That's the headline atop a jokey-but-serious item from "Jack Flack"--my guess is that, uh, that's a pseudonym, perhaps aimed at giving, say, Jeff Bercovici some plausible deniability--appearing in Conde Nast's very cool Portfolio mag. Full of sobering advice to GE's Jeff Immelt. But I just report. You decide.
Now some of my fellow Cable Gamers think that I have been too mean to NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC, and poor Jeff Zucker. Now yes, it is true that I think--pretty sure that I know, actually--that GE is going to spin off NBC-Universal, right out from under Zucker, some time in 2009. (Of course, at such time Jeff would be free to put together his own buyout consortium, to take NBCU off GE's hands; and who wouldn't want the fellow who made NBC the #3 network as the part owner, as well as chief executive?)
But there I go again, being critical. So to immunize myself from such criticism, I am simply going to provide all this information, here, to all Cable Gamers, so that they can decide for themselves.
First, here's a writeup of the "Jack Flack" piece, from MediaWireDaily:
You know there must be a serious threat against CNBC by Fox Business News when an open letter that should have been addressed to Jeff Zucker goes over his head and is addressed to his boss at GE Jeff Immelt. In the open letter Immelt is reminded of the things he is that former GE boss Jack Welch wasn't and is reminded that if he doesn't act now it may haunt him. Though there are no available reports on how Rupert Murdoch's new channel is doing, people continue to refer to the ass whipping his Fox News has given CNN over the years predicting that it will happen again with Fox Business News kicking CNBC's ass. Should Jeff Immelt take this open letter seriously and order his media chief Jeff Zucker and his troops into battle? We kinda think so. Because as the saying goes, never bet against Rupert Murdoch.
And here, again, is that Portfolio story.
Hey Jeff Zucker! You and your e-surrogates can't blame me for being tough on you! I'm just playing the piano here. It's that other Jeff, who's writing the music.
