The Comcast/NBCU Split (Part 1 of 3): This Is Fine. Actually...Is This Fine?
Comcast is setting NBCU and Sky loose to compete as a standalone entertainment middle power. But — assuming it ever even happens — is that actually good news for the company and its employees?
Like many of you, I’m sure, I woke up on Monday morning thinking to myself, “Gee, has it only been 123 days since the last industry-transformational corporate reorganization was announced?”
How lucky for all of us, then, that Comcast was there to save us the boredom of a 124th day of relative quiet, peace, and stability, with its announcement that — just six months clear of having ejected most of its inexorably declining (but, for the time being, still quite cash-generative) cable assets into Versant1 — it would spin off its NBCUniversal and Sky units into a new debt-laden standalone publicly-traded company (in which Comcast could retain up to a 19.9% equity stake).
My immediate reaction, if I’m being honest, was smug satisfaction, as I thought back to this passage from Part 4 of my Paramount/Warner Bros. series back in March:
I wouldn’t be surprised if, with hindsight, Comcast’s decision to largely sit this one out turns out to have been an early signal of having decided that the content business isn’t strategic for the company anymore.2 If that were the case, I would expect them to package up and ship off their entire remaining content business as a new standalone entity (in which they could retain certain levels of ownership and operational control) — much as they just did with Versant, the new standalone entity into which Comcast/NBCUniversal recently spun off most of its declining linear cable assets.
In the original post, that prediction appeared immediately following my acknowledgment that my last big prognostication about Comcast — “that I expected Comcast to eventually make a move on Warner Bros., likely at Zaslav’s (repeated) invitation, and possibly to spin off its own NBCUniversal content unit into a newly combined entity with Warner Bros. Discovery that would be loaded with debt taken off the Comcast books” — had turned out to be a big whiff.3
For that reason, I think it’s fair if I now indulge myself in a quick:
Among people without such specific, petty, and ego-driven interests in this news as my own, however, I’ve found reactions to be noticeably more muted, and intriguingly more varied, than we’ve seen with most of the other marquee M&A&S4 blockbusters of the last several years. People are…pretty chill, right? Plenty of speculation, but unusually un-obsessive, with few strong opinions. But, facing a surprisingly placid, fragmented, and disengaged audience during what should be a banner week for ad revenue, I’ve also seen some toasty takes in the trade press that I think fundamentally misjudge the significance5 of what’s happening here.
My prediction about Comcast’s “quiet quitting” from the entertainment industry was included in my four-part series about the Warner Bros./Paramount merger, which ran during The Business of Television Max(+)’s launch week in March 2026. That series featured much of what has come to distinguish this Substack — the discursive footnotes, the willingness to write about prominent people and institutions without concern for the effect on my own future employment prospects, and my unintended habit of turning virtually every topic into a multi-part series.6 So you shouldn’t be surprised when I now say:
Welcome to my three-part series on Comcast’s spinoff of NBCUniversal!
In today’s Part 1, I’m going to talk about the people that I think are — generally for very understandable reasons, sometimes even for admirable ones — underreacting to today’s news, and why I think they should probably be steeling themselves a bit more for what likely comes next.
In Monday’s Part 2, I’ll turn my attention to the overreactors who think that this news means “medium is the new big” in corporate scaling, before sharing my own opinions of what to make (and not to make) of Comcast’s unexpected announcement. (Preview: I don’t think you’ll be too surprised.)
And in next Thursday’s Part 3, I’ll consider the major candidates to buy or be bought by the newly independent NBCU, and share my best guess for its ultimate fate. (Preview: I think you’re going to be surprised, and that you’re going to hate it.)
NBCU Spinoff Underreaction #1: This Is Fine
Given my prediction in March, I wasn’t surprised by Comcast’s announcement of its plan to spin off NBCU and Sky. I was quite surprised, however, when I checked in with a few friends at Uni and found that the mood there is nowhere near as existential or bleak as I expected (and am used to hearing from insiders at times like this). As far as I’ve seen, employee sentiment has ranged from “Sure, why not, it’s better than getting sold to Netflix” to “Sure, why not, it’s better than buying WB would have been” to “This is fine.”
And yes, of course, that’s “This is fine” with a nod to this timeless Internet classic:
But can you blame the employees of NBCUniversal — or pretty much anywhere else — for kind of being half-dead about the whole thing at this point? It’s hard to find any major company that hasn’t at some point been a potential buyer, or a potential seller, or both. And as I observed in the March post I quoted earlier, an employee who started at Warner Bros. in 1990 or earlier and somehow survived long enough to retire after the pending “WarnerMount” deal closes will have incredibly and improbably survived seven different major mergers and ownership changes with their job intact.^ It’s easy to understand how they end up at a place of “Just tell me when the meetings are where I find out who my boss is, who my division head is, and whether or not I’m fired.”
