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Katharine Rust: NBC, Comcast and the Potential Take-Down of ESPN

2009-12-03T16:51:19Z

Whatever you think about the pending NBC-Comcast merger, there's a story brewing within the confines of the deal that has the potential to change the world as we know it. Well, the world of sports at least. As the New York Times reported Tuesday, Comcast is looking to have NBC Universal take control of its current sports network Versus and create what could be the first real competition for ESPN.

!!! ...?

Okay, so maybe this doesn't seem like news worthy enough to stop the presses -- at least not immediately. But here's why you should care.

ESPN is bad for sports. There, I said it -- though I'd wager I'm far from the first. What started as the sporting world's little network that could has grown into a behemoth that is six cable channels, two online channels, a plethora of radio shows and one magazine deep. You'd think this virtual monopoly would lend itself to providing the ultimate sports coverage, but unless you're a fan of the Big Three (football, baseball, basketball), you'll be lucky to find legitimate coverage of anything else besides an MLS game here or there or a rogue hockey clip thrown into some SportsCenter top ten list. It took the network until this year to secure a deal with Barclay's Premiership and Fox Sports International to broadcast the English Premier League, a.k.a. one of the most popular sports leagues in the world, and only on ESPN 2, younger sibling of ESPN proper. And last Spring was the first time any ESPN entity decided to broadcast any Mixed Martial Arts league when the Spanish version of the network, ESPN Deportes, showed weekly fights from the brand new Bellator Fighting Championships. Considering MMA's appeal as the third most popular sport among Spanish speaking Hispanics, it was all too kind of the Disney-owned network to take off their gloves and raw-fist fight for their viewers. Which brings me to...

...ESPN is bad for consumers -- unless you live on the East coast, that is. The network's penchant for catering to the vertical horizon stretching from Boston to Miami is not only tiresome, it inhibits West coast and Midwest viewers who'd like to see news about something other than the Yankees/Red Sox series (we get it, they're rivals) or retiring, un-retiring, terrible, no wait, amazing Brett Favre. Just because the former King of Cheese/current drama Queen plays in the NFC north doesn't mean he should satisfy the midwest-football-story quota. Then again, I'd rather have limited Big Ten news than have to suffer another Big Brother scare by the SEC limiting my social media usage during games -- a ban that was set down and retracted earlier this year under speculation that ESPN, who signed a huge deal for the right to broadcast SEC football games, pressured the league into restricting fans from social media usage in fear of losing viewers to twitter.

ESPN is bad for news. I'll admit that what ESPN does, it does exceptionally well; that "what" being in-depth analysis of the MLB, NFL and NBA. I'll also give them their great coverage of major college conferences in basketball and football (note, "major"). And their round-the-clock SportsCenter sports "news" show manages to cover the top highlight-reel-worthy entertaining plays of the day with sufficient, if not over-the-top, snark. But when it comes to real stories behind how the sporting world goes round -- like the reason why there's no public transportation to Dallas's new monstrosity or how Bob Kraft used the city of Hartford to get a new stadium for the Patriots -- they got no game. Is political coverage of the sporting world ESPN's mission? Likely not, but as the only sports media outlet with access to the biggest audience in the U.S., it should be an obligation.

The problem is that ESPN has no obligation to anyone. It has no real competition, so why should it be obliged to provide coverage of alternative and/or regional sports, let alone sporting news that could impact the way in which people live their lives? It is consumerism at its best, playing to the big markets and providing sports as entertainment only. Where would an audience turn for such offerings? So far, nowhere.

Until now.

NBC's takeover of Versus could provide a viable and equivalent competitor to the ESPN empire. It would make ESPN's coverage better: less East-coast skewed, less conference skewed, more coverage of different sports and, more importantly, truer news angles to off-the-field stories. It would hold sports coverage to a truer, higher standard.

Funny how higher standards can have a sobering effect on people.

Read more: Comcast, Espn, Tiger Woods, Versus, Nbc, Media News

Comcast, NBC Deal: Comcast To Buy Controlling Stake In NBC Universal For $13.75 Billion

2009-12-03T07:54:51Z

PHILADELPHIA — Comcast Corp. is buying control of NBC Universal from GE largely because Comcast wants to own more movies and TV shows. The point is to give it a position of strength if fewer people sign up for its cable TV services and watch more video online.

It's understandable why the strategy might seem dubious: Another media company, Time Warner Inc., just gave up on that and spun off its cable TV division.

Comcast, NBC Deal To Face Tough Antitrust Review

2009-12-03T07:30:05Z

WASHINGTON — Comcast Corp. will likely have to accept substantial conditions if the cable TV provider wants to win regulatory approval for control of NBC Universal's broadcast network, cable channels and movie studios.

Although federal regulators probably won't block a deal outright on anticompetitive grounds, they could prohibit Comcast, for instance, from denying rival subscription-TV services such as DirecTV access to NBC channels and other popular programming.

Comcast's NBC Deal Price: $13.75 Billion

2009-12-03T01:30:04Z

PHILADELPHIA — Comcast Corp. is expected to pay $13.75 billion in cash and assets to gain control of NBC Universal from General Electric Co., The Associated Press has learned.

The deal, which was set to be announced Thursday morning, calls for the nation's biggest cable TV provider to spend $6.5 billion in cash and contribute cable channels worth $7.25 billion for a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal, according to people familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement has not been made public.

GE, Comcast Deal For NBC Universal Is Complete, Reports CNBC

2009-12-01T23:04:57Z

The deal between General Electric and Comcast over a majority stake in NBC Universal is complete, and there is nothing left to do but process paper, a source close to the merger told CNBC Tuesday.

Art Brodsky: Fine Whines Accompany Comcast-NBC Turkey

2009-12-01T21:10:40Z

It won't be long before the main course of this year's media banquet is served. Comcast, the largest cable operator and largest Internet Service Provider, is poised to take over NBC-Universal, the TV network/movie studio. The critics will have a great time dissecting the carcass of this deal.

But before dinner is served, and just in time for the holidays, some old and new whines are presenting themselves for our seasonal enjoyment. In New York City, songwriters are still complaining about the Internet as a City Council committee considered endorsing the simple idea of "Net Neutrality." In Washington, AT&T's top lobbyist blew his stack when an administration official endorsed Net Neutrality in terms the lobbyist didn't like. Not that there are any terms endorsing Net Neutrality that the lobbyist would like, save those with which he agrees, which are relatively meaningless.

