Comcast

It’s another case of the streaming wars making strange bedfellows: Comcast announced that starting today, Google’s YouTube TV is now available on Xfinity Flex, the cable giant’s video platform for broadband-only customers.

Some observers predicted the just completed carriage talks between Disney and Comcast might make a convenient container in which to resolve Hulu ownership. Why didn’t that happen?

Comcast and Disney renewed a critical carriage pact that will keep ESPN, Disney Channel, ABC and more flowing to the subscribers of the Philadelphia cable giant. The two companies said they had struck a “multi-year agreement” that includes carriage of the ESPN networks, Disney’s kid-focused cable networks, Freeform, the FX and National Geographic networks and ABC-owned stations on Comcast’s Xfinity service.

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal is considering removing much of its content from Hulu and making it exclusive to its Peacock platform, according to people familiar with the matter, as the media giant determines how to best play its hand in the streaming wars. NBCUniversal, which owns one-third of Hulu, with Disney controlling the rest, has to make a decision soon. Under the terms of an agreement with Disney, NBCUniversal has a one-time window to exit from the content-licensing agreement between the two early next year. If it doesn’t exercise the option, the content would remain there until at least 2024.

It’s been four months since Comcast filed its FCC petition asking the agency to look at whether Nexstar is in violation of the 39% broadcast audience cap, and so far, it’s been crickets.

In the span of one month, Comcast has gone from outlier in the streaming platform market to suddenly having a robust smart TV strategy on two continents.

Media revenues for NBCU were up 47.5% to $6.8 billion. Comcast CFO Mike Cavanagh noted that included approximately $1.8 billion attributed to the Tokyo Olympics. But excluding the Olympics, revenues were still up 9.2%, driven by higher distribution and advertising revenue.

NBCUniversal parent company Comcast beat on both revenue and earnings expectations in the third quarter of 2021, which featured both the (delayed) Tokyo Olympics and “F9.” Wall Street had forecast earnings per share of 75 cents on $29.87 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate compiled by Yahoo Finance. Comcast reported adjusted EPS of 87 cents on $30.298 billion in revenue. The adjustment made up just one penny per share.

It all comes down to having power over what Americans watch and how.

Comcast has established a successful 10 Gbps network-to-modem connection using virtualized CMTS and the full duplex version of the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard, the cable company announced Thursday from the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers‘ once-again-virtualized Cable-Tec Expo conference.

Comcast and Cox Communications are chugging along down the road toward DOCSIS 4.0, aiming to take work currently being done in the lab out into the wild in the near future. Executives from both companies shed light on their progress during a pre-conference session held before the official start of SCTE’s Cable-Tec Expo on Tuesday.

Comcast has launched a new wireless streaming device — the XiOne — that will become the company’s standard platform across the globe. (Image: Comcast)

TV viewing by Comcast subscribers drops to 6 hours, 2 minutes per day.

Comcast stock fell Tuesday after its chief financial officer signaled a third-quarter slowdown in broadband subscriber growth, which had been a bright spot during the shift to work-from-home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Comcast and ViacomCBS have announced the next phase of their expected joint streaming venture into international markets in the form of SkyShowtime, which is looking to roll out in 20 European territories in 2022.

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell: “So, net-net, with all this bad luck, we’re going to be profitable on the Olympics, which we’re very happy with. We’re very happy with the product. If you watch every night, you’ll see that we use this as a firehose to promote everything else that we’re doing at the company.”

A significant comeback for NBCUniversal paced Comcast’s results in the second quarter as the media giant handily beat Wall Street forecasts. Total revenue climbed 20% to $28.5 billion, while earnings per share increased 22% to 84 cents. Wall Street analysts had expected earnings of 67 cents a share and revenue of $27.2 billion.

ViacomCBS and Comcast’s potential partnership has been slowed by concern about the Biden Administration’s pledge to aggressively enforce the nation’s antitrust laws, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions. Both sides are waiting to see how the new administration’s regulators react to the proposed merger of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit with Discovery, says the source, before resuming discussions about ways the two sides could work together — including any possible business combination — beyond a possible streaming partnership outside the U.S.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts met with ViacomCBS Chairman Shari Redstone in recent weeks to discuss a potential streaming partnership for international markets, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign the media companies see opportunities to join forces. During the meeting, which was held around the end of June in New York, and which also included ViacomCBS CEO Robert Bakish, the executives discussed a variety of possible business partnerships that would allow the companies to enter non-U.S. markets together, the people said.

Fox TV Stations said today it’s made a deal to integrate Fox Flx, its over-the-top advertising product, into the Strata buying platform operated by Comcast’s FreeWheel unit.

Nexstar Media Inc. filed a suit against Comcast Cable Communications charging that the cable company was breaching its retransmission contract by failing to pay fees for carrying WPIX New York. In the suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, Nexstar is seeking unspecified damages, interest and other costs, including attorney’s fees.

The internet and cable provider is still trying to figure out the best way to compete in the streaming wars.

Media tongues are wagging about what potential streaming collaborations might be brewing in the wake of this week’s Allen & Co. conference for tech and media moguls. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who has been reportedly mulling a potential acquisition of media assets, met with ViacomCBS Chair Shari Redstone on Wednesday, according to an attendee with knowledge of the sitdown. The powwows between media bosses at the Sun Valley confab reached a new level of intensity this year, including meetings between bosses at Disney and Netflix as well as at Comcast and ViacomCBS, one source says.

The companies said Tuesday that starting in 2022 all Universal films, including the new Jurassic World and Minions movies, will become available exclusively on Peacock no later than four months after their theatrical premieres. Both companies are subsidiaries of Comcast’s NBCUniversal.

Comcast wants the FCC to issue a ruling that Nexstar should be attributed ownership of WPIX New York , which would make it in violation of the commission’s 39% cap on broadcast national audience reach. The cable operator claims Nexstar’s divestiture of the station to meet FCC requirements in its acquisition of Tribune was a “sham.”

Analysts threw ice-cold water on a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday suggesting that Comcast may buy ViacomCBS and/or Roku. “From a regulatory standpoint, ViacomCBS is a non-starter with network/station overlaps, even before considering whether network/content production market share would be an issue,” Credit Suisse’s Douglas Mitchelson wrote in a note to investors Thursday morning.

Brian Roberts is out to prove that having content and distribution under one roof can turn his cable colossus into a major streaming contender. He is also wrestling with whether to build or buy to reach that goal.

Comcast, Charter Communications and Vizio, among others, have created a consortium to identify ways to simplify and scale an increasingly complex TV ad business.

ViacomCBS and Comcast can succeed without acquiring other businesses, IAC Chairman Barry Diller says. He described Comcast as being in a “fantastic position” with a cable and broadband business that hedges against NBCUniversal. “I don’t think they have to do anything,” he said of whether Comcast needs to spin off a business or get bigger.

Tensions between Disney and Comcast over their joint ownership of Hulu are heating up. The two companies are feuding over Disney’s decision last year to not launch Hulu overseas, a move that Comcast believes undermined its growth potential and valuation. The issue has inflamed arbitration proceedings now underway between the two companies over the value of Hulu, say people familiar with the situation. The dispute is a prelude to what could be a bigger fight in 2024, when Disney is scheduled to buy Comcast out of its minority stake in Hulu at a price that could be anywhere from $9 billion to $13 billion. Buying Comcast’s stake would give Disney full ownership of Hulu.