Comcast

Comcast Corporation is a global media and technology company with its main headquarters in Philadelphia and corporate offices in New York and London. It is a vertically integrated conglomerate with operations and subsidiary companies spanning across industries and roles in the production, distribution, and exhibition of news, entertainment, and information. It provides cable television and telecommunications services to residential and business customers. It operates cable- and satellite-delivered television networks and online video streaming applications for national and regional markets. It runs broadcast TV networks and stations. It produces and distributes filmed entertainment in the United States and abroad. And it owns or manages entertainment venues, including theme parks and sports stadiums.

Most of Comcast’s business is in the United States, where it is the largest provider of both pay-TV and Internet services. The company’s international footprint has expanded in recent years, first with its purchase of NBCUniversal (NBCU) in 2009, and again in 2018 with its acquisition of Sky, a leading European provider of many of the same services and products Comcast offers in the United States. This entry provides an overview of Comcast and details on its main business segments. It then discusses the NBCUniversal News Group, Comcast’s growth through acquisitions, and controversies involving the company.

Among Comcast’s holdings most immediately relevant to journalism are the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks (and their owned-and-operated local stations); the MSNBC, CNBC, and E! cable networks; and the NBC Sports Group, which includes nationally distributed channels (NBCSN and Golf Channel), a cluster of regional sports channels available to subscribers of local cable systems, and ownership stakes in the MLB and NHL networks. Comcast also has substantial equity investments in digital media and news companies Buzzfeed and Vox Media. Since 2017, Buzzfeed and Vox Media have been among the many news organizations experiencing labor turbulence; both have made large cuts to editorial staff and conceded to successful unionization campaigns by news workers.

Major sources of revenue for Comcast come from subscriptions to Internet, pay-TV, and other telecommunications services; advertising sales on broadcast and cable television; distribution and licensing of television programming and motion pictures; and fees from the carriage and retransmission consent agreements negotiated between pay-TV providers and Comcast’s cable networks and broadcast stations. In 2019, Comcast reported $108.9 billion in revenue and more than $13 billion in net income. That year, the company spent $6.1 billion to advertise its own products and services in the United States, more than any advertiser except Amazon. Because U.S. firms can deduct advertising expenditures from their federal tax bills, Comcast enjoys a government subsidy on this large outlay while also benefiting from the stimulus these subsidies provide for the advertisers who patronize Comcast’s media businesses. Brenton Malin (2020) calls this “America’s hidden public media system” and lists Comcast among its top beneficiaries.

Ralph Roberts and his associates founded the company now known as Comcast in 1963 when they bought a cable system with 1,200 subscribers in Tupelo, Mississippi. Comcast expanded over the following decades by purchasing competing cable TV providers. When Brian Roberts, the founder’s son, took over as president of the publicly traded company in 1990, Comcast had more than 2 million subscribers. Following its acquisition of AT&T Broadband (formerly Tele-Communications Inc.) in 2001–2002, Comcast became the largest U.S. cable operator, with more than 22 million subscribers. As of 2020, it ranks 28th on Fortune magazine’s list of the top 500 public companies, as measured by revenue. Brian Roberts, now Comcast’s chairman and chief executive officer, controls special Class B “super-voting” stock that gives him unimpeachable power over company decisions. Roberts’s salary in 2019 was more than $36 million and his net worth is reportedly $1.8 billion.

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