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NEW YORK Eight decades after it pioneered the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a move that illustrates broadcast television's decline.
Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps this week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.
"This is highly symbolic," said Tim Brooks, who had worked at NBC for 20 years and now writes books on television history.
As of Sunday, Vivendi SA retained an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then sell a 51 percent stake of the entire NBC Universal unit to Comcast, which serves about a quarter of the nation's subscription TV households.
Philadelphia-based Comcast and GE agreed to value NBC Universal at about $30 billion this month, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The idea of broadcast TV was implied in the name: The networks tried to reach the broadest possible audience. For cable it's important to do something specific and do it well, and the audience doesn't need to be as large.
NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker recognizes that cable properties such as USA, SyFy, CNBC and The Weather Channel mean more to NBC Universal's bottom line than NBC, fourth in the ratings.
And those cable properties were the draw for Comcast. By owning more content, Comcast further hedges its bets as mainly a distributor of shows in case viewers ditch their cable TV subscriptions and migrate to the Internet, mobile devices or a platform that has yet to emerge. The company could charge for the shows or sell ads where the viewers are.
NBC was the nation's first radio network in 1926. Its parent company, the Radio Corporation of America, made radios and realized the best way to get people to buy the product was to make sure there were interesting things to listen to.
In 1947 came the first NBC program still around - Sunday morning's "Meet the Press."