These whines are unfortunately familiar, neither red nor white, but enough to make someone who longs for the guarantee of a free and open Internet to be blue.

They would be mere background noise to the sound of Christmas carols if it weren't for the main course, the pending announcement of Comcast, the country's largest Internet service provider, taking over NBC-Universal, one of the biggest content providers. The debate over that unwieldy combination will move Net Neutrality to the forefront of issues as policymakers and the public consider the shifting balances of power between controlling the distribution of content and the content itself. Those who want to argue that AT&T, Verizon and, yes, Comcast, should be able to play favorites and have control over the content on the Internet will have an even larger barrier to surmount as the breadth, depth and economic might of the new media giant becomes apparent.

The size of this deal makes the concerns of smaller folk look positively puny. For example, three members of the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA) performed their familiar "Got Them Industry Ruinin' Internet Blues," for the New York hearing of the Council Committee on Technology in Government. Songwriters Gordon Chambers, Phil Galdston and Rick Carnes told their familiar tale of woe, of the industry besieged by "piracy," of dropping revenue and disappearing jobs. They told of an Internet polluted by stolen materials transported in that dreaded peer-to-peer protocol dominated by bandwidth hogs. Slamming Net Neutrality because it has (in theory) led to his industry's decimation, Chambers waxed poetic when he said, "It is not the silicon chip technology born out West that makes New York great. Rather, it is the artists who live and work here who have made and will continue to make New York all that it is."

Of course, that "silicon chip technology" enabled New York's economy to grow to unprecedented heights and what's left of it now following the economic immolation is built around it also. Some artists have even been known to indulge in the Western import.

It would take a book to correct all the misimpressions and faulty assumptions the songwriters poured forth to the Committee. Fortunately, that book has been written. The title is instructive - Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. The book, by music journalist Steve Knopper, chronicles not how the Internet ruined the music industry, but how the music industry ruined itself.

There's a good bit of history, too, noting that the industry complained of "piracy" as far back as 1982. That was at a time when the Internet wasn't even a gleam in an engineer's eye. Knopper catalogued a list of "Big Music's Big Mistakes," which show a disdain for everyone. Some of the items: 1) The CD Longbox, a total waste of space and materials that it took the industry 10 years to ditch. 2) Independent radio promotion, complete with payola, legal and illegal. 3) Digital audio tape, a nifty Sony electronics technology that the record industry killed and, in doing so, opened the way for CD-burning computers. 4) Killing the single in favor of albums or CDs with lots of songs no one wanted. The single reappeared with a vengeance in iTunes. 5) Focusing on Big Box stores, to the exclusion of smaller stores, which gave away record label marketing power as shelf space shrunk. 6) The Secure Digital Music Initiative, an early attempt at digital content control. Little use was made of this standard by large committee and Wall Street Journal reviewer Walt Mossberg said it "treats uses like potential criminals." 7) RIAA lawsuits. 8) Sony's BMG Rootkit, another backfiring content control "fix" that wrecked customer computers.

Pile on top of that an industry dependent on big hits, with big salaries to pay record execs and the fleecing those execs got from Steve Jobs when he started iTunes, and it's no wonder the record business is shattering. Surely there was some piracy, but the causes of the industry's decline are much more complex and as much a case of suicide as homicide.

Even the despised p2p protocol is taking it on the chin. Recent network studies are finding that thanks to YouTube and other streaming technologies, p2p use is shrinking.

(We pause for a moment to congratulate the songwriter's cousins in the motion picture industry. Despite their constant whingeing about "piracy," the industry had a record high Thanksgiving weekend at the box office.)

Not all of the showbiz industry is opposed to Net Neutrality. At the New York hearing, Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writer's Guild of America, East, testified that Net Neutrality is crucial to protecting the rights of digital content creators. Peterson said he was concerned with a small number of major institutions would "control the flow of data" as well as the content.

The other sideshow came courtesy of James Cicconi, AT&T's chief lobbyist in charge of keeping AT&T in charge of the Internet. Speaking at a conference recently, Andrew McLaughlin, the Obama Administration's deputy chief technology officer, linked Net Neutrality with free speech. Noting that the Chinese government has censored reports of President Obama's visit, McLaughlin said, "If it bothers you that the China government does it, it should bother you when your cable company does it."

As the Washington Post's Cecilia Kang reported, Cicconi issued a typically understated response:

It is deeply disturbing when someone in a position of authority, like Mr. McLaughlin, is so intent on advancing his argument for regulation that he equates the outright censorship decisions of a communist government to the network congestion decisions of an American ISP. There is no valid comparison, and it's frankly an affront to suggest otherwise.

Cicconi didn't stop there, saying:

Mr. McLaughlin's statements are ill-considered and inflammatory. They describe a supposed threat to free speech by ISPs that simply does not exist, and seem designed to manufacture a 'crisis' in order to justify regulations that could damage investment and jobs.

He also took some shots at Google, where McLaughlin formerly worked, and said McLaughlin was attempting to "smear those American companies spending billions to build out broadband and create good jobs in a difficult economy."

That is some whine, even by AT&T standards and, as with most of them, it has gone sour. Perhaps that statement forgets the 12,000 AT&T layoffs scheduled for this year, or the 16,000 layoffs scheduled by Verizon.

If the Comcast-NBC deal goes through, you can bet there will be layoffs galore there as well. There always is, when that much money is being spent. NBC is already under financial pressures.

More fundamentally, McLaughlin is proposing nothing that would damage investment and jobs. The companies can do that all by themselves, with no regulation-related excuses needed. The bottom line is that censorship is censorship, whether it is the Chinese government cutting off Obama remarks, or an AT&T Webcast of a Pearl Jam concert that not-so-accidentally deleted Eddie Vedder's saying unflattering things about then-President Bush.

Threats to an open Internet are real now, and the complexity will only get bigger if the merger goes through. Comcast can't be allowed to leverage control over its programs through control of its vast network to harm consumers or to impede competition.

The proposed rules which Cicconi protests, the Net Neutrality rules, would make certain that private companies stay out of the way of Internet content, much as the Constitution says that Congress shall "make no law" abridging freedom of speech. What's good enough for the U.S. government should be good enough for AT&T, and for Comcast, no matter how big it gets.

