (which, according to our research, will be well-received by shareholders),” Loeb noted archly, before referring to Yahoo’s current lawsuit against Facebook over patent infringement. “You appear to have enough battles to fight already.”

In other words, if you prefer the “Fatal Attraction” movie metaphor rather than from “Dirty Dancing,” Loeb is not going to be ignored!

Oh, read it all for yourself — here’s the full letter:

Third Point Letter 3.14.12

Have you never heard of Starboard Value?

Me, either!

But the New York activist fund is readying to make a splash as soon as today, several sources said, if it follows through on the expected naming of an alternate board to challenge AOL.

Saturday is the official deadline to nominate directors to the board of AOL, also based in New York, which will have all eight up for reelection.

Sources said Starboard has talked to several Internet types, but that it has plans to put up a slate made up more of Wall Streeters to present at the company’s annual meeting later in the year.

In a filing last week, Starboard said it had been in discussions with AOL management about its concerns, so it is certainly possible the investor and the company could come to some agreement over board seats and strategic direction before it gets Yahoo-ugly.

That would make it a kind of an East Coast proxy battle version of what’s been going on over at Yahoo and its tussle with Third Point’s Daniel Loeb. He recently followed through on long-expressed unhappiness with the Silicon Valley Internet giant, and named a slate of directors — including well-known media exec Jeff Zucker — to replace current ones there.

The same kind of thing has been in the works at Starboard, which sent a letter in late December to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, saying his much-touted strategy around content was not a good one for investors.

Like Loeb at Yahoo, Starboard is one of AOL’s largest shareholders, with a stake of just over five percent.

The letter signaled an increasing impatience with the pace of Armstrong’s turnaround efforts, which are still in turnaround. Meanwhile, AOL’s stock has rebounded from last summer’s lows of near $10 a share.

The stock is up more than 22 percent this year, to $18.44. But that’s still down almost 20 percent from when AOL spun off from Time Warner and went public in late 2009.

The grumpy (and opportunistic) Starboard entered the picture late last year.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

“Starboard, which focuses mainly on small-cap companies, was spun off from Cowen Group Inc.’s Ramius Capital LLC in March. In October, the fund successfully waged a proxy fight against hair-salon chain owner Regis Corp. when three of its director nominees were elected to Regis’s board. AOL, which was spun off from Time Warner Inc. in 2009 after a failed merger, is its most high-profile target yet.”

One of the investment fund’s bugaboos is Patch, the local news network that AOL has sunk a lot of dough into. Also under fire is Armstrong’s content efforts and the pace of its display advertising sales, including the high-profile acquisition of the Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

I have emails into all the bigs at AOL and Starboard, so we’ll see who calls back first, if at all.

Daniel Loeb

The activist shareholder wants four of Yahoo’s board seats, one of which he wants to occupy himself.

His other nominees: MAEVA Group CEO Harry Wilson, a “restructuring expert”; Michael J. Wolf, the media consultant who also served as chief operating officer at Viacom’s MTV Networks for a stint; and Jeff Zucker, the former CEO of NBC Universal who left once Comcast acquired the media conglomerate.

In a filing with the SEC, Loeb says he’s glad to see Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang head out the door, to be followed by board chair Roy Bostock and three other board members. But that’s not enough, he says — Yahoo needs people who know how to turn the company around, and it needs people who know the media business:

Although the Reporting Persons are pleased to see the Retiring Directors acceding to the Reporting Persons’ previous demands that they leave the Board, they believe the recently announced changes do not put the Issuer on the right track towards maximizing shareholder value. Installing the hand-picked choices of the current Board does nothing to allay investor fears that Yahoo is poised to repeat the errors of its past. In order to protect and instill confidence in the Issuer’s shareholders, the Reporting Persons believe it is imperative to accelerate the transition of the Retiring Directors and introduce new outside nominees from relevant financial and business backgrounds. The Reporting Persons believe that recent changes do not demonstrate convincingly that Board and shareholder interests are fully aligned, nor that this Board has the fresh perspective and necessary experience to overhaul the Company’s challenged organizational and operating structure.

While the Newly-Appointed Directors possess certain specific technology credentials, key elements of a balanced strategy remain unaddressed at the Board level, fueling further concerns. Recent press reports indicating that the Board’s current strategic direction is to emphasize the technology aspects of the Issuer’s business at the expense of advertising and media, which accounts for the vast majority of the Issuer’s revenues. The Reporting Persons believe that this approach places the Issuer’s core revenue generating capability at substantial risk, fails to recognize the tremendous growth opportunity in video, and directly results from a dearth of essential expertise in media and entertainment at the Board level.

Finally, the Reporting Persons believe that the Board lacks an expert in the type of fundamental corporate restructuring the Issuer requires, along with an independent investor representative aligned with the Issuer’s shareholder base. The reluctance of the Board to prioritize shareholder value to date – evidenced by years of deferring and delaying comprehensive strategic initiatives and missing out on myriad accretive transactions and strategic opportunities – will no longer be tolerated or endorsed by investors. Shareholders deserve earnest representation and oversight as the Issuer confronts the critical investment and capital allocation decisions it expects to face in the next few months.

Snapshot bios of Loeb’s three amigos:

• Wilson is a PE guy who put in time at Blackstone Group and Silver Point Capital.
• Zucker was once a wunderkind at NBC, where he started out running the Today Show, but was widely criticized by the time he left.
• Wolf has spent most of his career offering advice to big media companies.

I remain a big fan of the Wolf profile that Kurt Andersen wrote for the New Yorker back in 1997. And here’s a condensed version of Zucker’s interview with Kara Swisher at the D: All Things Digital conference in 1999.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/dan-loeb-recruits-former-nbc-boss-jeff-zucker-for-his-raid-on-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110512/hulu-networks-close-to-new-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20110512/hulu-networks-close-to-new-deal/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 02:02:43 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=32807 Hulu and its network TV owners are close to a new deal that will keep programs from NBC, Fox and ABC on the Web video site.

