Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Jan 30, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The biggest television service provider of the United States, Comcast has closed the deal with NBC Universal, to finally acquire the latter, after thirteen months of negotiation, that started in December 2009. The agreement value of this big deal is something around 30 billion dollars.

Reportedly, Comcast will be commanding over 51 percent of NBC’s share, while the remaining 49 percent will be retained by General Electric (GE), that initially owned 80 percent of its shares. Along with NBC, Comcast has also taken the control over twenty-four cable channels and movie studio, the theme park named NBC Universal LLC and Telemundo networks. Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive said that this deal will create an “Ideal entertainment and distribution company”. On the other hand, Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE said that this deal will be extremely beneficial for the media giant as it would allow GE to continue to be a part of NBCU’s growth, while at the same time, the media giant will receive enough financial benefits from Comcast, and improvise on its technology and productivity. However Federal Communications Commission has put certain restrictions on Comcast. They cannot have the rights over films and shows produced by NBC Universal and “The Office”. By imposing this limitation, the huge media giant can continue to serve the 23 million cable TV customers with enough liberty, without being answerable to the parent company.

However, since Comcast and NBC are now merged, some people are under the impression that this business venture, between the two largest companies would now control both information and the way people would receive it. According to Josh Silver, the president of Free Press, Comcast-NBC can block competition and pacify innovations and “independent opposition viewpoint”.