The Cable Gamer has never been able to figure out exactly what's going on at GE/NBC/MSNBC. I mean, a couple things are clear:
First, Keith Olbermann is a lefty hothead, who had a good thing, in terms of positioning his network where he himself wanted it to be--but then, Olbermann Overdosed, and pushed it all too far.
Second, MSNBC is still ranked third among the cable newsers.
Third, GE stock is still below 30. And trust me, folks, that third reason is the mother of all reasons. GE stock was 60 eight years ago, and that's the transcendent metric by which pension funds and shareholders--the true owners of GE--measure the performance of CEO Jeff Immelt.
Those three things are crystal clear. Now what's murky is what's happening there on a daily basis: Who is stabbing whom?
Here's Jossip's take: It's a corportate powerplay between Immelt and his alleged subordinate, Jeff Zucker.
Once again, it's hard to separate out the leaks and agendas, the finger-pointing and the blame-shifting, so let's go back to three crystal clear facts, and venture three transparently obvious predictions:
First, Olbermann is so radioactive, by his own thermo-design, that he will blow up his next employer, too.
Second, MSNBC won't get out of the dumpster anytime soon.
Third, Zucker and Immelt are not going to stay in the same corporate structure for long. Even if the Two Jeffs are BFF's, the pressure on GE to get the stock price up will be overwhelming, and a significant restructuring is coming. As in, breakup.
And in the Cable Gamer's humble opinion, such a breakup would actually be good news for both entities, GE and NBC (which is technically NBC-Universal, so NBC-U). GE would get a nice spinoff bump, and for its part, NBC-U could be sold to some egomaniacal tycoon, maybe someone already in the industry, or perhaps an egomaniacal tycoon from the outside. And they would pay a big premium for the right to own a blue-chip media company.
Anybody ready for Al-NBC?