An agreement to extend the content licenses that owners News Corp., Disney and NBCUniversal signed two years ago should be in place within a week, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The pact is being negotiated by Hulu managment, led by CEO Jason Kilar, and officials from News Corp. and Disney. Investor Providence Equity Partners also has a say.

But NBCUniversal, one of the site’s original owners, gave up its board seats and management role in the joint venture earlier this year as part of its Comcast merger agreements; it will have to accept whatever terms its partners arrange.

A Hulu rep provided this statement from Kilar, and said it represented the view of all four companies involved in negotiations:

News Corp, Disney, Providence and the Hulu team have been engaged in productive discussions to extend our existing content agreements a number of years. Keep in mind that our existing Hulu.com content agreements already extend for several more years; these discussions would extend the term further and also extend our separate Hulu Plus content agreements.

Between the operating results and formalizing the above, it is shaping up to be a big year for Hulu.

I don’t have details on the new pacts, but people familiar with the negotiations tell me that the joint venture’s basic structure will remain the same: Hulu.com will continue to be an ad-supported site, while the Hulu Plus subscription service will offer more programming and the ability to watch it on devices like Apple’s iPad.

The new deal terms are unlikely to change things that will be obvious to casual Hulu users. It’s possible that some programs may be withheld from the site, but it’s more probable that the changes will affect things like programming “windows,” which determine when a show turns up on the site and when it disappears, and how much Hulu pays for the content it shows.

The terms may also give content owners more flexibility to distribute their programming on other digital outlets.

Hulu’s original premise was that the site would would have co-exclusive rights to programming from its networks’ partners/owners–shows would stream on the networks’ own sites and Hulu.com, and nowhere else. But my hunch is that programmers will want the ability to offer their stuff to other distributors.

Disney CEO Bob Iger seemed to hint at this during his earnings call this week, when he said that Disney supported Hulu, but not exclusively: “We don’t intend to let a platform—even one we own—get in the way of doing what we think is right.”

The new deal will put to rest any idea that Hulu’s network owners want to kill off the site. That notion has been floated in part because some of Hulu’s original backers, like former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin and NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Zucker, have left their jobs. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

More important is that the media landscape has changed since Hulu was assembled in 2007. At the time, NBC and News Corp. officials were primarily interested in building a site that could compete with Google’s YouTube.

Now, Hulu’s owners are trying to extract new and/or increased fees for the programming from cable and satellite services, as well as services like Netflix; offering their shows for free on Hulu makes that harder.

And yet one more question mark about Hulu’s future popped up in February, when Kilar wrote a blog post challenging the TV industry’s business model. The move angered some of his bosses, and led to speculation that he would quit or be fired.

Tempers have cooled since then, but that doesn’t mean Kilar will stick around indefinitely. I’m told that his contract expires in July, and that if he wanted to he’d be able to stay on. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left for something else.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110512/hulu-networks-close-to-new-deal/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101110/a-web-video-truce-free-hulu-goes-away-from-boxee-replaced-by-hulu-plus/ http://allthingsd.com/20101110/a-web-video-truce-free-hulu-goes-away-from-boxee-replaced-by-hulu-plus/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:45:06 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25725 The Hulu-Boxee war is over! The terms of the truce: Boxee, which makes software that makes it easy to get Web video on TV, will remove links to Hulu’s free service–but will give users the ability to use the Hulu Plus paid service.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen is scheduled to make the announcement tonight at an event celebrating the release of the Boxee Box, his company’s first move into the consumer electronics business.

The arrangement with Hulu, which is primarily owned by News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC and GE’s NBC Universal, marks the end of a conflict that dates back to February 2009. That’s when Hulu insisted that Boxee take down links to its service, then tried severing the connections itself.

Hulu said it made the move at the insistence of its network partners (an argument that outgoing NBC U boss Jeff Zucker said was not true). But recently it has stopped complaining publicly about Boxee.

And as I noted earlier this week, the big networks have warmed to Boxee in the last year or so. And with the appearance of Google TV, which offers something similar to Boxee, they appear to be more amenable to working with Ronen and company.

Boxee will also have other content partnerships to announce tonight, I’m told, including a deeper relationship with Netflix. More details on that, as well as timing of the Hulu move, as I hear about it.

UPDATE: Alas, no details from Boxee on either–just confirmation that Netflix will come to Boxee by the end of the year, and that Hulu Plus will come “soon.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101110/a-web-video-truce-free-hulu-goes-away-from-boxee-replaced-by-hulu-plus/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101015/nbc-u-perks-up-a-bit-for-its-new-owners/ http://allthingsd.com/20101015/nbc-u-perks-up-a-bit-for-its-new-owners/#comments Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:56:37 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24588 This should make the folks in Philadelphia feel a bit better about their purchase-to-be: GE says that its NBC Universal unit, soon to become a Comcast property, had a decent third quarter.

Unofficially, that is. For the record, GE says that Jeff Zucker and company booked flat revenues and saw operating profit drop by 15 percent. But a year ago NBC had booked a gain after moving around ownership stakes in the A&E TV venture it co-owns with Hearst and Disney.

Strip those one-time benefits out, GE says, and its 2010 Q3 would show a seven percent revenue hike and a five percent bump in operating profit.

That’s better. “A pretty solid quarter,” in the words of GE CFO Keith Sherin.

Here’s GE’s highlight reel for the business, which Comcast will likely own by the end of the year. (Click to enlarge.)

Meanwhile, Zucker, who has a few months left on the job, is much, much more enthusiastic about his company’s performance. Here’s his all-hands letter to employees sent out this morning:

GE reported its earnings today, and I wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate everyone on NBCU’s very strong results. Looking just at our operations, these are our best third-quarter results since the NBC-Universal merger more than six years ago. Truly a record performance.

