{"id":2035173,"date":"2026-07-09T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2035173"},"modified":"2026-07-09T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:00:00","slug":"comcast-is-breaking-up-with-nbcu-why-did-it-ever-buy-it-in-the-first-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2035173","title":{"rendered":"Comcast is breaking up with NBCU. Why did it ever buy it in the first place?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><main id=\"content\"><\/p>\n<div class>\n<article>\n<div class=\"duet--article--lede duet--page-layout--feature-article _1se63890\">\n<div class=\"duet--ledes--feature-lede _1m5y14k0\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k1\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k6 _1m5y14k7\">\n<div class=\"_1xtd7xb5 _1xtd7xb4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1044qiz7\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k2 _1044qiz3\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k3\">\n<div class=\"_5s9d1e0 _5s9d1e2\">\n<div class=\"_5s9d1e3\"><span class=\"_29pwo217\"><\/p>\n<ul class=\"_1phh1th0\">\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Podcasts<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Podcasts<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\">See All <!-- -->Podcasts<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjE0Mg==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Business<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjE0Mg==-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Business<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/business\">See All <!-- -->Business<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU2\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Entertainment<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU2-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Entertainment<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/entertainment\">See All <!-- -->Entertainment<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<div class>\n<h1 class=\"cbn62f2 cbn62f0 cbn62f7 _19wv7tcb _19wv7tc9\">Comcast is breaking up with NBCU. Why did it ever buy it in the first place?<\/h1>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup cbn62fi cbn62fg _19wv7tcb _19wv7tc1\">Business Insider\u2019s Peter Kafka on the Comcast split, and why the dream of content plus pipes keeps failing.\ufeff<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_5s9d1ea\">\n<p class=\"pf8b0f0 _19wv7tcb\">If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. <a class=\"pf8b0f1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ethics-statement\">See our ethics statement.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo22 _29pwo20 _29pwo221\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo29 _29pwo2h\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-byline _19wv7tcb _1p3b6390\"><span class><span>by<\/span> <!-- --> <span aria-expanded=\"false\" role=\"button\"><span id=\"follow-author-author_byline_lead-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\" class=\"t0jcdf0 gnx4pm0 _1p3b6392 _1p3b6394 t0jcdf1\"><span class=\"t0jcdf2\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><\/span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx-author_byline_lead\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1bw37384\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5 _1bw37380\">Nilay Patel<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1bw37381\">\n<div class=\"_1bw37382\">Editor-in-Chief<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\">See All by <!-- -->Nilay Patel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw6 g4xafw1 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _19wv7tcb\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-09T14:00:00+00:00\">Jul 9, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo2m\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo2x _29pwo215\"><span class=\"_29pwo216 _29pwo217\"><\/p>\n<ul class=\"duet--article--share-buttons _1e9wo7z0\">\n<li>\n<div class=\"_1e9wo7zo\"><button aria-label=\"Copy link\" class=\"_1e9wo7z3 _1e9wo7z1\"><title>Link<\/title><\/button><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" aria-label=\"Share article\" class=\"_1e9wo7z3 _1e9wo7z1\"><title>Share<\/title><\/button><\/li>\n<li><\/ul>\n<p><\/span><span class=\"_29pwo224 _1044qizr _29pwo216 _29pwo217\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo219\">\n<div class=\"o1ls98 o1ls90 o1ls92h\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls9f o1ls99\" data-concert=\"article_sponsorship_white_mobile_and_tablet\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo21u\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo21h\">\n<div class=\"o1ls98 o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls9d o1ls99\" data-concert=\"article_sponsorship_white_desktop\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo218 _1044qizp\">\n<p class=\"pf8b0f0 _19wv7tcb\">If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. <a class=\"pf8b0f1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ethics-statement\">See our ethics statement.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1xtd7xb0\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k4\">\n<div class=\"_19dn9e80\">\n<div class=\"_19dn9e82 _19dn9e81 sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"r21yj70\">\n<div class=\"f8x97j3 _1044qizz\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--layout--entry-body-container j2p4kx0 _1044qiz3 _1044qiz17\">\n<div class=\"j2p4kx1\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--entry-body mebm7x0\">\n<div class=\"duet--ledes--standard-lede-bottom\">\n<div class=\"h9mca15\">\n<div class=\"waimqt2 waimqt0\">\n<div class=\"_4aoxp30 _4aoxp31\">\n<div class=\"_4aoxp33\"><a class=\"_4aoxp36\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"_4aoxp34\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=96\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"_4aoxp35\"><span aria-expanded=\"false\" role=\"button\"><span id=\"follow-author-standard_article_details-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\" class=\"t0jcdf0 gnx4pm0 _1p3b6392 _1p3b6393 t0jcdf1\"><span class=\"t0jcdf2\"><span class=\"_1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><\/span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx-standard_article_details\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1bw37384\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5 _1bw37380\">Nilay Patel<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1bw37381\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\">See All by <!