NBC Labor Dispute Threatens Rockefeller Center Christmas Special [UPDATED]

2009-12-01T17:36:05Z

Update: The show will go on.

Despite the lack of in its labor dispute with NBC, NABET-CWA Local 11 president Ed McEwan says his union will "stay on the job" for Wednesday night's Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center.

The union had threatened to strike Tuesday over a failure to bargain with NBC.

"We're not going to let the Grinch at NBC ruin Christmas for millions of people around the world," McEwan said. "So we're going to stay on the job. We hope that NBC sees Christmas as a time of goodwill, too, and that they negotiate a new and fair contract with us. The union is corresponding with NBC Universal to schedule future talks, but we hope the network uses this opportunity to engage in the give-and-take of collective bargaining to reach a fair agreement that favors everyone's interests."

Original Post: A labor dispute is threatening NBC's "Christmas in Rockefeller Center" telecast.

The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA) Local 11, which represents nearly 3,000 of NBC's producers, writers, and technicians, vowed Tuesday to "pull the plug" on Wednesday's Christmas special -— which includes the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree — over failed negotiations with NBC management. The union's contract expired in March and the union says there's been very little progress since talks began last year, describing NBC management as "increasingly hostile" in "ignoring the concerns of the union's membership."

"We can't let the Grinch at NBC steal another Christmas from thousands of honest working people," said NABET-CWA Local 11 president Ed McEwan. "This charade must stop. Christmas is supposed to be a time of goodwill, but the network's management is trying to hide behind their fancy lights while leaving their employees in the dark."

The union has set up a website, NBCStoleChristmas.com, to air their concerns and attempt to avert a strike during Wednesday's Christmas tree ceremony.

NBC did not respond to a request for comment on the union dispute.

David Kronke: The NBC Strategy to Save America

2009-12-01T15:29:58Z

General Electric must be pinching itself right now: it's about to unload its share of NBC-Universal on Comcast. Ostensibly, it's win-win for both sides: GE dumps an underperforming albatross, while Comcast becomes a media conglomerate that almost rivals Rupert Murdoch's empire, only without those pesky, antiquated newspapers Rupert is so fond of.

Even antitrust advocates know they're tilting at windmills in trying to block this: Too Big To Fail is the way to go these days.

And certainly, Comcast/NBC-Universal will be too big. But to fail? NBC practically owns the playbook for failure these days.

In the past decade, NBC has transformed itself from the No. 1 broadcast network into an afterthought, an industry laughingstock mired in fourth place -- last place, that is, unless you count The CW, and pretty much no one does anymore -- and defined by its mediocrity. Coincidentally, also in the past decade, America has transformed itself from the most powerful country on the planet to one crippled by a punishingly dysfunctional economy and petty bipartisan bickering, defined pretty much by its mediocrity.

So while NBC can scarcely be considered an industry leader these days, it does appear to be the primary inspiration for the American government's policies, a template for fiasco that our leaders have followed assiduously. Congress has become the political equivalent of NBC's Knight Rider remake: willfully stupid, hyperbolic, irrelevant and over-stuffed with inane gimmicks. The Biggest Loser has been the constituency politicians pretend to look out for.

For the purposes of our rhetorical exercise, let's examine how NBC's disastrous missteps have uncannily informed governmental policy, shall we? No? Well, tough, because that's all I've got.

Reward failure with upward mobility.

NBC: Jeff Zucker ran NBC Entertainment from 2000 to 2005. In that period, he managed to develop precisely zero new hit sitcoms for the network that once was the standard-bearer for smart comedy, and his programming struck many critics and viewers as sheer torture. NBC plunged from first to fourth in the ratings, ruining the network's once-stellar reputation and torpedoing his network's financial stability. His arrogant swagger remained intact, however, and for his journeyman-like efforts, Zucker was promoted to network CEO in 2005, and then was named President and CEO of both the network and all its cable channels in 2007. So, essentially, despite crippling a once-proud media empire and having no quantifiable achievements to point to, Zucker was kicked upstairs and given exponentially more power.

America: After somehow managing to drive a Texas oil company into the ground (with nary a financial gusher to show for his efforts), George W. Bush was allowed to run the United States of America from 2001 to 2008. In that period, he managed to plunge the country into at least one ill-conceived war, ruined the country's once-stellar reputation with the rest of the planet and torpedoed his nation's financial stability. For his journeyman-like efforts, Bush was re-elected President in 2004, and his arrogant swagger remained intact despite crippling a once-proud global empire. He was kicked upstairs, to the role of elder statesman capable of pulling in huge fees for delivering speeches and writing a memoir, even though he betrayed no articulacy in his time in office.

So, according to NBC, in order to save an empire, you put an incompetent in charge and wait for the magic to happen. And if you're America, you pretty much do the same.

Bring in a young, relatively inexperienced guy who talks a good game to mop up the mess left by his predecessor.

NBC: Chose Ben Silverman, a guy whose resume was filled with producing credits of remakes of popular overseas sitcoms and reality shows, as the face of its entertainment division. The number of self-aggrandizing glossy-magazine profiles he inspired far outpaced the number of successful TV shows he was responsible for; he was better known for his partying than for his executive prowess and quickly and quietly disappeared from sight.

America: Elected Barack Obama President after giving a series of pretty speeches and spending a little time hanging out in the Senate. The number of glossy-magazine profiles he inspired far outpaced the Americans he got back into the work force; he allowed key legislation to be watered down by Republicans (who huffily refused to vote for it anyway) and had a beer with a black guy and a white cop. But at least he kept giving pretty speeches.

Try to fix things on the cheap.

NBC: To curb production expenses, the network introduced The Jay Leno Show, an inexpensive prime-time variety-talk hour that pretty much no one watches. You get what you pay for.

America: To curb costs in responding to the financial meltdown, Congress slashed billions of dollars from the stimulus package, including much earmarked for job-creating infrastructure projects. The percentage of unemployed/underemployed has risen to 17.5% since. In this case, you don't even get what you pay for.

Favor the rich guy over the little people.

NBC: I hate to keep picking on Jay Leno, but everyone else is, so: Leno makes somewhere north of $30 million a year (and his show is still cheaper than regular programming), while his show serves to supplant some 1,000 actors, writers and crew members who would be working on the series that would be airing if Leno was still in late-night.

America: Drafted bankruptcy legislation favoring banks over working stiffs, and then, when the banks failed anyway, bailed out the banks, leaving no-longer-working stiffs out in the cold.