Although our segment profit as reported by GE shows us down, this is driven by the impact of one-time, non-operating events and transactions that took place in the third quarter of last year (such as the one-time gain from the change in our interest in A&E Networks). On an operating basis, our profit was up 32% versus last year (or 5% excluding the impact of charges taken by certain divisions in the third quarter last year). Given that the economy, although improving, is still far from robust, these are excellent results driven by superior execution throughout our operations.

We had exceptional performances from a number of our divisions, including Cable Entertainment, Local Media, Film, and Theme Parks. Cable Entertainment posted a double-digit increase in operating profit, behind great results at each of our networks. Local Media was up an amazing 87%, as increased revenues from a resurging local ad market hit the bottom line. Film op profit was up 57%, driven by Despicable Me, which performed well ahead of expectations. And Theme Parks had the best quarter in its history, with op profit up 59%, the result of the new Harry Potter attraction in Orlando and the new King Kong 360 in Hollywood.

Here are some of the other highlights:

· USA was the No. 1 cable entertainment network for the 17th quarter in a row, an incredible string of success, and Syfy finished the quarter ranked No. 8 in adults 25-54

· Bravo had its best quarter ever and now has 20 consecutive quarters of ratings growth, and Oxygen had its best 3rd quarter ever

· CNBC posted increases in both revenue and op profit, and MSNBC continues to operate from a position of strength, beating CNN in primetime for the 4th quarter in a row and beating CNN in total day for the first time in a decade, while also launching a very exciting new marketing campaign

· Through the first five weeks of the NFL season, Sunday Night Football is averaging nearly 22 million viewers, the most for the first five weeks of a primetime NFL package in 14 years

· NBC is tied for No. 2 through the first three weeks of the new season, up 4% versus a year ago to make it the only major English-language network to grow year-to-year

· Jay Leno continues to be No. 1 since returning to his old timeslot, and Jimmy Fallon holds a 35% lead over CBS in his time period

· NBC News remains No. 1 across the board and recently hosted a fantastic public-service programming event called Education Nation, an effort that should make us all proud to be part of this company

· Telemundo has the highest-rated novela in its history with Donde esta Elisa, and mun2 had its best quarter in all key demos

There is so much to be proud of! Congratulations and thanks again to everyone, because I know, whether you are part of one of the businesses mentioned above or not, you are working hard to keep this company great, and I truly appreciate it.

At the same time we are notching these business successes, our transition teams are hard at work preparing for the new NBC Universal. We’re on track for a close of the transaction with Comcast, hopefully by the end of the year. As I’m sure you know, the timing will ultimately be determined by the FCC and the Department of Justice. We’ll have a clearer idea about timing as we get into November.

One other thing about the transition. You have received information about your new benefits, and I urge you to pay attention: review the information on the intranet, attend the benefits sessions, and enroll yourself and your family in both the GE and the new NBC Universal benefits plans. I hope each of you give this the attention that it deserves.

The company is really in a terrific place right now. We have a Cable Entertainment group that is on track to record its fifth straight year of record earnings. A Theme Parks division that is on track to have its best year ever. A Local Media division that will likely more than double its earnings from a year ago … and much more. And making it all happen are 15,000 employees who love this company, understand what we do, and are committed to doing it better and better every day. Thank you very much. Your strength of character, and the strength of our operations, will ensure a strong end to this year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101015/nbc-u-perks-up-a-bit-for-its-new-owners/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101001/viral-video-jeff-zucker-gets-zuckered/ http://allthingsd.com/20101001/viral-video-jeff-zucker-gets-zuckered/#comments Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:40:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34677

Yahoo (YHOO) is not the only HR excitement these days!

Here is a very funny spoof of the firing of NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker last week by new owners Comcast (CMCSK), which was on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” late-night television show.

BoomTown interviewed the media mogul at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in 2009, which is also below.

But I kind of like the spoof better than his actual appearance at D7.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101001/viral-video-jeff-zucker-gets-zuckered/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100930/tv-studios-arent-buying-apples-99-cent-rentals/ http://allthingsd.com/20100930/tv-studios-arent-buying-apples-99-cent-rentals/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:05:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=49750 Better run a diagnostic on the reality distortion field….

“We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast,” Steve Jobs said earlier this month of the TV studios wary of its new 99-cent iTunes TV rentals initiative. And while it’s never wise to bet against the Apple CEO, it’s beginning to look like “pretty fast” was an optimistic choice of words. Because in a flurry of public comments recently, a growing number of TV execs have decried the 99-cent rental model, which they say undervalues their content.

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference last week, Viacom (VIA.B) CEO Philippe Dauman said of it, “The 99-cent rental is not a good price point. It doesn’t work for us. We value our content a lot. We don’t think Apple has it quite right yet.”

And during his appearance at the conference, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said pretty much the same thing. “We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content,” he argued. “We thought it would devalue our content.”

Then there was Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman Barry Meyer, who trashed Apple’s (AAPL) effort at the
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch 2010 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. “We just don’t think the value proposition is a good one for us,” Meyer said, adding that he’d rather sell season passes to the studio’s TV series and $1.99 and $2.99 per-episode downloads than “open up a rental business in television at a low price.”

And now Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes has come out against 99-cent iTunes TV rentals. Speaking at the Royal Television Conference in London, Bewkes echoed the comments of his colleagues, warning that the new model Apple’s pushing will threaten sales of TV shows to network television. “How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?” he asked. “These new entrants must meet a few criteria: They must provide consumers with a superior TV experience, and they must either support or improve the overall economics that funds and creates the programming in the first place.”

