<\/p>\n
I hope everyone had a happy Fourth of July in America, celebrating the country\u2019s 250th birthday. Frankly, I am bummed the 250th wasn\u2019t a bigger celebration, but that\u2019s a different topic for a different Substack.<\/p>\n
While it was generally a quiet week on the entertainment\/streaming\/media business fronts, we still had some interesting news stories. Actually, that kinda undersells one of the stories, a huge, huge, huge divestment that could upend the entertainment landscape…<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s get right to it. In today\u2019s column, I\u2019ll cover Comcast spinning off the rest of NBCUniversal, an entertainment company investing in an LLM company and an LLM-owner investing in a movie studio, the latest round of threats of digital tariffs, and more.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n
If I had to describe my reaction to Comcast spinning out NBCUniversal, it feels like a relationship ending, either breaking up or divorcing. Comcast\u2019s decision to spin off the rest of NBCUniversal, after spinning off some of its cable assets into Versant last year, really does feel like a family breaking up under \u201cirreconcilable differences\u201d.<\/p>\n
Of my stereotypes of the entertainment moguls, my go-to for Comcast CEO Brian Roberts\u2014heir to the Comcast fortune, but a man who\u2019s been at the helm for 24 years now, and president for twelve years before that\u2014is that he likes building empires. He cut his teeth acquiring cable rivals in the 1990s and tried to buy Disney repeatedly, then settled for NBCUniversal after a long court battle. (Contrast this with Rupert Murdoch, a man who also loved to buy, but would also sell when the price is right. Murdoch made Fox out of nothing, but then sold 20th Century Fox to Disney, arguably at the top of the market. So I understood why he sold.)<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t understand Roberts\u2019 motivation to sell now. I have some explanations but no single, super-satisfying explanation. Strategically, it would just make more sense to have kept NBCUniversal in-house, especially for a one-time empire builder like Comcast. Yet one powerful force\u2014arguably the decider in modern capitalism\u2014likely overwhelmed all other considerations.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought I\u2019d arrange my thoughts as a <\/span>\u201cFive Why\u201d analysis<\/a>, digging through each layer of the puzzle. But instead, I found myself asking, \u201cBut\u2026why?\u201d (And I only ended up with four sections.) So let\u2019s look at Comcast from that angle.<\/span><\/p>\n Then, at the end, I\u2019ll give my biggest strategic recommendation for every company in Hollywood. It\u2019s obvious, but sometimes, the obvious strategy is the most ignored.<\/p>\n