Create stupid programs with grimly ironic names.

NBC: My Own Worst Enemy. The Biggest Loser. Trauma.

America: "No Child Left Behind." "The Clear Skies Initiative." "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

See? Politics is just like show business.

Josh Silver: Mega-Media Era Begins: GE/Vivendi Deal Clears Way for Comcast/NBC Merger

2009-12-01T10:43:40Z

On Monday night, French media giant Vivendi and NBC parent company General Electric agreed to terms that clear the way for US cable giant Comcast to take a controlling stake in NBC Universal. An announcement from Comcast is expected within days. The proposed merger would create a media behemoth, and clear the way for an unprecedented era of media consolidation across cable, the Internet and broadcast television.

Be afraid. Comcast is both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider in the United States: a $34-billion business with 24 million subscribers, reaching nearly one out of every four homes in the country. NBCU owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Studios, 27 television stations, and a host of other properties.

President Obama has promised that his administration would finally begin enforcing antitrust laws to prevent unreasonable consolidation of market power. If ever a media deal posed such a threat, this is it. The merged Comcast would be to media what Goldman Sachs is to Wall Street: "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi once described the latter.

It should come as no surprise that Wall Street and Washington are saying this is already a done deal: The media and telecommunications industry is second only to drug companies in how much it spends lobbying Washington. Its army of PR firms, lobbyists and sock-puppet think tanks is already blitzing the press corps and Capitol Hill. It's readying Comcast CEO Brian Roberts for his close-up as a new media mogul and neglecting to mention the impact of this deal on everyday people.

Comcast has raised cable rates for years while raking in record profits nearly every quarter. It is anti-union. It cares nothing for independent, alternative programming. And if you're a startup television channel, you can forget about getting a spot in Comcast's lineup. Comcast will charge you far more for space on its lineup than you could possibly pay. Just ask Al Gore about his failed effort to get his Current TV a reasonable position in the cable lineup.

Let's not forget that Comcast is the company that was caught illegally blocking peer-to-peer Internet downloads and then lying about it - earning a smack-down from the FCC for breaking Net Neutrality rules. And the company is known for blocking TV ads it didn't like. The company's track record of protecting the public's interest isn't exactly stellar.

And now, Comcast is set to control media across all distribution platforms. The company is threatened by the increasing amount of free content on the Net, and a public who is both watching entertainment on the Internet, and creating their own. NBC owns a major stake in Hulu, and Comcast likely wants to put the video service and all NBC content behind a paywall. Comcast and other cable companies are already putting the final touches on "TV Everywhere," a paywall that requires a traditional cable subscription to watch online content owned by these companies. Comcast's very survival depends on remaining the gatekeeper between you and the programs you want to watch, and it wants as little competition as possible.

Worse still, if the Comcast-NBC merger is allowed to go through, it will be the start of a catastrophic storm: a tidal wave of mega-deals by other content giants like News Corp. and Disney merging with distribution behemoths like Time Warner Cable and AT&T. In a nation where 98 percent of Internet users have only one or two choices of Internet service providers, we could witness a future in which a handful of phone and cable companies, merged with a handful of content companies, will put all premium content behind a paywall and make all other content hard or impossible to find.

ISPs' content and applications -- and those of their partner companies -- will move at light-speed, while the rest of the Internet will seem like it's still on dial-up. The result: homogenized corporate content, higher prices and fewer real alternatives so that distributors can prevent the "market fragmentation" that advertisers loathe. Sound familiar? The Internet will become the cable service of the 21st century -- instead of the free and open arena for economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech that it's been.

Some say that companies like Comcast are simply doing what they must to prosper. But we need to ask whether boosting Comcast's bottom line is worth the cost to the rest of us. Such market power could destroy the promise of an open Internet and its unprecedented ability to amplify independent voices, reinvent journalism, and inspire new forms of entertainment.

The deal is expected to take at least six months to finalize, and it will possibly be more than a year for federal regulators to approve or reject the deal. The warped Washington conventional wisdom says that the deal is inevitable, but Free Press and our allies are rallying public opposition. The Obama administration has sharply criticized the previous administration's weak antitrust record and promised vigorous oversight of anti-competitive deals -- particularly those involving vertical mergers (like joining content and distribution companies) and innovation-focused industries like the Internet.

This merger is another major test of whether President Obama plans to deliver on his promises.

Jay Leno Losing His Audience To DVR Machines

2009-11-29T14:08:33Z

NEW YORK — Much of the prime-time audience lost to NBC when Jay Leno moved into prime-time has gone not to its rivals but the digital video recorder.

Rival network executives seemed almost giddy at the possibilities last spring after NBC announced Leno would do a comedy show five nights a week at 10 p.m. There will be more viewers available "for people who put on great dramas," said Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, "and that's what we do."

Nick Carr: Scouting NY on TV!

2009-11-24T15:20:12Z

A few weeks
ago, I did an interview for What's the Deal?, an NBC New York series
that investigates various quirky aspects of city life. The topic: the
rarity of phone booths. This is one of those pieces that has tons of zoom-ins, so down a Dramamine and look for me at the beginning and tail end.

Shortly
after I posted my original article on Manhattan phone booths, everyone
from CNN to the NY Post had similar stories up without a site mention.
Thanks to NBC for making the effort!

-SCOUT

PS - Very appropriate Onion headline: "CNBC Cameraman Can't Believe He's Filming Another Blog Off A Computer Monitor"

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger Jokes About "Rock Star Sex" In Matt Lauer Special

2009-11-23T03:07:43Z

LOS ANGELES — Pilot Chesley Sullenberger jokes that his heroic handling of a disabled jetliner brought him "rock star sex" in an interview for "NBC's People of the Year" TV special.

Sullenberger, who safely ditched a US Airways plane in New York's Hudson River after geese hit the engines, is among those interviewed by Matt Lauer for the Thanksgiving Day special.

GE, Vivendi's NBC Talks STALLED: NYT

2009-11-23T03:04:05Z

Talks between General Electric and Vivendi over the future of NBC Universal have stalled, according to people involved in the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were part of confidential negotiations.

John Malone: Comcast-NBC Would Have Too Much Power

2009-11-19T16:17:19Z

PHILADELPHIA — Media mogul John Malone said Thursday that Comcast Corp.'s plan to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal would give it too much market power and force competitors to consider similar acquisitions.