-- -->Nilay Patel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p> <span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _4aoxp37\">is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel\"><b>Decoder podcast<\/b><\/a>, and co-host of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/the-vergecast\"><b>The Vergecast<\/b><\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\" class=\"_1044qiz13\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b2 _18mzr4b0 _18mzr4b7 _18mzr4b5 _19wv7tc1 _18mzr4bb\">Today on <em>Decoder<\/em>, I\u2019m talking with Peter Kafka, who is chief correspondent at <em>Business Insider<\/em> and host of <em>Channels<\/em>, a podcast about the media industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">And it\u2019s a big week for the media industry \u2014 Comcast just announced that it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/958849\/comcast-nbcuniversal-company-spinoff-announcement\">splitting itself up<\/a>, into the Comcast broadband company and the NBCUniversal entertainment company. That\u2019s after the media giant spun out its cable assets like CNBC and MS.NOW <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/662082\/spinco-is-now-versant\">into a new company called Versant<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">A quick note, by the way \u2014 longtime <em>Verge<\/em> fans know we\u2019ve been disclosing that Comcast NBCUniversal was an investor in our parent company, Vox Media, for years now. That\u2019s come to an end \u2014 not only did that investment spin out with Versant, but Vox Media itself is splitting in two, and that Versant stake now lives inside of a shell company that is part of a joint venture with the Penske Media Corporation called PMX, which technically does not exist yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It is very complicated, and I promise I will sort out a simpler disclosure when all of these deals close. But for now the upshot is the same as ever: None of these companies have ever told us what to do or say in our reporting, and we wouldn\u2019t let them if they tried.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac2 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--highlight _1044qizl _1upt4f20\">\n<div class=\"_1upt4f21\"><\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"position:relative\">\n<div class>\n<div class>\n<div style=\"background-image:none\" class=\"duet--media--content-warning _1k8kvzd0\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--image-gallery-image _1pegheu0\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1\" id=\"dmcyOmltYWdlOjU5NQ==\"><a class=\"_1pegheu1\" href=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" data-pswp-height=\"3000\" data-pswp-width=\"3000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1upt4f24\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1 _1upt4f27\"><em>Verge<\/em> subscribers, don\u2019t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free <em>Decoder<\/em> wherever you get your podcasts. Head <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/account\/podcasts\">here<\/a>. Not a subscriber? You can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/subscribe\">sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That is good, because, boy, do Peter and I have a lot to say about Comcast. He and I have been covering media and telecom as friends, peers, and competitors for years now, and Comcast was <em>the<\/em> biggest bet on the idea that combining media assets like NBC with access and distribution like Comcast\u2019s broadband network would somehow pay off. This idea, which you\u2019ll hear us loosely call content plus pipes, is irresistible to media and telecom people. They cannot stay away from it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">AT&amp;T tried content plus pipes when it bought Time Warner. Verizon tried content plus pipes when it bought AOL and Yahoo, and, hell, AOL tried content plus pipes when it bought Time Warner in the early 2000s. You might notice a trend here \u2014 all of those deals ended in disaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But Comcast managed to hold it together with NBCU for 15 years, even though it could never quite explain what value there was in putting the content near the pipes. As you\u2019ll hear Peter say, this big split feels like the company admitting it never really had that answer and capitulating to Wall Street\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Peter and I talked a lot about what comes next for Comcast and NBCU \u2014 both companies have existential choices ahead of them and face stiff competition, and it\u2019s unclear if there are more deals coming to either sell or acquire more assets. We also talked a lot about how we got here and why content plus pipes always crashes and burns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You\u2019ll hear us talk a lot about net neutrality in that context \u2014 that\u2019s the idea that ISPs like Comcast have to treat all traffic on their network equally, and they can\u2019t throttle Netflix and prioritize Peacock. That might have been the entire basis of content plus pipes, but Peter and I disagree on whether it was regulators or the market that kept the internet from turning back into cable TV in that way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">This is a good one, as you\u2019ll hear, Peter and I really like talking to each other about this stuff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Okay: Peter Kafka, chief correspondent for <em>Business Insider <\/em>and host of the <em>Channels <\/em>podcast, on the Comcast split. Here we go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac1 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1h0hdr20\">\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><em>This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Peter Kafka, you\u2019re the chief correspondent for <\/strong><strong><em>Business Insider<\/em><\/strong><strong> as well as the host of the excellent media industry podcast <\/strong><strong><em>Channels<\/em><\/strong><strong>. Welcome to <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Thank you, Nilay. Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I have to say, <\/strong><strong><em>Channels<\/em><\/strong><strong> is excellent because I was just on it. That\u2019s how I know it\u2019s good.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That was an excellent episode.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So, we\u2019re trading it back. I\u2019m really excited to talk to you about what\u2019s going on with Comcast because it feels like you and I have spent our careers weaving in and out of covering Comcast around each other, you especially.