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This morning, the top Comcast execs in an earnings conference call admitted to Wall Street that NBCUniversal, which the company just purchased, is a fixer-upper and, in the short term, a money pit. NBCU chief Steve Burke says the company plans to spend $200 million more this year on NBC’s primetime schedule than General Electric did last year when it owned the network. (Burke is looking at 21 pilots, about the same number NBC ordered in 2010.) Comcast considers the turnaround to be a long-term project, but Burke says that simply lifting NBC to third place from fourth would 
mean “hundreds of millions” in improvement in the company’s cash flow. Meanwhile, Burke also says he plans to spend $100 million more this year on programming NBCU’s cable networks. He expects a “very strong” upfront ad sales season.
As for Universal’s film business, where 1Q revenues and operating cash flow declined, Burke says that “we have to make better films,” although the size of its current slate is “about right.” He attributed some of the woes to the fact that the company had to include a lot of marketing costs for Hop and Fast Five in the latest quarterly report even though most of the revenues from those recently released films will show up on Comcast’s next earnings statement.
Both Burke and Roberts mentioned the “S” word — synergy — which hasn’t been used by Big Media since the days of AOL Time Warner. And we all know how that turned out. The execs said Uni movies will benefit from synergistic cross promotion among Comcast’s various cable and entertainment properties. “We have a saying that we’re better together,” Burke says. “That’ll be a big key to our success.” But Comcast CEO Brian Roberts added that “we still have a lot of work to do, and we know it.”
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts punted when asked the inevitable question about whether he sees Netflix as friend or foe for making deals to offer TV shows on its Internet streaming service. “I defer to them to talk about their company,” Roberts said, adding that “something exciting is happening in that space” and it “presents opportunities” for NBCU.
One thing that surprised me about today’s call: None of the analysts asked what NBC would do if Donald Trump runs for president. Either Wall Street doesn’t think the host of Celebrity Apprentice is serious, or else there’s no “reputation impairment expense” cell they have to fill in on their financial spreadsheets.
Quotations From Chairman Brian Roberts…
Comcast Earnings Grow With Help From NBCU Cable Networks
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What are the odds of them bringing back “Life” for a 3rd season?
Keep your fingers crossed Mike. It just might happen!
That was sarcasm.
Bring back Life, and the original Law and Order. Get rid of all the annoying reality shows; once I see they’re on I don’t tend to check back at 9 to see what’s on. Reality sucks.
It’s not enough to just throw money at NBC, they actually have to choose the right productions. Just because a series is expensive doesn’t mean it’s good. If they would go back to something family-friendly and groundbreaking as The Cosby Show, they might have a good chance to differentiate themselves from the other broadcast networks. There are only few shows out there like The Middle that you can watch with the whole family.
@Mike — agreed. Life was brilliant. Best series NBC has had in several years. From the casting to writing. Amazing. Watching Donal Logue the other night on House made me reminisce. Sarah Shahi & Damien Lewis were the best pairing ever.
Only if you present from the BIG FISH. sigh.
Bob Greenblatt is good news for NBC because he always supports the creatives.
As long as they renew Chuck….. ???
oh that’s comcastic
thank you suits
so smart
as long as Donna Langley is there, nothing will change. one FAST FIVE does not a studio make. Can’t believe regime is still in place.
that studio is not talented or talent friendly. some pretend to be but they are fake.
suits that can’t even control the money
“We have to make better films.”
What an absolutely brilliant business plan! Ideas like this make you realize that these guys are worth every penny of their enormous salaries.
Be careful about revealing sensitive business stategies, though. If the other studios get wind of this, they may decide to scrap their “make crappier films” business plan and replace it with NBCU’s innovative new idea.
NBC Universal has been a joke for a long time now. Their TV and Films are among the worst in the business. Last year it was Land of the Lost (they were Lost in the head when they made it). They either come up with TV flith like House, or a seventh Law and Order spin-off, which is really patheic. The whole company has become one big money pit.
House was a great show its 1st 5 years.
With new bosses in charge, maybe they can change the whole corporate culture, and focus on WHAT they’re buying instead of WHO they’re buying it from. I can’t tell you how many great projects die on the vine all over town, every day, because the studio/agent/actor doesn’t recognize the name on the script or the producer who found it. If Comcast wants to make good movies, that’s a simple formula — buy good scripts and don’t f*ck them up. Change the policy of always requiring a rewrite by some known-for-the-genre name in order to get agents to send it to their clients. And ditch the model of attaching some worthless producer who happens to have a deal on the lot to the material (Warner Bros. is the worst for this — Akiva gets his $2 million producing fee and the script goes to crap.)
It’s easy to make good movies. Just make good movies. Don’t let the actors demand story changes, don’t announce a release date without a script, don’t allow more than three people on the lot TOTAL to give notes (including all execs, producers, actors and directors combined), and make it someone’s job to make sure the movie is GOOD. Not marketable, not “four-quadrant.” Just good.
Why don’t they spend a percent or two of that $300 million to make a deal with the WGA for their E! and G4 shows, so they can stop calling their writers “script consultants”?
If they have that kind of money…why can’t you save All My Children and One Life to Live? The fan base is huge and switching to Comcast or watching NBC will bring the numbers in and the money with sponsors!!
SAVE THE SOAPS!!!!
Bring back family shows! No more reality tv! buy the soaps, bring back after school special type shows. Bring television back to what it used to be before crappy reality shows became the new trend. keep the family programming alive and you will be the Kings of networks
I am surprised at this.
I actually expected NBC to cut prime-time from 22 to 16 hours a week this Fall (Sundays 7 P.M. ET/PT-end of football game and Monday-Saturday 8-10 P.M. ET/PT) with another hour (10-11 P.M. ET/PT Sundays) lopped-off when football ended.
Hopefully, NBC will use this extra money to:
(1) Develop better programs.
(2) Develop more and different kinds of programs.
(3) And first-run entertainment programming six nights a week (Monday-Saturday) during football season (assuming the 2011/2012 NFL season is held as scheduled), expanding to first-run entertainment programming seven nights a week after the NFL season ends (or in the Fall if there’s no NFL season).
This may be a vote of confidence on network TV.
buy stargate universe! Save it and it will bring you in so much money!!!!!
I think Comcast knows what they want and I see better things for their movie and television divisions.
Paul Greenblatt’s hire was a clear sign that they’ve got the right man in charge and the two comedy scripts that were picked up were really good in Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings’ projects.
To me where the success lies in NBC is getting back to the basics in daytime to promote their Prime Time programming. Bring back a full soap lineup by adding AMC and OLTL, bring back the After School specials. Focus on this part of the day first then get to Prime Time.
Comcast really needs to get TV back to its golden era and skip the reality stuff except the stuff that’s already a success don’t develop anymore new reality shit. NBC needs to be that network that gives people a good feeling about its programming that they feel like its a retro network.
I have a good feeling that this will not end well. I will find joy in watching it play out.
In order for big changes to come to NBC, they need to fire a lot of dead weight there, both from the VP and lower level positions. There are a lot of people there that don’t want to change their ways. They still think they are from the 80s. If Comcast, can promote or bring in people that have innovative/fresh ideas in both development, media, marketing and advertising then they might have a shot. But if they keep the same players the game will never change.