Comcast Corp. – the nation's largest cable TV provider – is in talks to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. GE is negotiating to buy back Vivendi SA's 20 percent ownership in NBC Universal and then sell a majority stake to Comcast.

Read more: Nbc, John Malone, Comcast, Comcast NBC, Media News

Reeling Bears Spurn Bob Costas, NBC Sunday Night Football Interviews

2009-11-19T12:17:45Z

In a sign of how difficult things have become in the Bears' world, the beleaguered team stunned a network giant Wednesday by rejecting NBC's request for prime-time access to coach Lovie Smith, quarterback Jay Cutler and general manager Jerry Angelo.

Lee Schneider: Shoestring Journalism

2009-11-16T12:29:34Z

Last week I paid a visit to an old friend in television news. I watched the ten screens in his office showing competing news stations and live feeds. I listened to his scanners buzzing with cop voices. His computer instant message system wanted his eyes and ears. His cell phone and Blackberry begged for attention.

What was happening? He was marshaling resources so that a local fire might be covered on his station for a lunchtime broadcast. I noticed that he did a lot of running around to accomplish this, unusual for the boss. But his newsroom had lots of empty cubicles, the result of recent layoffs.

I left him that day with two things: A new appreciation for making a lot of television with few resources and also a massive earache.

It was hard to get my mind around how much stuff was needed just to get a news report on the air. Do you really need that much stuff to do the news?

When I was at NBC and FOX News and ABC, we had helicopters, satellite uplinks, grip trucks, video crews all over the world, dozens of editors and many talented reporters. Even the interns had interns. The cafeteria at NBC may have been sketchy sometimes, but other than that, we had HUGE resources.

Yet today, there are journalists doing much, much more with a whole lot less.

Check out Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele's "Facing Climate Change" blog and you'll get crisply produced reports on how global warming is changing forest fire suppression. They've posted a story about reindeer husbandry that's fascinating, and I don't even like reindeer. They do it using photographs and audio recordings -- what used to be called a "multi-media" slide show. It might just be the future of journalism. A potent dose of storytelling made on a shoestring. Why does it work?

For one thing, it's portable -- you don't need much stuff. (Well, a helicopter would be nice for some shots.) For another, people relax and tell you things when you're holding a little audio recorder. They don't mind a couple of pictures from a handheld SLR. You get a chance to record the story instead of becoming the story.

(Try showing up in a small town with a nationally-known correspondent, a couple of camera crews, the intern, the intern's intern, and you get what I mean.)

Photographer Jeff Pflueger has posted a story about recently homeless people seeking justice. The post links back to some terrific multimedia storytelling on the streets of Fresno.

More examples of the multimedia movie include Mathilde Piard, an Internet producer at the Palm Beach Post. She's created an interactive site about home birth. Chris Tompkins has posted an inspiring photo slide show about backpacking through Yosemite. I've taken a shot at it, with this piece on lonelyplanet.tv about a sleepless night in India.

Maybe we have seen the future of journalism and it could be much like the past. A storyteller. A slideshow. A mission. Simplicity itself. No need to watch ten televisions at once.

NBC, Broadcast Pioneer, Prepares For Comcast Takeover

2009-11-15T10:22:40Z

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

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

Mike Ragogna: Standing on One's Principles: An Interview With Ron Reagan

2009-11-12T04:00:57Z

Ron Reagan is the son of a president and, weekdays on Air America, he's a voice of reason for many listeners who are trying to navigate the complexities of national and global concerns. Known for his progressive views and politics, Ron took a few moments to discuss some of the more pressing issues of our time and gave a shoutout to Elvis Perkins.

Mike Ragogna: When did The Ron Reagan Show begin broadcasting on Air America?

Ron Reagan: It would have been a year ago September, we started with an hour show.

MR: How did that come about?

RR: I had been at the Republican convention in Minneapolis, they (Air America) asked me to come there and be part of their coverage. I'd been doing some things with Mark Green who had a weekend show, a wrap-up kind of thing. I did some of those with him, so he invited me to the convention, and I spent a few days there doing shows. At the end of the week, they asked if I wanted to do an hour show for them, and I said sure, my having been between gigs at the time.

MR: How much time passed between then and when your first show aired?

RR: They said, "Can you start Monday?" and this was Friday evening. I said, "I guess I can, am I going to have a producer?" I met my first producer on the phone Monday morning, the day we launched the show. Not a lot of prep time to get things together, but it slowly evolved, and by the beginning of this year, I think it was in February, we went to the regular three hour format.

MR: Who's backing you up behind the scenes?

RR: Tina Nole, my executive producer, came on board in February, and Shelley Osterberger, the associate producer, came on during the summer.

MR: When you discuss topics, you've been very respectful and gracious to callers and guests with opposing points of view, although it's pretty clear where you stand on the issues. How do you find the patience to deal with your more challenging guests and callers?

RR: I'm not much of a yeller, I don't really get particularly offended or affronted when somebody takes even an extreme position that's opposite mine. I'm not a big one for personal attacks or rudeness. When somebody crosses a line where it's going beyond just stating their extreme viewpoint, like attacking me in a personal way, well then I'll take exception to that and come back at them.

But I don't see any purpose in yelling at the civilians who call in to the show. These are just folks calling in, regular folks, they're not professionals at this or anything. You know, some people have weird ideas, and it's often more interesting to tease out those ideas. For instance, we had a guy call in, and we were talking in general about the ramifications of the off-year elections. The subject of Maine's Question #1 on marriage rights for gay couples came up, and he was violently opposed to allowing gay couples to marry. I asked him, "Well, what would the harm be?" "It's terrible! It's an abomination! These people and their deviant lifestyles..." He was from Massachusetts, and I said, "That's you're opinion, but I want to know what negative consequences YOU'VE felt because of gay people being allowed to marry."

Then he went off again on how terrible gay people were which was all irrelevant, and at that point, he crossed the line and started talking about a Jewish/gay conspiracy. I was like, "Okay, now I've heard enough from you, now we can leave you alone because the entire audience knows that this is the kind of person who is opposed to allowing gay people to have the same civil rights as everybody else." This was a guy where there was no end to the bigotry. If I kept scratching, we'd find racism, we'd find everything else, and I think it was more useful, in a way, than me jumping all over the guy and telling him what an idiot he was. That would have been easy enough to do, but it would have been less educational for people.