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Turns out we were stupid. We should have just slept for the last 15 years, woken up, and nothing would\u2019ve changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Of all the weaving back and forth, one of my favorite moments wasn\u2019t about Comcast specifically. You had [former Netflix CEO] Reed Hastings <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2017\/5\/31\/15720268\/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-net-neutrality-open-internet\"><strong>onstage at a Code Conference event<\/strong><\/a><strong>, and you asked him about net neutrality, which we will come to in the course of this conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Reed Hastings said, \u201cYeah, it\u2019s over. We\u2019re big enough. It doesn\u2019t matter anymore.\u201d In many ways, this was a pivotal moment in the history of internet and content because what he was saying was that he had reached enough scale that the distributors, the power, now had to come to his terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>If you look back, I think you can trace almost everything that\u2019s happened to that moment: Netflix announcing to you that they were big enough that everyone had to deal with them. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s funny because I always think of that as the classic, \u201cOh, nerds or people who care about the thing we said we cared about, it\u2019s fine. We\u2019ve just moved on.\u201d There was a huge part of internet culture that was just despondent about the fact that Netflix had been their sword carrier for this stuff and that it was done carrying swords. Shields? Whatever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It was both. They had a sword and shield. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But you\u2019ve nailed it. We\u2019ll get into it, but I think Netflix is the great example of why this convergence dream that Comcast, among many others, chased is immaterial for 2026, and it\u2019s finally acknowledging that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yeah. Everyone had to go to Netflix because Netflix had built enough of an audience. I think that\u2019s where you can begin this conversation, it might be where you can end it \u2014 that Comcast is <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/958849\/comcast-nbcuniversal-company-spinoff-announcement\"><strong>going to break itself up<\/strong><\/a><strong> into a content arm and a broadband arm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Maybe those two companies will work together, and maybe they won\u2019t, but there\u2019s a moment that I think you can point to and say, \u201cOh, this was inevitable. It was inevitable that the dream of a giant multinational conglomerate would have to unbundle itself.\u201d I feel like we\u2019re in a time of great unbundling right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The media bundles and re-bundles are a classic cliche. We\u2019re in the unbundling part of the pendulum swing. I\u2019m sure at some point we\u2019ll move back to, \u201cHey, wouldn\u2019t it be great if we bundled?\u201d But the great thing is the bankers and lawyers remain undefeated because they get paid no matter what for every&#8230; You do a transaction, it makes no sense, so you get paid to undo the transaction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Every time anyone says that to me, I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy did I quit being a lawyer to be a journalist? I could have been getting paid on every one of these deals.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But you have more fun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It is more fun. Talking to you about this stuff is way more fun than being a lawyer and not being able to talk about it. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I jumped way into the weeds because it is true that you and I have covered Comcast together and around each other for so long. Let\u2019s just start at the start here. <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/958849\/comcast-nbcuniversal-company-spinoff-announcement\"><strong>Comcast announced it\u2019s splitting itself up<\/strong><\/a><strong>. At a high level, what\u2019s happening here?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Comcast started splitting itself up earlier this year. It spun out what is now called Versant. That\u2019s its collection of cable networks no one wants. It split that off, and that was pure financial engineering. That was, \u201cMaybe if we get rid of this declining asset, Wall Street will value us more.\u201d Its stock really has been mired for many, many years. That did not move the stock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Cut to last week, it announced, \u201cOkay, we\u2019ll split ourselves up even more. We are now going to be what we were before we bought NBCUniversal. We\u2019re going to be Comcast, the company that sells you broadband connections for your home and now other stuff as well.\u201d That\u2019ll be one company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">There\u2019ll be another company, NBCUniversal, which is NBC, the broadcast network; Bravo, the cable network (for some reason); Peacock, the streaming network; the Universal Studios theme park business, which is a big business; and the actual film and TV studio owned by Universal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So, those are big assets and they\u2019re all entertainment. For years and years, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, would get asked by all sorts of folks, \u201cWhy do you own a media company and an infrastructure company?\u201d He would have some answer that didn\u2019t really make sense. The real answer is actually that they shouldn\u2019t have those two companies combined. They should be separate companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Let\u2019s rewind just a bit. Comcast buying NBCUniversal was a big deal at the time. A lot of people made the argument that Comcast Universal was the only company of its kind that actually worked, that every other company that had tried to smash together content and pipes failed from the jump. I think AT&amp;T buying Time Warner is the classic example. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It didn\u2019t even get started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yeah, they were like, \u201cWell, this failed instantly.