Early reviews suggest that Apple has met Bewkes’s first criteria, but given the statements above it’s looking like it may take a bit longer than expected to meet the second, or convince the studios that it has.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100930/tv-studios-arent-buying-apples-99-cent-rentals/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100926/meet-the-new-boss-whats-on-steve-burkes-mind-as-he-takes-over-nbc-u/ http://allthingsd.com/20100926/meet-the-new-boss-whats-on-steve-burkes-mind-as-he-takes-over-nbc-u/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 20:55:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=23875

No surprise that Comcast COO Steve Burke would be taking the reins at NBC Universal after the cable company swallowed it up–even though Comcast insisted that wouldn’t be the case. “Jeff Zucker is going to be CEO of the entity,” Burke told BoomTown’s Kara Swisher in June in an onstage interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference.

But now Jeff Zucker is officially out and Burke is officially in, and Comcast (CMCSA) would like us to stop talking about any other comings and goings for a while: “Comcast and GE also said that there will be no additional structural or personnel announcements until the deal closing process and timing is certain,” Comcast insists, via a press release.

But there’s certainly going to be lots of chatter about which NBC U executives stick around in the new, post-GE (GE) regime, and which Comcast officials Burke brings with him, and who he imports from the outside. Stay tuned!

And until then, here’s a look at the Burke, via his sitdown with Swisher at the D8 conference (his insistence that Zucker is staying comes around the 8:50 mark, by the way):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100926/meet-the-new-boss-whats-on-steve-burkes-mind-as-he-takes-over-nbc-u/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100924/comcast-nbc-announce-the-end-of-the-jeff-zucker-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20100924/comcast-nbc-announce-the-end-of-the-jeff-zucker-show/#comments Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:43:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=23843 Not a surprise: NBC U head Jeff Zucker concedes that he will, in fact, step down once Comcast finishes buying his company from GE. The move was obvious to anyone who watched the two companies, but both sides refused to acknowledge it until now. The New York Post says Zucker will get a very golden parachute as he exists–something north of $30 million. Meanwhile, Zucker defends his much-criticized tenure to the New York Times: “The thing I regret most is not moving quickly enough.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100924/comcast-nbc-announce-the-end-of-the-jeff-zucker-show/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100716/nbc-us-ok-quarter-just-fine-for-ge/ http://allthingsd.com/20100716/nbc-us-ok-quarter-just-fine-for-ge/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:12:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=21567 GE doesn’t really care much about NBC Universal, which is why it’s happy to hand it off to Comcast (CMCSA) once regulators sign off. But for the record, the cable/broadcast/movie conglomerate posted an okay quarter: Revenues were up five percent and operating profit was up 13 percent, the company said this morning.

Bear in mind that a year ago, those numbers were down eight percent and 41 percent, respectively. So Jeff Zucker and company are still digging out of a hole. But whatever: Sometime, in the next 12 months or so, this will be come Brian Roberts’ and Steve Burke’s problem.

For the record, here’s how GE (GE) describes the unit’s performance to investors (click image to enlarge). As usual, NBC U’s real star is its cable business, though GE said the NBC broadcast unit had a strong upfront sales cycle, up 18 percent:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100716/nbc-us-ok-quarter-just-fine-for-ge/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100616/nbc-keeps-part-of-the-huluboxee-story-a-secret/ http://allthingsd.com/20100616/nbc-keeps-part-of-the-huluboxee-story-a-secret/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:36:58 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20623 Remember the kerfuffle when Hulu blocked Boxee last year? And remember the slightly smaller kerfuffle when the issue resurfaced earlier this year, during a government inquiry into the Comcast-NBC Universal deal?

It’s not going away. In response to questioning from the Federal Communications Commission, NBC has described its version of the incident.

But the GE (GE) unit doesn’t want everyone to see what it has to say. At NBC’s request, a large chunk of its statement has been redacted.

See for yourself, courtesy of MediaBistro’s Alex Weprin, who has been going through NBC’s filing (click image to enlarge):

The text that NBC hasn’t blacked out is relatively straightforward, and it’s consistent with NBCU boss Jeff Zucker’s comments in February: Hulu blocked Boxee because it streamed Hulu’s content without using Hulu’s wrapper.

And those comments still appear to contradict Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s original position, which is that he blocked Boxee because his “content providers requested” that he do it.

So what about the rest of NBC’s statement, which we can’t see? Got me.

The bigger picture here is that both Comcast (CMCSA) and NBCU need to convince Washington that their proposed merger won’t consolidate enormous power in the hands on one company. Which is of course exactly what the merger is supposed to do.

But one way to appease lawmakers may be some sort of “hands off Hulu” pledge, whereby Comcast promises to leave access to the site unfettered. Question: Is that what NBC’s partners–News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and Providence Equity Partners–have in mind, too?

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times’ excellent Joe Flint notes that NBC has also revealed Hulu’s plans to launch a subscription service. And not surprisingly, it has blacked out that stuff, too. (Luckily, you can read about the broad strokes here).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100616/nbc-keeps-part-of-the-huluboxee-story-a-secret/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100204/boxee-either-jeff-zucker-or-jason-kilar-are-lying-about-booting-us-of-hulu/ http://allthingsd.com/20100204/boxee-either-jeff-zucker-or-jason-kilar-are-lying-about-booting-us-of-hulu/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:21:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=15974 Little Boxee, the much hyped Web video service, played a cameo role at today’s Congressional hearings on the Comcast (CMCSA)-NBCU deal. And as sometimes happens when Boxee and big media intersect, controversy ensued.

The short version: Rep. Rick Boucher, the Virginia Democrat who heads the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, asked NBC head Jeff Zucker about last year’s incident involving Hulu’s effort to bar Boxee from using its feed.

At the time, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said his actions were prompted by his “content owners,” which most people, including me, assumed meant GE’s (GE) NBC and/or News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, the media conglomerates that had invested in the video service.

But today at the hearings, Zucker pointed the finger back at Hulu (full clip at bottom of this post):

This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal. And, you know, all, all the, we have several distributors, actually many distributors of the Hulu content that we have legal distribution deals with so we don’t preclude distribution deals. What we preclude are those who illegally take that content.