MR: When you go home after a day of calls like that, how do you process it?

RR: That kind of stuff doesn't really wear on me at all. I admit it's pretty tiring doing a three hour show, where, generally speaking, it's pretty much ad lib five days a week. That's tiring for anybody to do. But dealing with folks like that is not really a problem. They don't wear on me, I'm aware that those people are out there, that's no secret, I've run into them before and I'll run into them again. They don't really suck the energy out of me. They're more amusing, in a way, and I guess a little depressing, too, but that stuff doesn't bother me.

MR: What are your thoughts on the defeat of Question #1?

RR: We've talked about it on the show before. I would put to the audience as a question whether people in this country should be allowed to vote out civil rights for others. I mean, if a majority of folks in a given state decided they didn't want free speech anymore, should they be allowed to eliminate free speech in their state? I think that most people would say no, and I see marriage rights for gay couples is pretty much in that territory.

This is a fundamental civil right that everybody in this country enjoys EXCEPT one group of people--gay folks. I don't think that should be left up to the vagaries of politics, out-of-state financing, dishonest campaigns, and the various lies that are told by opponents of civil rights. I think it's too fundamental. There's nothing in the Constitution that implies or says that gay people should be treated any differently than anybody else, and that's the document we should be relying on when we look at this.

It's no coincidence that people who want to deprive or keep gay people from having this civil right generally have to change their state constitution to achieve that. They have to literally write-in a specific amendment to their constitution that singles out gay people for this exclusion, and the fact that it's exclusionary is the point. These idiot arguments that come up about, "Well, if we allow gay couples to marry, then we have to allow polygamy and bestiality and things like that"--beyond the stupidity of these arguments--it's quite obvious that in the case of polygamy and bestiality, those laws are not exclusionary in any way. They apply to everybody. No one can marry more than one person. But when we're talking about gay marriage, then we're talking about an exclusionary law. Everybody can get married in this country to the person of their choice except gay people, they're excluded. That's a very different thing, it's an apples and oranges kind of situation.

MR: With all the ignorance and fear out there, it seems that the only way issues like this are going to be resolved is through the court system, and ultimately, by the Supreme Court. But that might not be such a good thing because of some of its hard right judges.

RR: Well, you've got Scalia who's a radical fundamentalist Catholic on the court. You've got Roberts and Alito who also have an agenda, though it might not be as socially extreme as Scalia's. I think they're more interested in protecting the rights of corporations and things like that. I mean that's why they were installed on the court. But yeah, you're quite right, it's not a gimme on the Supreme Court. It could very well be one of those unfortunate five-four decisions that would come down the wrong way.

MR: What do you think, if any, were the messages from last week's election?

RR: I don't think we can read the tea leaves and say because democrats lost the Virginia and New Jersey governorships that this portends all sorts of awful things for the mid-term elections. I don't think you can really say that there's that connection. On the other hand, I do think that the people widely, across the political spectrum, are becoming terribly dissatisfied with status quo governance in Washington, D.C., right now. I think you saw that, to some extent, even in the Tea Party stuff earlier this year. Now, some of these people were just, you know, kind of Glenn Beck idiots with their Nazi signs and all that kind of stuff. But there were people who were drawn in because they were upset, for instance, by the bank bailout and the lack of transparency at the Fed. I can't argue too much with that, they're not wrong to be worried.

I think with health care, we find progressives who are very disenchanted with the approach of this administration and, certainly, the approach of Congress to health care reform. It's really as if these people are bending over backwards to try and make as ineffective a piece of legislation as it can possibly be. You know, we've got people shouting about the public option being a government takeover of health care...hell, it's not even going to be available to most people. I mean, you and I, if we have health insurance through our jobs, we can't sign up for the public option. This is going to apply to maybe twelve million people in America. It seems to me this is the worst kind of incrementalism, and I think people are looking at that and wondering if our government is capable of dealing with really big problems that are all coming down the pike at about the same time.

MR: What would you say are some of those problems?

RR: Look at the environment, economic issues, social issues, health care of course, war and peace... We've got lots on the plate and it's pretty serious stuff, and we don't seem to be able to man-up and do something about it. And you think the health care fight was ugly? Wait 'til we get to Cap & Trade. We've got a bunch of people in Congress who are still denying that global warming even exists! These are Flat Earthers that we're having to deal with here. It's a little depressing, and it doesn't bode well for the future.

MR: Do you think that we've got a president who can tackle some of these issues?

RR: There's no question that this administration is a vast improvement over what we had before. My God, from torture to everything else, not only were they evil, but they were incompetent and evil at the same time. So yeah, I'm a supporter of Obama, I wish him the best, I think his impulses are good. My question--I think it's a question that many people on the progressive side have--is, does he have the stones to see this thing through?

He's not really a progressive democratic politician. He is a centrist democrat. He's cautious, he always has been. If you look at his history, it's one of always reaching across the aisle, always looking for the bipartisan compromise which can be fine in its place. But he's not as "left" as some people on our side thought he was during the election, and so we're seeing the real Barack Obama here--a cautious, centrist, pragmatic politician. That can often get the job done, but I'm a little nervous at this particular time in history, with all the problems we have facing us, that that approach really isn't going to get the job done. I think he's wasting a lot of time--a lot of time--with this reaching across the aisle stuff. He had to make the gesture, had to let people know that he would try in good faith with republicans; but we're long past the point where we realize that these people aren't reaching back. They just simply want him to fail. If they're reaching back at all, it's to stick a thumb in his eye, so the time for that stuff is just about over.

MR: And so many in Congress seem to be under the thumb of the lobbyists and corporations who have made large donations to their campaigns or causes.

RR: Let's not be naïve here. When you see that someone is receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars over a few years to their campaign PAC or whatever from a certain industry, they're getting that money for a reason. People don't just hand politicians money because they kind of like their haircut or the way they wear a suit. They want something for that money. If you want to know the main thing we can do to put a stop to that? Campaign finance reform. Let's take the money entirely out of politics. If you get pulled over by a cop for speeding and you try to give him a twenty dollar bill to get off, well, if he's crooked, he'll take it and let you go. But you're really courting arrest there. That's bribery of a public official. Well, why isn't it bribery of a public official for individuals or corporations to hand them bundled checks for their political action committees. It's the same kind of thing here, and we need to eliminate that entirely.