^ Fun side-note: In that article, I also expressed my doubt that there was anyone left at WB who had been there that long, and my expectation that, if such a person did exist, “he or she probably works in some very practical, underappreciated, and likely blue collar position in studio facilities, administration, security, maintenance, or the like.” Just a few weeks later, I discovered in a Richard Rushfield piece on The Ankler that I was wrong on both counts! That week had featured an appearance at CinemaCon by WB’s President of Global Distribution Jeff Goldstein, who “started as an intern and has worked in Burbank for 40 years.” Cheers to you, Jeff — you have an incredibly lucrative second career as an executive coach in front of you, if you want it, once you finally decide to retire as a full-time exec.7
^^ Bonus side-note #1: You can tell how much I loved this detail because I, of all people, chose to include it here in the main body text as a “side-note,” rather than risk it getting lost in an unread footnote. It feels…wrong. Necessary, but wrong.
^^^ Bonus side-note #2: Readers using a web browser on their desktop or laptop computer can see each footnote in a small window over the body text by hovering their mouse cursor over the superscript number. Readers on the Substack app can also preview footnotes in a small pop-up box, without scrolling, by tapping on the numbers in the text. (They’re worth it.)
World-weary as that may sound, I think it’s actually pretty wise for employees to somewhat divorce themselves, both emotionally and intellectually, from grand processes and outcomes that they can’t predict, much less control. That isn’t to say that employees should be indifferent about those processes and outcomes. But it’s also healthy to recognize that, in the face of such chaos and uncertainty, no one really knows which scenario will actually play out best for them in the end — or what “best” will even turn out to mean.
To be clear, though, maintaining a healthy, humble, and sanguine attitude about transformational change doesn’t mean that it isn’t transformational change. Saving the worrying about the impact on you and your business for after you’ve learned what you actually have to worry about is sensible and mature, but the impact will come.
I think there are a lot of plausible final outcomes here — more on that in Part 3 next Thursday — and any number of ways it could turn out in terms of how immediate, dramatic, and traumatic the impacts would be for NBCU and its employees. Prolonged discomfort, distraction, and uncertainty are guaranteed. But how much more uncomfortable, distracted, and uncertain than the recent baseline? Could be a little, could be a lot.
If that sentiment feels disappointingly lukewarm, then let me remind you that, not even four months ago, I addressed the employees of Warner Bros. Discovery in a section titled “To The Employees of Warner Bros. Discovery: I’m Really Sorry but This Is Going to Suck.” You’ve got to admit, it’s getting better.8
NBCU Spinoff Underreaction #2: This Is Good
NBCUniversal has been viewed as a bastion of relative stability over the last several years, and rightly so.9 Its financial condition and performance have been steadier than most, it has never seemed as vulnerable to bigger competitors, or as functionally out of control of its own destiny, as many of its once-proud rivals, and it has never made it past the exploratory stages of any major M&A&S10 transaction.11 That sounds like a company that has a fighting chance out there, right?
The Ankler’s Rich Rushfield has gone even further than “this is fine” — all the way, in fact, to “this is actually pretty good!” I’ve always been struck by the familiar stubbornly hopeful streak running through Rushfield’s frequently acerbic and exasperated commentary about the industry.12 When the industry’s leaders yet again make a decision that proves our worst assumptions about them, he is never surprised, but always disappointed. Even so, I was quite surprised to see that, while he acknowledged an initial reflexive sense of dread, Rushfield optimistically welcomed the return to the market of a genuine, reasonably well-scaled (by contemporary standards), standalone media and entertainment company — fully committed to its own business, and liberated from its corporate ghetto within a broader technology or infrastructure behemoth that has bigger things to worry about on its balance sheet.
But to be optimistic about NBCU’s prospects as an independent company because of its recent relative stability and resilience is to underestimate the extent to which NBCU has owed that relative stability and resilience to its lack of independence.
Simply put, NBCU has been somewhat sheltered from market forces that hit its competitors much harder — including growing investor skepticism/antipathy toward traditional content businesses — because of its position as a subsidiary component of a bigger infrastructure business. Not unlike the cable network businesses that were spun off into Versant, Comcast’s core broadband/pay TV business may be in long-term secular decline, but it still generates large and predictable revenue. And it does so in what has historically been a pretty stable and minimally competitive industry — you might remember that, in 2014, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts defended a proposed combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable against antitrust concerns by arguing, “They’re in New York. We’re in Philadelphia. They’re in LA. We’re in San Francisco. You can’t buy a Comcast in New York. You can’t buy a Time Warner in Philadelphia. So there’s no reduction in competition in broadband or in television.”13 All of that has substantially reduced pressure on and scrutiny of the performance of NBCU in isolation over the last few turbulent years.
The last thing I want to do is try to convince somebody who is currently feeling happy and confident about the industry to just succumb to the existential dread with the rest of us. But Rich and I clearly have fundamentally different opinions about the benefits of an entertainment and media company trying to “make it on its own” out there, at least as a publicly traded company. As I’ve argued elsewhere, I believe that the realities of the entertainment industry have never held up well against the expectations of the institutional investors. Rather, it seems to me that our industry’s most vibrant and celebrated eras have been those in which its major powers were largely owned and operated either as the personal playthings of wealthy moguls14 or as weirdo subsidiaries of much larger diversified conglomerates.15
In other words, I don’t view the severing of NBCU’s relationship with Comcast as breaking NBCU’s chains; I view it as removing NBCU’s corporate security blanket.
