Does Comcast See The Writing on Cable's Slippery Wall?

Want to know the real reason that Comcast (CMCSA) is looking to strike a deal to gain control of NBC Universal from General Electric? Cable TV may well have seen its best days. Cable operators are estimated to lose 3.5 million subscribers over the next four years. And research firm Kagan predicts that 7.1 million folks will get their TV from online sources rather than cable in 2012 and that those numbers will double by 2019. You can imagine that Comcast wants to get its hands on a major video content creator like NBC before that happens. In addition to providing content for new technologies like telcos and the Internet, NBC is also a founder of the Hulu online TV site. According to numbers supplied by Comscore, Hulu delivered more than 488 million videos in August to 38 million online viewers. That's more than a three-fold increase from a year earlier. Growth of that sort would be welcome news to Comcast, which is likely looking for a way to offset the slowing growth in its cable business.