Steve Burke

Speaking on parent Comcast’s earnings call, NBCU CEO Steve Burke said the company finished upfront selling across all its broadcast and cable nets with volume up 10% to $7 billion and price increases of 9%. Prices for spots in NBC primetime shows like This is Us were up 14%. Cable network also saw double-digit pricing growth, he said.

The tide is turning among America’s Spanish-language broadcast networks, and no one is happier about it than NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke. Soon, he says, parent company Comcast’s investors will catch up to his level of joy. That turnaround hasn’t technically paid off just yet in terms of revenues — but it could be just a matter of time.

After the company reports net loss of 45,000 cable subs in the second quarter, Comcast’s Steve Burke dismissed online streaming services, also known as virtual MVPDs, as immaterial. It’s a “a very tough business,” he said. “We are skeptical that it’s going to be a very large business or profitable business for the people that are in it.”

NBCU snared more than $250 million in profit from its 17-day broadcast of the events from Rio de Janeiro, the company’s CEO Steve Burke said at an investor conference Wednesday, despite noticeable ratings shortfalls in viewing of the Games on its flagship broadcast outlet, NBC.

NBCU chief Steve Burke says the company will get rid of some of its “marginal channels.” I give that idea an enthusiastic thumbs up. The glut of these second- or third-rate channels has been a bane to broadcasting, siphoning off viewers, national advertising dollars and, in many cases, programming fees paid by the MVPDs. Most networks offer a few quality shows, but the good ones are scattered across too many networks. It’s time for consolidation.

Comcast says in an SEC filing that it re-upped NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke through August 2020 — with a $10 million stock option to reward him for his “outstanding work” and to “incent” him to do a good job.

The Olympic Games in Rio are 25 days away but NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke believes his company has already won the gold in ad sales. After a press preview on Monday of NBC’s Olympics coverage, Burke told the Los Angeles Times that the company has hit its sales target for the Rio Games, which he said will end up being be “the most profitable Olympics in history.”

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts’ compensation rose 10% to $36.2 million, according to the company proxy just filed at the SEC. NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke’s compensation declined 0.7% to $33.7 million. And Senior EVP David Cohen, the company’s point man in the Time Warner Cable effort, got at 32.6% raise to $17.9 million.

With its movie studio, broadcast television network and theme parks, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal sits squarely in the geriatric old-media camp of Disney, Viacom, CBS, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner, all of which are struggling to varying degrees with the digital revolution and innovative upstarts like Netflix. But NBCU CEO Steve Burke has turned his attention to the digital revolution. “It’s my biggest challenge.”

Media giant NBCUniversal has an Achilles’s heel, according to its top executive. And it hopes it has come up with a cure for the ailment. CEO Steve Burke said the company took a look at four different outlets: BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice and Huffington Post. NBCU recently announced it would invest $200 million in each of the first two companies, in deals that will allow for content sharing, joint advertising pacts, and said Burke, education. “We like their businesses, but the real deal is we are going to get smarter” about reaching consumers with content through digital outlets.

NBCUniversal Chief Executive Steve Burke received a slightly more handsome compensation package in 2014 than his boss, Brian Roberts, who is the chairman and chief executive of Comcast Corp. Burke’s take was $33.9 million vs. just under $33 million for Roberts.

NBCU CEO Steve Burke’s statement that he was surprised at the moves by HBO and CBS to offer streaming services is a bit surprising for a few reasons, one being that neither service came completely out of left field. And contrary to Burke, HBO and CBS aren’t likely to cannabalize their cable revenue or find the online distribution business particularly tough.

Steve Burke, CEO, said today that he was taken aback by the announcements last week that HBO and CBS are offering online-only services that don’t require a cable subscription, he said in an investor call this morning. “I was surprised,” Burke said. “CBS I was surprised because they’ve been such a defender of retransmission consent and the traditional ecosystem and been so successful in the broadcast business. And HBO, because I think it’s going to be such a challenge for them to not cannibalize what is already a really, really good business.”

Steve Burke doesn’t want people, or advertisers, to pay attention to total viewer ratings because “we’re in the 18-to-49 business,” he told a press gathering today in the run-up to the upfront sales season. Indeed, if presented with a program that would attract a big total audience, but would be weak in the target demo, “we wouldn’t pick that show up,” he says.

Nearly three years after Comcast took control of NBCUniversal from General Electric, Steve Burke is still shaking up the executive suites and clearing out those who don’t hew to the CEO’s vision. The seemingly endless stream of high-level changes has raised questions among NBCUniversal insiders about what exactly Burke and Comcast ultimately have in mind.

NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke, who for years has complained to Wall Street that NBCU was shortchanged when it came to retransmission fees and other revenue, told a conference last week that the media giant’s gap with rivals could be as much as $1 billion. While his pitch in the past fell on deaf ears — in no small part because an NBC turn-around has been as elusive as unicorns — the first week of the current season shows the Peacock Network off to a flying start with its primetime ratings up 41% in the first four days of the new season.

CBS, Fox and ABC make $500 million to $1 billion more than NBC does each year, in part because NBC sells advertising for about 20 percent less than its competitors due to smaller ratings, CEO Steve Burke said today. Retransmission fees have gone from zero a few years ago to $200 million this year, Burke said, and there, too, NBC lags behind the competition.

Writers from Saturday Night Live, Late Night, 30 Rock and a slew of other NBCUniversal shows sent a letter to NBCU President Steve Burke asking him to allow writers at the company’s Peacock Productions to unionize.

The NBCUniversal chief’s previous deal, made in late 2009, was due to expire at the end of 2014. Now it will run through August 2018, with an 18% increase in his base salary to $2.6 million while his annual cash bonus opportunity stays at 300% of his base salary, the company says in an SEC filing.

Comcast Corp. CEO Brian Roberts ranks in the middle of the media pack in terms of salary and perks. Roberts received $29 million in compensation last year, an increase of 8% over 2011, according to a regulatory filing by the company Friday. One of Roberts’ ranking lieutenants, Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, got a double-digit bump, receiving $26.3 million in compensation in 2012, an 11.3% increase over the previous year.

The NBCUniversal CEO says the Peacock doesn’t generate anywhere near the operating cash flow of CBS, ABC and Fox, and he vows to gain equal footing with those rivals.

“We’re way ahead of where we thought we would be,” NBCUniversal chief Steve Burke tells analysts. “Given the trends we stand to make money on future Olympics,” he adds.

Steve Burke on Wednesday echoed a familiar refrain, telling investors that NBC has “a long way to go” before it truly can be said to have regained its standing with its broadcast network rivals.

In a season in which NBC has a shaky grasp on third place — only the Super Bowl is saving the network from an ignominious spot at the bottom of the heap — and is in desperate need of a hit, Steve Burke picked a bad time to drop his guard. As Comcast wrapped its 4Q earnings call Tuesday, the NBCUniversal CEO offered an aside to an unknown interlocutor, saying, “I think Smash is problematic.”

With a fourth-place broadcast network, an underperforming Hollywood studio, a Today show with its star’s contract set to expire in December and pricey TV-rights contracts to exploit at NBC Sports, much is on the line for the NBCUniversal chief starting his second year at the media giant.

While the FCC’s desire to get back TV spectrum from stations is grabbing a lot of attention, there’s another issue that shouldn’t fall under the industry’s radar. The attempt by cable and satellite operators to get the commission to change the retransmission consent rules to decrease the broadcasters’ leverage. This second revenue stream is vital and is growing more important each year. This is a dangerous proceeding. If broadcasters don’t pay enough attention, all their spread sheets showing steadily rising retrans revenue over the next decade could suddenly become moot.

The odds of succeeding with any newsmagazine are tough in the age of instant information on cable, the Internet and smartphones. No network has launched a new one since CBS tried Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel in 1997. Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, ignored those trends and made finding a high-class platform for Brian Williams and the news division one of his first orders of business when he took over earlier this year.

That’s one wicked about-face for Steve Burke. The Comcast executive, after fiercely resisting for 12 years paying broadcasters any retransmission fees, appeared to find religion yesterday, surprising a media conference audience by promising to doggedly pursue “millions of dollars” in — wait for it — retransmission fees for his NBCU unit. “Retransmission consent dollars is not a good thing for the cable side of Comcast, but it’s going to be a very good thing for NBCU,” he told a host of investors at Bank of America’s annual media conference.

Craig Robinson, who succeeds Paula Madison as NBCU’s chief diversity officer, will stay on as GM of the NBC Los Angeles O&O until a successor can be found.

Less than three months after Comcast Corp. took control of NBCUniversal, NBCU’s new CEO, Steve Burke, is angling for sports deals and pushing a big shift in how the entertainment company would use them.

NBC Universal chief Steve Burke said that with regulatory approvals behind it and the joint venture deal officially closed, his initial focus will be to help the cable networks maintain their leadership position in the industry, while improving its broadcast operations may take a little more time.

NBC Universal’s new chief executive, Steve Burke, has resigned as Comcast Corp.’s chief operating officer but will remain an executive vice president of the cable company, according to a regulatory filing today. Burke became NBCU CEO after Comcast’s takeover of the company closed on Friday.