MR: Challengers to reform insist this is a Freedom of Speech issue.

RR: Money is not speech. If you want to go out and campaign for somebody, speak on their behalf, tell everybody that you think they'll be a great congressman or president or whatever. You're more than entitled to do that. But giving them money is not the same thing. Money is property, money is a bribe, it isn't support, and that's what needs to be eliminated. There needs to be a level playing field and a regular manor in which we elect officials where everybody, maybe who've gotten enough signatures on a petition or whatever, can get on the ballot. Then you all play by the same rules and you have the same amount of money to work with. Free television time would be a good thing for TV advertisement...we give the broadcast networks our public airwaves for a song. They're supposed to do a public service in return--that used to be the news shows that they would produce. Well, you know, they can start giving politicians free ad time during election years for a certain period as part of that public service so that (politicians) won't feel pressed to spend billions of dollars buying time on the networks that should be free. This is how we can elect public officials in this country. It's an important thing, and the broadcast and cable networks can get on board with that. If we can have a level playing field for various sports teams, we certainly can have it for political races as well. Just take the money out of the system entirely.

MR: But sometimes a level playing field can work against you, like when the media gives equal weight to both sides of a story no matter how ludicrous one side might clearly be.

RR: Yeah, that's the fallacy of "fair and balanced." It's turned into literally, "Well, we have two opinions here--Joe says the world is flat, Bob says the world is round, YOU be the judge," instead of pointing out that one person is full of s**t, and the other person actually has it right.

MR: And there's so much damage being done and ignorance being propagated as a result of that approach.

RR: There have always been these carny barkers in American life. There have always been the crooked tent preacher or whoever who's getting people all riled up about stuff. Limbaugh and Beck are just those kind of clowns. There's not much you can do to stop that. It's not that they're promoting ignorance as much as the American public--actually, a fairly small percentage of the public--buy into this crap. You know, come on people...wake up! The Limbaughs and the Becks are charlatans. They're entertainers who are there to make money and nothing else. I don't even know that Glenn Beck believes half of the stuff he says, and he's just taking advantage of people's ignorance and gullibility and stupidity. Are people that naïve and stupid that they're going to be taken in by fools like this? Well, apparently some are. You can fool some of the people all of the time.

MR: All of this seems even more ridiculous in the face of real discussions we need to be having on dangers like global warming.

RR: Indeed, global warming is a perfect example of just the kind of problem that American politicians seem incapable of dealing with. It's long term, it's incremental, it's not going to show up in a big explosion tomorrow that knocks down buildings on the southern tip of Manhattan. We've got to think long term, and we've got to actually deprive ourselves of stuff. We're going to have to change our lifestyle, we're going to have to make do with less in certain instances, at least temporarily. And it involves nature instead of just people politics and money politics and things like that, and that's something that Congress also has a very difficult time dealing with. These are people who spend way too much time indoors...they need to get out a little more! They forget that nature doesn't really care what your political agenda is, nature doesn't really care that Jim Inhoff doesn't believe that the atmosphere is warming up. Nature is gonna do what it does regardless. The laws of physics are the laws of physics. But these people don't seem to get that, they think they can kind of spin nature their way somehow. It ain't gonna happen, you know?

MR: Sure, global warming is important, but what music are you listening to?

RR: I've been playing a lot of Elvis Perkins in my car on the way to work. My wife is very good about finding new stuff, I'm a little more boring when it comes to that.

MR: What are some of your favorite classic acts?

RR: I still will throw a little U2 on every once in a while, and I still enjoy The Beatles. My wife and I were talking about Sgt. Pepper the other day and what a great song "For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" was. We were trying to remember the lyrics. We had them all mixed-up and had to go online to find them.

MR: You sort of were introduced to America through your Saturday Night Live appearance in 1986, right?

RR: Yeah, that's pretty true.

MR: Your Risky Business parody is considered one of the show's best moments.

RR: I was a little reluctant to do it at first, I didn't want to be a conduit to ridiculing my parents. I knew, of course, there would be some fun poked at them, but I didn't want it to be vicious and mean and be a part of that. But I was assured I would have veto power over any of the skits if they got out of hand, that I could pull the plug on them. But it worked out well, it was a lot of fun. It was a good cast, and everybody was real nice.

MR: Were your parents okay afterward?

RR: Yeah, I think they were a little confused, they didn't understand the Tom Cruise thing. They'd never seen that movie, and they had no idea why I was in my underwear. So I had to explain to them that whole Tom Cruise bit and all. I was actually wearing three pairs of jockey shorts by the time we did the live show. The NBC censors said, "You can't go out there with just one pair of jockey shorts. God knows what might happen, he's moving around and dancing, we can't just have something fly out of there. Have him put another pair on!" I put two pair on and when we did the live show after we did the dress rehearsal, the edict came down, "He needs another pair!" So I had three pair of jockey shorts on just to be sure that nothing untoward happened.

MR: Having been a president's son, did you ever feel obliged to steer your career towards politics?

RR: No, from the time I was a little kid and exposed to politics, I pretty much knew that I was not interested in leading that kind of life. I'm just not that kind of person. There's nothing about that life that appeals to me. I guess it's an attractive enough notion to be in a position to get things done, that would be fun and challenging. But I'm no good at asking people for money, to get back to our campaign finance angle. It's not me, it's not my personality, it's not my life.

MR: You're probably contributing more by choosing the path you did.

RR: You do what you can do I guess. As I've told people before, I can't really be elected to any high office because I'm an atheist, and as we know, Americans won't elect an atheist to any high office. And I don't think I'd be a very good local politician because I don't know anything about local issues most of the time. You don't want me running your city or being in charge of your utilities or any of that.

MR: With all the current disillusionment in the way our government has been run for so long, what is your advice to anyone entering politics who wants to make a real difference?

RR: Well, cinch it up real tight because you're going to be buffeted by the forces of compromise, and I'm not talking about political compromise. I'm talking about compromise in principle. You can see some people in Congress today like Anthony Weiner from Brooklyn, New York, talk about health care, and, you know, Alan Grayson. He's ruffled some feathers, I know, and he gets right up in people's faces, but he seems to be doing stuff from the heart. There's Bernie Sanders, I talk to him a lot on our show. He seems to have his head screwed on right. These are people who follow their own principles, and they've probably gone about as far as they're going to go in politics being members of Congress. I would look to those folks who have identified principles they're willing to run on and stand on and do so consistently.

