Last week, cable and broadband giant Comcast announced it plans to spin off most of its cable channels into their own company. According to Deadline, the new company, currently with the placeholder name “SpinCo,” will take control of MSNBC, CNBC, E!, SyFy, the Golf Channel, Oxygen, and USA, as well as Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes. Comcast will keep ownership of Bravo, as well as NBC and Peacock. Everything for SpinCo is expected to be up and running by late 2025.
Why the spin-off?
Comcast has owned NBC Universal’s assets, including the cable arms, since 2011. Of course, Comcast is still a huge conglomerate. However, it’s probably even more reliant on its broadband side these days, as the cable TV side likely isn’t as lucrative as it was back in 2011. (Comcast’s my broadband provider; not a lot of choices where I live for internet service, trust me.)
Despite Peacock having only half of Paramount+’s subscribers (36 million for the former, 72 million for the latter), Comcast is clearly focused on making Peacock more of a thing. As for why Bravo gets to stay, the reality shows Bravo cranks out (the “Real Housewives” franchise, etc.) are lucrative and likely cheap to make. They’re also among the most popular programs on Peacock.
The future of the SpinCo channels
As I’ve written before, cable TV’s future seems pretty dim, given there’s little reason to have cable if you aren’t a sports or news fan (or need local TV reception an antenna can’t provide). The nation’s biggest cable TV provider throwing in the towel on its own cable channels doesn’t do much to argue otherwise.
I assume for the time being the SpinCo channels will maintain relationships with Comcast/NBC/Peacock. That said, it’s unclear how they plan to unwind everything. As Deadline and others have noted, Comcast’s sports coverage alone will need a rethink, especially with NBC relying on these cable channels for Olympics spillover coverage.
As for news, I’m wondering if this means MSNBC will lose the backing of NBC News. If so, I wonder how MSNBC will fare in the long run, between competing with CNN and its former parent network (NBC News has an online streaming component via Peacock and free services like Pluto TV). There’s also the already-rising corporate pressure to appease the incoming Trump administration, and a thin-skinned president who rants about any perceived slight by journalists. All this seems to put the future of MSNBC, or at least its left-leaning tone (by US media standards) in question.
If you’re wondering how the future SpinCo employees feel about all this, Variety suggests their reaction to all of this is mixed-to-negative, and not just for the all-but-expected downsizing.
“365: 04/20/2009.jpg” by uberculture is licensed under CC BY 2.0. (Flickr / cropped from original)