In a blog post, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen points out the seeming inconsistency between the two statements–though he’s incorrect in saying that Kilar blamed NBC, because Kilar didn’t actually say that in his original blog post. That makes sense, because Kilar is one careful and cautious dude, which you have to be when you’re running a joint venture that’s now co-owned by three big media conglomerates.

Ronen also restates his general case–that Boxee is not much more than a Web browser, so it’s not taking anyone’s content at all, just displaying it, ads and all. And from what I can tell, that argument is gaining increasing traction among some big media players.

But while I’ve never been able to get a straight answer from Hulu or its owners about the Boxee incident, I do get the sense that it’s one issue that sticks in the collective craw of Hulu managers. So I’m not sure things are going to get resolved anytime soon at that site.

I’ve asked Hulu and NBC for comment and will update if I hear back.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100204/boxee-either-jeff-zucker-or-jason-kilar-are-lying-about-booting-us-of-hulu/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100122/nbc-droops-but-doesnt-blame-its-woes-on-jay-or-conan/ http://allthingsd.com/20100122/nbc-droops-but-doesnt-blame-its-woes-on-jay-or-conan/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:35:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=15441 Assuming that Washington cooperates, GE (GE) will be able to hand off NBC Universal to Comcast (CMCSA) in a year or so. Until then, though, it must briefly acknowledge NBCU in every earnings report, even though investors have no interest in it.

Especially with numbers like these: GE says NBCU’s Q4 revenue dropped four percent, to $4.3 billion, and operating profit declined 30 percent, to $602 million.

Were Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien’s ratings really that bad? Of course not.

NBC’s broadcast revenue was down 1.5 percent, but that was balanced by growth in the company’s cable properties, which were up eight percent. And not that I’m a Jeff Zucker apologist, but when pundits are castigating him for his late-night debacle, they really ought to point out that some parts of the company–the parts that Comcast wants, not coincidentally–have grown considerably during Zucker’s tenure.

In any case, GE blames this quarter’s decline on Hollywood: Its movie division has been low on box office hits, and its DVD group, like most other studios, has been sucking wind.

Here’s GE’s brief description of its business in charticle form (click to enlarge). Note the line about slow recovery in Web ads:

And here’s the best “screw you, NBC” clip I’ve seen from Conan this week. Which, as many Web commenters have noted, is not available on NBC’s Web site or via Hulu. But given that NBC has been fairly vigilant about pulling down unauthorized clips it doesn’t want on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, the network can’t be that upset about this one, which you can find all over the site:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100122/nbc-droops-but-doesnt-blame-its-woes-on-jay-or-conan/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100112/is-nbcs-jay-leno-disaster-good-news-for-time-warner/ http://allthingsd.com/20100112/is-nbcs-jay-leno-disaster-good-news-for-time-warner/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:11:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=15012 Here’s a take I hadn’t considered on NBC’s Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien debacle: Good news for Time Warner!

So says JP Morgan’s (JPM) Imran Khan. He predicts that Jeff Zucker’s screwup is good news for Jeff Bewkes since Time Warner makes a lot of “scripted programming,” and that’s what NBC will need to replace Leno at 10 pm.

The whole point of moving Leno to 10 pm, recall, was to save money on “scripted programming”–what you and I call “shows that aren’t reality shows.”

But it’s not as if NBC stopped running scripted shows altogether, and at max, the network is going to need an additional five hours a week. Khan says this will represent “incremental spending” for Time Warner (TWX), but it’s not as if NBC’s pressure to save on programming costs is going to go away. And even if the network buys all of five of those hours from Time Warner, it’s hard to see how that does much for a company that generated revenue of $6.3 billion last quarter (not counting AOL).

Khan also thinks the same logic means bad news for Disney (DIS) and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox because increased demand for nonreality shows “could result in higher talent and production costs.”

Again, this seems like a stretch: It seems like the lesson to draw from all this isn’t that expensive programming is good, but that bad programming is bad.

And as ad dollars inevitably leach out from TV to the Web, the pressure on all the networks will be to keep their viewers’ eyeballs while spending less on content. The real winners will be the ones who figure out how to make good stuff cheaply.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/is-nbcs-jay-leno-disaster-good-news-for-time-warner/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100111/viral-video-late-night-debacle-make-for-good-jokes-at-least/ http://allthingsd.com/20100111/viral-video-late-night-debacle-make-for-good-jokes-at-least/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:22:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22781

Although BoomTown completely enjoyed having dinner with entertainment agency overlord Ari Emanuel last week–hey, it was a Hollywood party at the Consumer Electronics Show, so name-dropping is required–I have little interest in the money and scheduling machinations that broke out last week over NBC Universal’s late-night television talk shows.

But I do love the roundelay of online videos this Tinseltown mess has created.

It all has to do with Jay Leno stinking up the joint in his newish 10 pm time slot, which has caused NBC affiliates to revolt, which–in turn–has sent broadcast network execs into a decided chicken-with-its-head-cut-off panic.

Thus, their big and cloddish idea to reschedule Leno back to late night, while trying to hipcheck Conan O’Brien from his 11:35 pm perch, all without incurring a big contract penalty fee. Jimmy Fallon, who comes on after O’Brien, is also part of the shovefest, as is after-Fallon host Carson Daly.

And, of course, all of them got to comment on all of this on–yes–the late-night comedy routines that open their shows.

Here are Leno and O’Brien riffing on the silly crisis–as well as ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel weighing in with Daly’s help–at the GE (GE) unit that was just bought by Comcast (CMCSA).

And below is an interview I did with NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last May talking about a range of topics, including what a brilliant idea it was going to be to move Leno to an earlier, five-night-a-week slot.

Not so much, Jeff!

