NBC Universal, in the process of being acquired by Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), won't do anything that might come back and bite it in the butt later. Thus, while fellow broadcasters News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA) and Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) have sidled over to the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) TV table, NBC boss Jeff Zucker is avoiding it like an embedded razor.
"We do not think 99 cents is the right price for our content," Zucker said without adding that the right price for NBC's content is the $30 billion or so Comcast is paying out.
NBC has reason to be a little stingy with its content--and perhaps a competitive reason to stay away from Apple, which is considered Comcast's enemy. The broadcast conglomerate is in a multi-year deal with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to sell ads on its cable networks (Syfy, Oxygen, MSNBC and CNBC) and plumb viewership data to develop new advertising metrics.
The upswing in broadcast advertising was cited by Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis during a presentation at Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference one reason why the MSO is "more excited than we were back last December" when it first proposed the merger. "We have gotten fortunate with the ad market," he said.
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