Of course, all of that only really matters if you assume, as Rushfield evidently does, that NBCU/Sky’s next phase will be as a standalone entertainment and media company in substantially its current form. But I’m far from alone in doubting it. Rather, I think we will look back at this week’s announcement not as the beginning of NBCU/Sky’s new era, but as the start of a bigger process (and the prelude to a bigger deal) that will truly define what the next era will look like — for NBCU and Sky and their employees, and for the industry as a whole.
Happy Fourth of July! There’s a lot to criticize about the culture of the entertainment industry, but if there’s one thing we should all be able to celebrate about that culture, it’s our collective commitment to turning any 3-day weekend into a 4-day weekend. Possibly a 5-day one. Maybe even a 9-day one? So stay ambitious, folks, and enjoy a well-earned holiday break! I’ll see you next week for Part 2, in which I’ll turn my attention from critiquing those who I think aren’t freaking out enough about this news, to critiquing those who I think are freaking out too much.
In the months leading up to its official spinoff on January 2, 2026, I often heard the not-yet-named Versant — comprising USA, SYFY, CNBC, the Golf Channel, and, of course, MS NOW (which, as a rebrand…well, it’s not like I can come up with anything better) — referred to derisively as “ShitCo.” I initially thought that this was just a weirdly aggressive and crude nickname, which I found to be grating and distasteful, that sprang out of the widespread and persistently bleak mood around the industry. In fact, I later learned, it’s a weirdly aggressive and crude nickname, which I find to be grating and distasteful, that is common slang among finance bros for such spinoffs. Personally, I liked to call it “IceFloeCo.” (Fun aside: NBCUniversal is reportedly still handling Versant’s ad sales under a multi-year commercial agreement, which strikes me as a very Hollywood-appropriate way to get divorced — continue to split access to (and the cost of) the hired help while the person who’s moving out finds a new household staff.)
[FN in Original] Yes, I recognize that Comcast submitted its own bid for Warner Bros. in fall 2025. But its pursuit of the deal was rather half-hearted and brief, with [then-]Comcast President [now Co-CEO] Mike Cavanagh later all but admitting that the company knew its offer was weak and that he never expected to seriously compete for the prize. It may also be telling that Comcast only made its perfunctory offer after arguably passing up its chance to preempt a bidding war altogether. Had Comcast been truly motivated to secure Warner Bros., it could have submitted a time-limited bid in early 2025, when (a) Netflix, which had only been speculated about as a potential acquirer, had not yet publicly declared (or even tactically leaked word of) its intentions; and (b) Ellison, whose long-term designs on Warner Bros. were no secret, may have found it financially or politically impossible to compete (or bid at all) while still seeking regulatory approval for his pending takeover of Paramount. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure, but it’s certainly plausible that Comcast could have acquired Warner Bros. Discovery for a fraction of what Paramount eventually paid, had it made its move 6 to 12 months sooner.
This prediction appeared in the Conclusion of my book’s 2024 second edition.
“Mergers & Acquisitions & Spinoffs.” (Why is this not a thing?)
“Significance” in the sense of both “something that is conveyed as a meaning often obscurely or indirectly” and “the quality of being important.”
Which at least keeps the pieces shorter for you!
If you know of anyone left in Hollywood who has been continuously employed at a single intact conglomerate longer than WB’s Jeff Goldstein, I want to know about them! Leave your tip in the comments, or contact me at tbot.max@gmail.com.
John, singing backup: “It can’t get no worse.”
I have to emphasize: “relative stability.” Just ask your friends whose jobs didn’t survive the combination of Universal Content (née Cable) Productions (“UCP”) and Universal International Studios (“UIS”) into the new Universal Global Television. Or the ones who are still there, but now waiting for the seemingly inevitable follow-up merger of Universal Global Television with the company’s flagship Universal Television (“UTV”) studio (which may or may not also include folding in the terribly-named unscripted-focused Universal Television Alternative Studio), and/or the takeover of the whole thing by the cadre of former top-level Viacom/Paramount executives recently hired by Universal in anticipation of the arrival of Yellowstone-verse moguls Taylor Sheridan and 101 Studios in January 2029. Like I said: relative stability.
I’m making this a thing.
But they did manage to substantially drive up the price that Disney would have to pay — and therefore the amount of debt it would have to take on — to acquire most of Fox. I imagine they considered that one to be a pretty good win.
I also wonder if he, like me, would say that he is stubbornly hopeful “despite himself,” or that he alternatingly finds that unquenchable spark to be a source of pride and a source of misery, depending on the day.
More than a decade later, I am still gobsmacked by the audacity of arguing that regulators need not worry about the anticompetitive impact of combining the two largest existing players in broadband internet and cable television — industries with a very limited number of competitors and extremely high barriers to entry for new ones — because the companies being merged had already functionally colluded to divvy up the marketplace geographically and stay out of direct competition with one another anyhow. Bravo.
Hello, Mr. Ellison.
Hi there, Amazon and Apple.