But enjoy the ensuing videos:

LENO

O’BRIEN

KIMMEL/DALY

ZUCKER

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100111/viral-video-late-night-debacle-make-for-good-jokes-at-least/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091203/why-comcast-will-stay-hands-off-hulu-for-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20091203/why-comcast-will-stay-hands-off-hulu-for-now/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:16:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13517 Hulu and its broadcast TV owners have been pretty clear about their interest in creating a premium/subscription offering for the free site. Conventional wisdom is that we’ll see something early next year.

Does Comcast (CMCSA) have other plans? COO Steve Burke made it seem so this morning, when he told analysts that a “Hulu Premium” was “certainly not in the cards.”

An odd comment to make given that 1) Team Hulu’s premium plans didn’t slow down once news of the GE (GE)/Comcast deal broke, and 2) Comcast won’t own NBC, and thus its stake in Hulu, for another year or so.

Burke did go out of his way to say that he liked NBCU’s strategy of putting its broadcast shows up for free via Hulu, while keeping cable programming, which it sells to people like Comcast (CMCSA), more or less off of the Web.*

Of course he does! That’s the rationale behind the company’s “On Demand Online” plan, whereby cable programming is offered on the Web only to cable subscribers.

I asked Burke to clear this up during a media Q&A call this morning and he gave me an extended nonanswer/walk-back that amounted to something like actually, you know, we don’t actually own NBC, so we don’t have anything to do with Hulu, which we think is great, by the way. And then he kicked the question to NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, who offered up a nonanswer of his own about not wanting to discuss roadmaps, etc.

My hunch here: Burke would like a mulligan on this one. And Hulu’s short-term plans haven’t changed at all.

But down the road, things may very well get interesting: For starters, note that NBC’s exclusive Web licensing deal with Hulu (which is actually only sort of exclusive, but more on that later) expires in the spring of 2011, which could be within a few months of the close of the Comcast deal. And recall that Comcast was one the parties hollering loudly at Disney (DIS) not to sign on with Hulu earlier this year.

Still, I’d be surprised if Comcast makes a major overhaul with Hulu as soon as it gets a chance. The company is going to spend the next year promising politicians and voters that it’s not going to use its clout to cut off anyone’s access to anything. So to pull back on a wildly popular Web site would make for difficult optics, as they say.

At first, that is.

Related note: I can sadly confirm that Comcast does indeed intend to rebrand its awkwardly named “On Demand Online” service, which is supposed to roll out nationwide within weeks, with the infinitely worse “Xfinity” moniker.

As in “Fancast Xfinity TV” and “Xfinity.com,” as Broadcasting & Cable first reported last night.

Ugh. All I can say is that I used to refer to the whole thing as “Web TV You’ll Need to Pay to See” and got guff from the folks in Philly, who thought that was misleading. But it’s accurate, and it is way, way better than the new option.

*Sort of: NBC keeps most of its cable offerings off of Hulu, but not off of the Web. You can’t see last night’s episode of “Top Chef” (Goodbye, Jen!) on the joint-venture site, but you can see it on NBC-owned Bravo’s site.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091203/why-comcast-will-stay-hands-off-hulu-for-now/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091203/live-comcast-pitches-nbc-deals-to-investors-with-charts/ http://allthingsd.com/20091203/live-comcast-pitches-nbc-deals-to-investors-with-charts/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:35:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13480 Comcast investors have been upset with the company ever since its plans to acquire control of NBC Universal from GE appeared in September. Now’s the time for the company to start wooing them back (at least publicly).

On the call: Comcast (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts, COO Steve Burke, CFO Michael Angelakis

CEO Brian Roberts: The deal will make us “strategically complete.” [Translation: We promise not buy anything else!]

Obligatory praise for Jeff Zucker for “completely transforming NBC into one of the premier cable operators in the business,” which is the same way Zucker likes to describe himself.

This deal is so incredibly easy for us to finance that we’re increasing our dividend by 40 percent. [Also, we're doing this with both hands tied behind our back!]

CFO Michael Angelakis: If you get confused, there’s an appendix at the end of our presentation.

Did you know that Fandango is a “female-oriented” site? Me either.

Comcast has a “clear path to control” the joint venture by buying out GE’s (GE) interest, but future payouts are capped at $5.75 billion.

Debt ratings agencies have signed off on this, so don’t worry. They never get this wrong.

Roberts: Can’t stress this enough: We’re not buying a faltering film company and a flailing broadcaster; we’re buying a bunch of profitable cable channels. Cable channels. Cable channels.

Also, we’re buying at the bottom of the cycle, so some of the duds that we’re buying may end up having upside.

[Roberts is right about this, by the way: Networks really do rise and fall over time, almost independently of what management does. Remember ABC's peril in the pre-“Lost" era?]

Oh yeah. There are some theme parks, too.

Okay. Back to the deal: Cable channels, cable channels, cable channels. They are great. We love them. Affiliate fees are growing 12 percent a year, ad sales are up seven percent a year. Check out the awesome slide on page 19. “I think this is a wow slide” (see below).

Some more praise for Zucker.

COO Steve Burke: Cable channels. Cable channels. Cable channels. We love the ones we own, but they’re “subscale” compared to what we’re buying from GE.

We’re going to cross-promote the heck out of these and figure out how to make G, Style and Versus more valuable, like NBCU does with Bravo, etc.

[We're about 40 minutes into the call, and this is the first discussion about the Web.] The JV will be a Top 10 company with 82 million uniques.

At least for now, Comcast is still talking about “On Demand Online,” not XTREME ONLINE RAWKS or whatever the company is supposedly going to call it.

Q&A:

Can you give us more color on new businesses you may create once you combine? Also, what are you going to sell off?

Burke: There are “literally dozens of innovative ideas that come out of this combination.” Like interactive advertising. Targeting, etc. (via cable, not Web). We can launch new channels, new video-on-demand packages, more windows. A lot of opportunities.

Roberts: We don’t plan on selling anything. But “we have a long time between signing and closing” to learn about the assets we’re buying.

