A Vision for Comcast in a Post-Merger World

Comcast’s chief executive, Brian Roberts, was stung four years ago when Reed Hastings, chief executive of the then-fledgling Netflix, dismissed Comcast with a rhetorical question: “Why would we want to do a deal with a regional cable company?” If Roberts has his way, Comcast will soon be neither regional nor cable.

With its aggressive push into broadband Internet and its bold acquisition of NBC Universal, Comcast already is no longer just a cable company. If its proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable is approved by regulators, it won’t be regional, either. And Hastings is making deals with Comcast now. Roberts sees the new Comcast as a global technology company and its major competitors the media companies of the future: Google, Amazon, Facebook and even Apple, with which Comcast has been engaging in tentative negotiations. “The alternative was to sit around and let cable die a slow death,” said Roberts. “Cable is a relic of an antiquated model,” when municipalities doled out local monopolies to cable operators. “The result is we’re not in New York or Los Angeles. How great can that be?”