Inside Comcast's $30 Billion TV Bet

In the two years since Comcast bought NBCUniversal, Steve Burke has shown a zeal for shaking things up with little sentimentality, weeding out some of the company's most well-known personalities in the process.

A straight-talking Harvard Business School graduate, Burke belongs to a new generation of media chieftains—including Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes and Viacom's Philippe Dauman—who are more enamored with the bottom line than with Hollywood glamour. He refrains from hanging out in the news rooms and indulging stars—hallmarks of his predecessor Jeff Zucker. Burke is the man in charge of pulling off a colossal wager. With Comcast's two-stage, $30 billion deal completed in March, the cable giant is betting that its distribution business, combined with a content company, can create outsize benefits.