A lot of people have tried vertical integrations like this and they haven’t worked. What’s going on here? Also, how are you going to work with businesses like Hulu, which threaten your business?

Roberts: Some of these have worked. Think of [Liberty Media Chairman] John Malone’s deals. Or Time Warner (TWX) buying Turner. Or even News Corp. (NWS) and DirecTV. Anyway, that’s the past. Let’s look to the future. More important is that we believe this deal works with zero synergy benefits. [That's for you, Jeff Bewkes.]

[Um, anyone else get bumped off the call? Nope, just me. Apologies, will go get the Hulu the rest of Roberts's answer later, but I'm guess it was something along the lines of "we love Hulu and have no intent to crush it like a bug, and besides, we're one of three networks that will own it."]

Please explain how you’ll negotiate for, say, the Olympics and other assets when you don’t actually own NBC yet.

Roberts: [GE CEO] Jeff [Immelt] and Jeff [Zucker] will have to run their business until the deal closes.

What about regulatory hassles?

Roberts: No worries. This is a “pro-consumer transaction.” And check out all the things we said to that effect earlier this morning.

Burke: Both local advertising and national advertising are recovering. An analyst notes that GE has never told us much about NBCU because it hasn’t had to. So we’re going to get a much better look at how the business works going forward.

Why are you sticking your regional sports deals into this joint venture? Also, why not just hand the money you’re spending on this deal back to investors, via share buybacks?

Burke (I think): When you think of sports, its hard not to think of NBC Sports and Dick Ebersol [ahem]. Also, we think there’s some synergy with some of NBC’s local broadcast stations.

Angelakis (I think): We’ve already bought back $14 billion worth of stock in six years, and we’ll keep buying back stock. Also, check out our dividend. But we need a balance. This deal gives us financial returns and long-term strategic returns.

Roberts (I think): The timing is good. Size is appropriate–we can handle it. “You gotta like the business….We think it’s a reasonable risk. That’s what we’ve always done at Comcast.”

As for regulatory risk, if Washington wants us to make a really really serious change that blows up the rationale for doing this, we have the ability to back out. But we don’t think that’s going to happen. “Is there a break-up fee?” the questioner asks. Answer: No.

What does this mean for TV Everywhere/On Demand Online? (and Hulu)?

Burke: NBC has been careful not to put too much cable content on the Internet. We think that’s a smart strategy, “not that they asked us.” We think that going forward, you’re going to continue to have free broadcast stuff on Hulu, and cable stuff on TV Everywhere.

Roberts: Windows in general, our focus has been on expanding offerings, putting them on multiple platforms. All of those things are more likely to occur in a way that benefits distributors, content owners and consumers. “What about Hulu premium?” the questioner asks. Answer: “That’s certainly not in the cards.”

Here’s Comcast’s pitch in chart form:

ComcastNewPDF_12.3.09 –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091203/live-comcast-pitches-nbc-deals-to-investors-with-charts/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091117/karmazin-comcast-nbc/ http://allthingsd.com/20091117/karmazin-comcast-nbc/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:31:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=29167 Good thing Comcast (CMCSA) and General Electric (GE) plan to name NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker as head of their proposed joint venture, because Sirius XM (SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin doesn’t want the job. Not that he wouldn’t be a good candidate to run a merged Comcast-NBCU. Because as Karmazin himself told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto, he’d be an excellent choice.

“There would be no question that I would be perfect to run it,” Karmazin said. “But there is no chance that I will ever take another job outside of Sirius XM. I just renewed my contract. It’s exactly what I want.”

Exactly what he wants, except maybe for that perennially-under-a-dollar share price–though according to Karmazin, that’s going to change. “I think today, you’ll start to see quarter after quarter of growth,” he said. “You’ll see us making free cash flow. You’ll see us with…over $2.5 billion of revenue. We’ll start to make money, and we’ll start to keep investing in content. And I think our future will be great.”

Unassuming guy, that Karmazin…

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091117/karmazin-comcast-nbc/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091116/waiting-for-vivendi-comcast-nbc-u-deal-needs-a-oui/ http://allthingsd.com/20091116/waiting-for-vivendi-comcast-nbc-u-deal-needs-a-oui/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:10:40 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12979 When will Comcast and GE’s NBCU finally unveil their hook-up plans? When Vivendi says they can.

The former French water utility has the ability to hold up the deal due to its 20 percent stake in NBCU and a put option that gives it the right to sell the stake back to back to GE (GE), hang on to it or take the thing public.

There’s no reason for Vivendi to do anything but the first option, but the company is not going to come out and say so, which means that negotiations for GE to buy the stake aren’t going as fast as it or Comcast (CMCSA) would like. Vivendi itself wrote down the value of the stake by a few billion earlier this year, but that was then, and this is now. New York Post:

The deal, which many assumed would be announced today, is being held up because Vivendi is playing hardball in its negotiations with GE, said several sources close to the deal.

“They’re trying to squeeze every nickel they can out of GE,” said one of these sources. “Why wouldn’t they?”

But again, there’s no reason for this deal not to get done, and Vivendi itself made a strong case for it on Friday by announcing plans to spend some $4 billion on Brazilian telecom GVT. The proceeds of a $6 billion sale sure could come in handy for that, no?

While we’re at it: I wouldn’t read all that much into reports that Comcast plans to appoint current NBCU head Jeff Zucker to run the new business. Perhaps they really do. But even if Comcast didn’t, it would have no choice but to say it does. Remember that any deal will take a very long time to clear regulatory review and that someone has to keep running NBCU in the meantime. This stuff will get more meaningful when we’re closer to showtime.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091116/waiting-for-vivendi-comcast-nbc-u-deal-needs-a-oui/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091016/nbc-cleans-up-its-act-for-comcast-earnings-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20091016/nbc-cleans-up-its-act-for-comcast-earnings-up/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:27:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12123 After a couple of miserable quarters, NBC Universal and Jeff Zucker finally have some good news to announce: Earnings actually increased in Q3, even though the entertainment conglomerate’s revenue kept dropping.