\u201d AT&amp;T would make crazy arguments about why it would work. It was going to <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/arts-culture\/television\/game-of-thrones-true-blood-creators-3-body-problem-netflix-d0aa9420?mod=style_feat1_magazine_pos1\"><strong>load clips of <\/strong><strong><em>Game of Thrones<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong> on mid-range Android phones and that would make people pick AT&amp;T.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">And they were going to have amazing data somehow and\u2026 underpants gnomes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It literally just didn\u2019t work from the very beginning. There was an argument that Comcast NBCUniversal worked for a time. What was that argument?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I don\u2019t know about that argument, honestly. It never worked in terms of there being a synergy between owning the pipes that distribute the content and owning the content. Comcast did own some cable stuff before it went and bought NBCUniversal, so that made sense to fold into NBCUniversal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You can argue that NBCUniversal performed well as an asset under Comcast. Again, the theme park business is a real business. It\u2019s invested a lot in that. The studio has had its ups and downs, but it\u2019s still a thing that exists and is valuable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s ever proven that there was some benefit from adding the content company to the distribution company, which is what a lot of people thought was going to happen when they merged. It freaked out a lot of people: What happens if this big cable distributor now owns these cable networks? In fact, that was a real concern for the Department of Justice. It put all kinds of remedies and restrictions around that merger to prevent abuse. But in the end, I don\u2019t know that Comcast, the pipes company, was helped at all by owning the content company or vice versa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And yet, it persisted this long. We\u2019re 15 years into this experiment. Why did it last so long if the thesis never made any sense?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Great question. Comcast is a publicly owned company, but it\u2019s really a family-owned company. It\u2019s the Roberts family. Like a lot of these big media and now tech companies, they are essentially family-run companies even if they\u2019re publicly traded. That\u2019s <em>The New York Times<\/em>. That used to be Viacom. That\u2019s now Paramount. We can keep going down the list \u2014 <em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em> is publicly traded and controlled by one family, the Murdochs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So it can be as simple as Roberts saying, \u201cNo, this is going to work.\u201d Mind you, it was still trying to expand the media business as recently as a few months ago. It was bidding for part of Warner Bros. Discovery as the third bidder in that deal. It didn\u2019t try that aggressively, but it was, in theory, willing to spend billions of dollars to expand that media company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think it is probably as simple as after years and years of being told by Wall Street, \u201cWe don\u2019t value this asset you own at all. We don\u2019t care about this giant media company you own. We only care about your broadband company,\u201d Comcast finally said, \u201cOkay, we will take you at your word, and we\u2019ll split it up.\u201d It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">As for why they stuck it out for 15 years? We do make fun of AT&amp;T buying Warner Media and ditching it a couple of years later. At least with AT&amp;T, you can say it looked around and said, \u201cWe thought we\u2019d get rewarded by Wall Street for this deal.\u201d It had this synergy plan for AT&amp;T and Warner Bros. Discovery, but the real answer was, \u201cWe thought if we owned a media company, we would get valued like Netflix is valued.\u201d Wall Street, again, did not reward AT&amp;T at all for that deal. So, it turned around and said, \u201cAll right, let\u2019s just get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So, you could argue that AT&amp;T behaved more responsibly than Comcast did. And Comcast would argue, \u201cLook, we have behaved responsibly. We\u2019ve grown this asset. The fact that we\u2019re splitting it up is just a technicality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Two things there. One, it\u2019s funny because Netflix is fundamentally valued like a tech company, not a media company. So, everyone feels very confused about that just from the jump. Second, AT&amp;T might\u2019ve been more responsible but fundamentally, the thing it did was give Zack Snyder millions upon millions of dollars to make a <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/3\/18\/22337756\/snyder-cut-aspect-ratio-justice-league-hbo-max-warning\"><strong>grayscale version of <\/strong><strong><em>Justice League<\/em><\/strong><strong> in 4:3 aspect ratio<\/strong><\/a><strong>, which I think is one of the all-time funniest telecom company investments in history.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It had so many great deals. It did that <em>Friends<\/em> reunion with poor Matthew Perry all drugged up. Sorry, that\u2019s actually kind of a grim story. We shouldn\u2019t get into that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It generated a lot of entertainment for us, so that was good. I give it credit for that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You and I stayed in business. But it is funny that AT&amp;T, the telecom company, is more like a tech company on its face than a media company, and it chased a tech company evaluation by investing in media. It feels like Comcast wanted that same thing, and it actually got the benefit of running a media company people liked.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, and it bought it cheap from GE. Again, conglomerates love media companies. Why did GE own a media company? What did they have to do with GE Capital or any of its industrial divisions? Nothing. It just wanted to own a media company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It concluded that wasn\u2019t helping either, so it was spun off at a fairly cheap price. Again, Comcast can say, \u201cThat deal has worked out well for us on our P&amp;L. Shareholders have not rewarded us for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This brings us to the immediate question. You\u2019re going to turn Comcast from one big company into two smaller companies. Is this designed to create value by having those smaller companies get bought themselves and further split up? It seems like all the executives are saying that is <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2026\/06\/comcast-split-mergers-media-deals-brian-roberts-1236969705\/\"><strong>absolutely not the plan<\/strong><\/a><strong>, but it feels like an obvious next step.