I was alarmed back in 2004 after the presidential election with Bush being re-elected. Nancy Pelosi, I believe it was, came out and said, "Well, the democrats have to sit down and decide what principles we really want to focus on." I thought, "My God, this is a woman who is in her sixties, she's been in government for a long time, and she's now saying we have to identify the principles that are important to us? Didn't you do that before you ran the first time?" What is wrong with THAT picture. So I would say identify those principles before you run. Make those the reasons you want to run, don't approach a career in politics as a sort of, "I'll see what happens when I get there, and I'll make it up on the fly," or anything like that. You need to know what you're all about before you set out on that first campaign.

MR: Congressman Alan Grayson sure did invigorate the health care debate with his passion.

RR: All too often, democrats play this soft game where it's always, "My friend across the aisle." Decorum is fine, but the fact of the matter is, half the time, they're not your friend, they don't wish the best for you, and half the time, they don't wish the best for the American people either. It's time to stop playing footsie with some of these people. There are some destructive forces out there in government, and they need to be confronted, and they need to be revealed for what they are. The corruption has to be exposed, the disinformation, the lies that are coming, health care being the obvious example--death panels, and all that kind of stuff. I mean that was such an obvious lie that was being told, and it needs to be exposed and those people need to be confronted in no uncertain terms. No more of this "my friend" and "we differ on..." kind of stuff. How about, "Congressman or Senator So-And-So is telling you a lie." If THAT'S the truth, it needs to be spoken.

Michelle Pilecki: Notre Dame Irish Won't Fight for Singers

2009-11-11T18:51:43Z

The home of the "Fighting Irish," the University of Notre Dame, stood strong against the assorted activists who objected to the school's time-honored tradition of inviting the President of the United States, when that particular president was Barack Obama.

There is no shortage of traditions at the 167-year-old school, few of them as weighty as the commencement speaker, but all tenacious. Most of the famous (if sometimes unusual) traditions are in football. So it's more than a little jarring to hear that ND did not honor a cherished tradition, instead knuckling under to the demands of NBC, which televised the most recent home game, versus its most traditional rival, Navy. As part of the (yes, traditional) ND Glee Club Reunion, current and former members join the ND Marching Band -- several hundred people in all -- to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner." Except this year they didn't. And the plans, nay dreams, of at least one family were dashed, as this letter to university and network officials attests.

Dear Father Jenkins, Dr. Affleck-Graves, Mr. Swarbrick:

As a Notre Dame graduate, I have enjoyed the Notre Dame Football game broadcasts on NBC ever since they started covering the Irish.

As the parent of a current Notre Dame Senior that is a member of the Band of the Fighting Irish, I am very appreciative of the webcasts of the band's halftime show.

As an alumnus of the Notre Dame Glee Club, preparing to depart for South Bend for the Glee Club Alumni Reunion weekend, I am incredibly disappointed. This evening, I learned, that at NBC's request, the Glee Club has been bumped from our tradition of singing the National Anthem during our reunion weekend. This is a long-standing tradition of the Glee Club which has been graciously supported by the Band. Apparently, NBC has dictated that the band play the National Anthem for this game so it can be covered as part of a special pre-game show. NBC has rarely or perhaps never broadcasted the pre-game or National Anthem in the past. Now they are being allowed to dictate to the University. I know there is a significant relationship between NBC and the University but they should not be allowed to dictate a change of a long held tradition for the University and the Glee Club. Perhaps NBC isn't aware of the unintended consequences of this decision.

This last minute change is depriving a large group of men, current Glee Clubbers and over 200 Glee Club alumni, of the privilege of singing the National Anthem for the 80,000 fans, friends and family members in the stadium. This reunion and our performance of the National Anthem have been planned for months. Coming to the table on the Thursday before the game and dictating this change was thoughtless to say the least. For me personally, this change is depriving me of a long-awaited, Once-in-a-Lifetime dream. I have been anticipating the opportunity to be on the field performing at the same time as my son since he started at Notre Dame and was selected for the Marching Band three years ago. This chance won't come again.
....

Sincerely,

[name of real person removed]
University of Notre Dame, BA 1983

Sure, I am well aware that this situation is not really comparable to the brouhaha over graduation this past spring. But the change in the ND-Navy schedule got zero publicity, and I wouldn't have heard of it either except that I happened to be at the ND Glee Club Reunion. No, I'm no ND or glee club alumna, but I have a forum, and I'm prepared to use it.

30 Rock, Biggest Loser And Other NBC Shows Go Green

2009-11-11T10:43:40Z

NEW YORK — NBC gives new meaning to the phrase "green screen" next week, spreading a pro-environmental message across five of its prime-time entertainment programs.

"30 Rock," where Al Gore takes a cameo role, leads the way. Environmental themes were also added to the scripts of "The Biggest Loser," "The Office," "Heroes" and "Community."

Jeff Zucker To Run Comcast-NBC Universal Joint Venture: Reuters

2009-11-10T18:43:01Z

Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and General Electric Co (GE.N) have agreed to make NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker the head of their proposed joint venture, but the structure of a new board is still being negotiated, sources familiar with the matter said.

Andy Borowitz: Damning New Memo Compares Afghanistan to Jay Leno Show

2009-11-10T08:39:05Z

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - A scathing new memo on Afghanistan written by one of President Obama's top security advisors emphasizes the futility of a continued U.S. military presence there, at one point going so far as to compare the war to NBC's "Jay Leno Show."

"When you go at it day after day and there are no signs of improvement, no chance of success, that is what you have in 'The Jay Leno Show,'" writes General James Jones. "Also, Afghanistan."

But moments after the memo was released, administration officials were quick to say that General Jones' comparison of Afghanistan to the Leno program were "too harsh."

"We are very cognizant that Afghanistan is challenging and will continue to be so," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "But have you seen the Leno show? Come on."

Mr. Gibbs added that while the situation in Afghanistan was very violent, it was "still not as bad as women's soccer." More here.

GE, Comcast Agree: NBC Valued At $30 Billion

2009-11-09T10:31:37Z

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co. and Comcast Corp have agreed on a valuation of around $30 billion for a joint venture between NBC Universal and Comcast, ironing out what has been a key obstacle in talks so far, a source familiar with the matter said on Sunday.