The numbers, via parent company GE’s (GE) release this morning: NBCU posted a $732 million operating profit, up 13 percent year over year, on revenue of $4 billion, which is down 20 percent. Important footnote: As GE explained during its earnings call, if you adjust NBCU’s performance for one-time gains, operating profit would actually be down nine percent.

Still, even that result is an improvement over previous quarters. So perhaps those numbers will cheer Comcast investors, who have been beating up the cable company ever since news of its talks to buy NBCU surfaced last month.

GE usually spends very little time discussing NBCU’s performance during its earnings calls, since investors are much more concerned with the rest of the company’s performance, and in particular, its troubled finance arm. But perhaps the pending Comcast (CMCSA) deal will change that this time around.

Some notes from the earnings call: GE CEO Jeff Immelt has joined the “recession is over” crowd, but only mentioned NBCU briefly during his opening statement. He says scatter pricing–ads that marketers buy during the TV season, as opposed to the spring “upfronts”–is “better.”

GE booked a $283 million one-time gain from the sale of some of its stake in the A&E cable channel. And it took charges on write-downs related to its stake in NDTV, its Indian TV investment, as well as the Weather Channel, which it bought alongside some private equity groups for $3.5 billion last year. But the company still ends up $89 million ahead in the one-time events column–the equivalent of a penny per share of earnings.

And as the company explains in the table below, if you take out the one-time gains, NBCU’s quarterly profit increase turns into a loss. This is a reverse of previous quarters, when the company told investors to ignore one-time losses that made horrible earnings look even worse.

More color on the scatter market: CFO Keith Sherin says Q4 pricing is up “double digits” for primetime TV spots, and more than 20 percent for cable TV.

Asked a vague question about the proposed NBCU deal, Immelt gave a vague answer, noting that while “NBCU is a great franchise that’s consistently delivered income growth and cash…we always evaluate our portfolio.” He then suggested that GE doesn’t need to sell NBCU, which is the right thing to say. “We just want to be ready for several scenarios….We don’t have a specific pronouncement, or a specific need for cash.”

Here’s GE’s broad-stroke description of NBCU’s quarter (click to enlarge):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091016/nbc-cleans-up-its-act-for-comcast-earnings-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090804/yahoo-microsoft-regulatory-filings-begin-this-week-let-the-legal-game-playing-begin/ http://allthingsd.com/20090804/yahoo-microsoft-regulatory-filings-begin-this-week-let-the-legal-game-playing-begin/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:01:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=16965

After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn’t deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.

That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.

According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.

When it was unveiled last Wednesday, the companies said Microsoft (MSFT) will run search technology for the two, while Yahoo (YHOO) will sell the premium search advertising.

That SEC filing could answer a number of questions some still have about the deal, such as whether there is a large break-up fee that Microsoft would pay Yahoo in case the deal is scuttled.

That’s just the outcome that Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to avoid.

“We think of it as an outreach effort to explain how we are creating a strong No. 2 to Google,” said one source close to the situation. “The main goal will be to show that a better competitor in the marketplace is a good thing.”

While the companies are prepping for opposition from Google (GOOG), sources close to the thinking at the dominant search company said it is more likely to be muted and indirect.

That’s especially true since a MicroHoo makes Google–currently under a lot more government scrutiny than ever before–look like less of a bully.

Thus, Google’s tactics would entail less direct statements and more pointing out the discrepancies between what Microsoft said when Google tried to get approval for a search deal with Yahoo last year and what it argues now.

“They will probably not be that obvious, but they will be there still,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to me, in an off-hand remark at the software giant’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.

It’s a game of legal chicken that Ballmer knows well.

Already, for example, Microsoft and Yahoo execs have been aggressively reaching out to major publishers and advertisers to get their staunch support.

That included calls immediately after the deal was announced last Wednesday to such execs as Martin Sorrell of the WPP Group (WPPGY) and Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal, a unit of GE (GE).

In Washington, D.C., both companies have legions of lawyers to try to make sure the Justice Department, which will review the case due to its antitrust implications, has all the information it might need.

And, more to the point, they want to avoid the debacle that took place when Yahoo and Google tried to get approval for their failed deal last year.

That deal was ended by Google after it became clear that Justice was going to fight it by arguing that top search companies hooking up hurt competition and stifled innovation.

In addition, there might be Congressional scrutiny, with possible hearings, similar to those held when the Yahoogle deal was pending, such as in the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee.

And, of course, there are actually independent groups concerned and they have also been in contact with regulators.

“There are questions that must be answered regarding the collection and sharing of consumer data by the two companies,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a D.C.-based group that works to promote consumer privacy and protection online, in a statement last week. “While the rationale for the deal is to provide some much needed competition to Google (and income for Yahoo), the further consolidation of the global digital advertising system should be a concern to Internet users, privacy advocates, online marketers, and competition regulators.”

Sources said Microsoft and Yahoo also plan to petition regulators in the European Union this week, which is likely to be most concerned about privacy issues involved in their union.

They will also be doing the same in other key countries worldwide, such as Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.

And, finally, given how involved state attorneys general became in beaching the Yahoo deal to partner with Google, they also will be starting outreach to key states, such as California, where Silicon Valley-based Yahoo is headquartered.

“Once again, it will be the Lawyer Employment Act of 2009,” joked one person close to the deal. “At least, that shows there is some economic benefit to this deal already.”

While we all wait in breathless regulatory anticipation, here are interviews I did at last year’s Senate hearings on Yahoogle, with lawyers from Google (David Drummond), Microsoft (Brad Smith) and Yahoo (Mike Callahan).

Incredibly, they are the very same lawyers who will be pretzeling themselves in entirely different shapes than they pretzeled themselves a year ago.

I would expect nothing less!

Here’s the video:

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