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It feels like an obvious next step. Like you said, the Comcast folks have been asked about this and said, \u201cAbsolutely not. We\u2019re not selling. We\u2019re not selling. We\u2019re not selling.\u201d It can be absolutely what they mean, and it can be absolutely what they mean up until the day they decide to sell one of those assets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">There are tax implications that make it difficult for them to go and turn something around right away, so they might end up holding onto these things for some period of time before they decide to sell them. I think it\u2019s worth noting that if you\u2019re a Comcast shareholder, you\u2019re going to own 20 percent of this spun out company, but not for very long. They\u2019re going to sell that down. To me, that\u2019s a little bit of a tell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But the main reason this as an M&amp;A event flashed in my mind is that when Warner Bros. Discovery was trying to financially engineer its way out of the mess it made with its AT&amp;T deal, it was going to split the company up into the good company, which was HBO and the movie studio, and then the cable assets. The idea was we\u2019ll dump the cable assets. Maybe that will make our existing stuff look more valuable to investors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Also, there are lots of companies out there that want to buy HBO and\/or a movie studio. There are no companies out there that want to buy HBO, Warner Bros., <em>and<\/em> a bunch of declining cable networks. Turns out they were wrong. There was Paramount. But the idea was they were splitting these things up to make them more sellable, to make them more attractive for sale. So, two things can be true at once. It can say it has no intention of selling either of these assets \u2014 people think maybe Charter and Comcast is a combination on the other side \u2014 but it\u2019s now more acquirable if it wants to do that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Let\u2019s talk about Versant for one second. That was the first thing split off. You can see that it was just trying to cut costs there, most definitively in the rebranding of MS.NOW, upon which it spent approximately $0. The <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/822028\/msnbc-msnow-rebrand-new-website\"><strong>graphics package from that is straight out of Microsoft Paint<\/strong><\/a><strong>. Zero effort was put towards rebranding MS.NOW.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I will take your word for it because I cannot tell you that I\u2019m familiar with the MS.NOW graphics package.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>See, this is the reason it didn\u2019t spend any money on it. CNBC did a little bit better. It kept NBC in the name because that\u2019s just a household brand. The biggest piece of that puzzle is that CNBC is still doing well.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>What is the future of Versant? If all the cable channels that were distributed on Comcast network are declining and all of Paramount\u2019s cable channels are declining, it feels like it has only one direction to go in unless it radically reconfigures itself for the internet.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yep, that\u2019s what it seems like to me and anyone else from the outside. They go, \u201cIf you thought the stuff was valuable, you would\u2019ve kept it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Comcast has two responses to that. One is, \u201cHey, if we really thought this was a piece of shit, we would\u2019ve loaded it up with a bunch of debt like AT&amp;T did with Warner Bros., which then prevented Warner Bros. from ever doing anything else after that. And we have not done that.\u201d That is true. If it really wanted to make that a garbage disposal of a company, it could have done that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I had <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/versant-ceo-mark-lazarus-is-running-a-post-cable\/id1080467174?i=1000768706005\">Mark Lazarus, the CEO of Versant, on <em>Channels<\/em><\/a>. He is aware that his cable assets are declining, and his goal is to build them up with something else. Things are declining, but they still throw off a lot of money. They throw off less money each year, but the idea is that while that stuff is still making money, can we go and find other things that will generate more revenue for us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You and I have been covering Comcast forever. The main thing I\u2019ve done forever is watch old media companies try to struggle with new technology. Even when they can see the future \u2014 because some of them can\u2019t see the future \u2014 they all can sort of see the future eventually. \u201cOkay, we know the future\u2019s over there. The existing business we have is over here. We have to keep running that business or we can\u2019t get to the new thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">They usually get screwed. They usually can\u2019t figure out how to go to the new place while staying in the old place because that would require some kind of time travel. A foot in each canoe is the easier metaphor. So, that is what Versant is trying to do. We have this existing and declining but profitable business, what can we turn that into? That\u2019s the pitch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The reason I ask is that usually a foot in each canoe is great, but you have to turn down the money from the old canoe in order to invest in the new money you might make on the new platforms. Versant makes a lot of money because people have cable packages, and it gets paid for CNBC, MS.NOW, and whatever else regardless of how many people are watching\u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Regardless of whether anybody watches it, yes. Best business model in the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is maybe the greatest business model in history, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">[<em>Laughs<\/em>] We\u2019re just doing the podcast for each other at this point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>If it\u2019s not obvious by now, listeners should know that Peter and I share a lot of history covering these companies. