A Big Deal, but Not a Good One

Content never became king — search did — but the notion continues to lure otherwise careful companies to the deal altar with its abundant charms. Sometime in the near future, Comcast, the largest cable system operator in the country, is likely to buy a majority stake from General Electric in NBC Universal, a huge enterprise with content assets in broadcast, cable and film and on the Web. It's just like the good old days, when media titans strode the earth in search of the grail of synergy, a magical elixir that emerged from vertically integrating seemingly disparate enterprises. In this case, Comcast — a company with around 24 million customers in 39 states that make up 95 percent of its revenue — wants to diversify when cable systems are under a variety of threats. Nothing like a little deal flow to get the blood pumping. We haven't seen anything quite like it since the merger of Time Warner and AOL. And that turned out well, right?