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is the greatest business model in history. You get paid no matter what because people subscribe to a cable channel subscription bundle. That business is not just in decline for Versant, it\u2019s in decline overall. You can see it because Comcast\u2019s pay TV business is essentially in free fall.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is called cord-cutting, and it is happening every single month at massive rates. I think it\u2019s at 50 percent of their peak in 2008? It\u2019s under 10 million pay TV subscriptions. There\u2019s a lot of reporting that suggests <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cordcuttersnews.com\/youtube-tv-is-on-track-to-become-larger-than-comcast-spectrum-in-2026-become-americas-largest-provider-of-live-tv\/\"><strong>YouTube TV is now bigger<\/strong><\/a><strong>, which is wild considering how expensive YouTube TV is.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">If YouTube TV is not bigger now, it will be in a year or two. It will be the biggest pay TV company in America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Is there any way out of that beyond just cutting bait? Because it feels like Comcast splitting off its access division \u2014 its broadband and pay TV division \u2014 is a sign that that business is going away or getting smaller somehow. Then, Versant is tied to the economics of the pay TV business unless it can reinvent itself. All the cable channels are tied to the economics of the pay TV business.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So, do you want to talk about Versant or about Comcast, the broadband company?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, I\u2019m focused on the fact that this one company that has intertwined economics is splitting itself into three. The economics are still intertwined, and I don\u2019t see how the pay TV business ever recovers. If the pay TV business never recovers, the cable business at Versant can\u2019t ever recover, so everyone has to pivot away from their core businesses.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Versant can\u2019t be in the business of selling a package with MS.NOW, CNBC, and the Golf Channel in five years. It knows that. it might still have a segment of that, just like AOL still had a dial-up business for years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>When I worked at AOL, it was a dirty secret that old ladies were still paying for dial-up.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s an interesting business school case study, right? You know this thing is happening, what can you do? How can you extract value out of it? Will this thing be a standalone company for X number of years, or will it get combined into something else? Will some version of Bending Spoons <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/775701\/vimeo-bending-spoons-acquisition\">buy it for the digital glue factory that is Bending Spoons<\/a>?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The Comcast part of it is pretty interesting because for several years now, the Comcast argument has been, \u201cWe\u2019re not really a cable TV company anymore. In fact, we don\u2019t actually care if you buy cable TV from us. We\u2019re happy to sell it to you, but all we want is for you to buy our broadband. And that is an awesome business. It is super high margin.\u201d They won\u2019t ever use these words, but it\u2019ll say, \u201cWe have either a monopoly or a duopoly in almost every market we\u2019re in. If you want the internet, you\u2019re getting it from us, and after that, we don\u2019t care what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That looked like an awesome business. There was a point in which it formally crossed over and had more broadband subscribers than video subscribers, and that was a big moment. Comcast is not a cable TV company anymore. So, if you look at where it is today, shedding media, that all makes sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Its other problem, though, is that the broadband business is not as good as it used to be because there is actually competition now. There is fixed wireless internet from T-Mobile and Verizon. I\u2019m sure folks who listen to <em>Decoder<\/em> have heard you talk about this in the past, but it went from being a fringe idea to real competition now. Now, its broadband numbers, which used to go up and up every year, are now flat or sometimes down because it\u2019s facing real competition, so that\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s trying to engineer the way out of that, but one thing it\u2019s doing on top of that is saying, \u201cI guess we should be in another business. Okay, why don\u2019t we sell wireless? If the wireless guys are going to sell broadband, we can sell wireless.\u201d So, it\u2019s now building up a wireless business. There\u2019s no obvious synergy there other than, \u201cIf you\u2019re going to buy internet from us, maybe you\u2019ll buy a phone connection as well.\u201d So, it is not a clear-cut business like it used to be even five years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That wireless business has always been a puzzle for me. It\u2019s tried for many years to bundle wireless in the markets it\u2019s in, but it\u2019s always reselling someone else\u2019s network. It hasn\u2019t built one of its own. Other big pay TV companies that have tried to build their own wireless networks and pivot their businesses have more or less fallen on their face.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I\u2019m thinking of Dish Network specifically here. It was supposed to be the big winner of the T-Mobile and Sprint merger where the government literally engineered a deal for it to take over some spectrum and part of Sprint\u2019s network.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/959894\/dish-chapter-11-bankruptcy\"><strong>Dish Network just declared bankruptcy<\/strong><\/a><strong>. It just did not work. It is too hard to do at scale. Is Comcast going to try to build its own network in broadband? Is it going to keep reselling Verizon? Does it have a plan to be actually competitive here?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I would assume that it\u2019s a reselling and bundling plan. I\u2019m not a spectrum expert by any means, so I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s available or what it would need to be competitive in that market. Again, its messaging is, \u201cWe\u2019re a buyer, not a seller.\u201d So, if you\u2019re a Comcast and you\u2019re running a broadband and wireless company, what would you buy that would make you more competitive? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I\u2019m sure there are listeners right now who are screaming at me that Dish Network\u2019s \u201cwe\u2019re going to stand up a network\u201d plan was always a sham in order to collect spectrum assets and resell them at a profit later, which is what happened, but it still drove that company into bankruptcy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I\u2019m very curious if the Comcast broadband division that\u2019s going to get split out has a plan to grow. I\u2019m looking at the numbers. I think it <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/go.skimresources.com\/?id=1025X1701640&amp;xs=1&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Finvesting%2F2026%2F04%2F20%2Fcomcast-trades-at-just-8-times-earnings-after-losi%2F\" rel=\"sponsored\"><strong>lost 700,000 subscribers last year<\/strong><\/a><strong>. That\u2019s a huge number. Its only way to grow is to grow outside of the markets it\u2019s in.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s some talk that it\u2019ll <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/29\/comcast-nbcu-spinoff-m-and-a.html\"><strong>combine with Charter<\/strong><\/a><strong>, which doesn\u2019t operate in the same markets as Comcast, but that doesn\u2019t get you any economy of scale. Running a bigger physical network doesn\u2019t get cheaper. It actually only gets more expensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Its announced strategy to deal with these losses and this overall problem is, \u201cWe\u2019re going to operate it better.\u201d That has to do with pricing, deals, and how it\u2019s been selling, how it\u2019s going to make the selling easier, and all of that. Sure, operate it better. But that\u2019s a \u201cfix the business, not grow the business\u201d plan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Every Comcast subscriber just heard their internet provider say they\u2019re going to cut costs and operate leaner, and I\u2019m sure they thought about their customer service experience and those cheaper fixed wireless plans. This is the conundrum it\u2019s in. It has to provide a higher quality service for less money.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Is this the part of the story where we mention Elon Musk?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Actually, yeah, it\u2019s literally the next question. We\u2019re doing the podcast together. This is great. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>SpaceX went public. The only part of that company that makes money is its telecom division, Starlink, so much so that there are <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tylerroush\/2026\/06\/25\/spacex-could-acquire-t-mobile-as-it-expands-into-wireless-analyst-says\/\"><strong>rumors that it will buy T-Mobile<\/strong><\/a><strong>. This is hilarious to me because SpaceX is chasing telecom economics with its fixed costs of launch and everything else it\u2019s doing, and I don\u2019t know if telecom economics can support it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But that\u2019s because you\u2019re not smart enough, you don\u2019t have enough intelligence, you\u2019re not creative enough to understand what a galaxy-sized [total addressable market] is, Nilay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>[<\/strong><strong><em>Laughs<\/em><\/strong><strong>] Yeah, the whole world.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I have no idea. I mean look, it\u2019s already competing with the T-Mobile\u2019s and Verizon\u2019s to sell you internet access, and it may be competing with Elon Musk. Again, just because Elon Musk enters a market does not mean he wins. We\u2019ve now seen evidence of that several different times. But he\u2019s certainly a real player that Comcast has to worry about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The Starlink premise, at least until now, has been, it will bring you broadband quality connectivity in places where no cable company would ever dare to spend the infrastructure investment to lay fiber. Comcast has big physical plants mostly in cities. I used to live in Chicago as a Comcast customer. It is true that Comcast was essentially a monopoly or duopoly in almost every apartment building in Chicago, and most people I knew had Comcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Starlink has to show up and compete there in ways that it can\u2019t yet. This is why people think it might buy T-Mobile. But then the competition looks like a price war where customers can get pretty fast access for the same or less money. I would say Comcast has done almost everything it can do in its history to avoid that kind of competition. Has it shown any signs of being able to meet that? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">No. It\u2019s been facing real competition from the telcos and losing broadband subs. What they\u2019ve said is, \u201cOkay, the people who were doing that aren\u2019t running that business anymore. We have new people running the business.\u201d That\u2019s the real answer there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I will say \u2014 again, I really know very little about spectrum \u2014 there are sober-minded people who continue to think that there is a hard cap in the fixed wireless business in terms of how many customers it can serve, that there\u2019s literally physical limits on what you can do with that. I think Comcast\u2019s hope is probably that these guys can only get so big and that they can\u2019t get into its markets beyond that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But that\u2019s also the inverse of whatever cable TV executive was saying from 2010 to 2015 that, \u201cWell, maybe cable TV subscriptions will slow a little bit, but they\u2019re not going to go to 50 percent.\u201d And now they\u2019re at 50 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The other hope I hear is that Starlink does require a fiber network on the ground. You can connect to satellites all day long, but they have to hit a ground station, and then you need massive bandwidth on the ground to support all those customers. Maybe, just maybe, these ISPs will put themselves in the business of supplying the backhaul at high rates.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I just can\u2019t believe we\u2019re still talking about ISPs in 2026, but here we are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The whole world runs on these things, man. It was inevitable that you and I would have this conversation. You thought this was boring when I was obsessed with it in 2011.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It was funny. I did a <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.voxmedia.com\/show\/land-of-the-giants\">seven- or eight-part narrative podcast about Netflix<\/a> for the Vox Media Podcast Network several years ago, and I was like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve been following this company forever and I know the beats of it and I know what\u2019s important and we\u2019re definitely going to spend one episode talking about Netflix\u2019s huge fight with Comcast (the one you brought up at the beginning) and how crucial it was for it to figure out how to move bits around the internet more effectively and who was going to control how those bits were gated, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">This is nerdy stuff but it was core to the company, and I would tell my colleagues about this and they all just gave me a blank look. No matter how many times I tried to retell the story, they gave me a blank look. My point is that no one in my world wants to hear about Comcast fighting Netflix over the future of the internet. But like you referenced, it was a big, big deal in, what, 2010 to 2015? It was like a five-year period, and they were angry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>They were mad.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Those guys were going at each other. Now, they\u2019re business partners, but it seemed at the time that this was an existential problem for both of them. Who was going to control those pipes? Was there going to be a tollbooth for the data that moved through those pipes? And the answer is, \u201cEh.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So this does interest me. Here we go. If you\u2019re listening to this, this episode so far has been Peter and I debating whether or not this is important or interesting for over a decade. So, here\u2019s my argument for why it\u2019s important and interesting. If you\u2019re a <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong> listener, you had to know this was coming.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The fight was whether Comcast and the other internet providers could turn internet access into cable TV. It was whether they could recapitulate that business model, which we have both agreed is the greatest business model in the history of the world. AT&amp;T tried to do it, Comcast tried to do it, literally every ISP tried to do it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>AOL maybe did it the best and that\u2019s why it bought Time Warner. You bought access from AOL over a phone line, you opened the AOL app, and it showed you content. The idea that it could put economics around that content and preference its own was at the heart of AOL\u2019s entire purchase of Time Warner. It failed disastrously, I think we should note, but that was the argument.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The argument for Comcast, AT&amp;T, and whoever else who wanted to buy content and put it on their pipes was that they would charge everyone else to reach you, the consumer, and give you their stuff for free. Then, the economics of their stuff would increase in some way.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Or in the most hopeful scenario, you would also pick Comcast as your ISP because it had NBC and it would keep NBC away from Verizon, or make NBC so expensive to access on Verizon that when the Olympics came around, it was cheaper for you to switch to Comcast than to pay the rates on Verizon.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Maybe more simply, it would just say, \u201cNetflix, you have this great service. It only works if people can get on the internet, so you\u2019re just going to pay us a little for each customer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And that would get passed on to the consumer.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So your rates as an internet customer would vary in spectacular ways depending on what your ISP was, and this was the fear. I think the reason it was an outrageous fear in 2010 or 2011 was that all of the internet platform startups realized that this was an existential threat to them.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is why Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/andygreenberg\/2012\/06\/05\/how-reddits-alexis-ohanian-became-the-mayor-of-the-internet\/\"><strong>styled himself as the mayor of the internet<\/strong><\/a><strong>. He toured around the country on a bus being like, \u201cWe have to have net neutrality because if they can throttle Reddit, I won\u2019t be able to pay, and it\u2019s the ISPs that will determine which platforms succeed or fail.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The moment I\u2019m talking about, when Reed Hastings said to you, \u201cWe\u2019re big enough so that net neutrality doesn\u2019t matter anymore,\u201d I think we all saw that it was over. But the reason I\u2019m saying I knew then that it was over for the ISPs and their media dreams was that consumers had picked Netflix and they would not tolerate the fee.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So, Netflix had enough leverage to say, \u201cNo, our content is going to be on your networks, whether or not you want it to be.\u201d Everyone else could just piggyback on Netflix and say, \u201cNope, YouTube has the same arrangement.\u201d If you have an AT&amp;T network or a Comcast network, charge your customers a fee, and then you charge them more to access the things they want, that won\u2019t work. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This was the argument. It\u2019s the argument from all of the FCC people. It\u2019s the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel\/652470\/verizon-consumer-sowmyanarayan-sampath-net-neutrality-5g-china\"><strong>argument from the Verizon executives<\/strong><\/a><strong> who\u2019ve been on the show. It ultimately came to nothing because the market demanded net neutrality.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">If you would ask a telco person about this during this entire time, they would go, \u201cPoint out one time where this has happened, where we successfully extorted someone into paying us more for access to our pipes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There were so many times.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Honestly, I think this was much more of a fight with the cable networks who wanted distribution. Bloomberg versus Comcast was a long-running fight about what kind of carriage Bloomberg could get on Comcast-owned pipes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That is still a big deal for the remaining companies that still have cable TV networks. Your cable TV network has zero utility if you can\u2019t deliver it to someone\u2019s TV, and that was a real problem. Although, as I\u2019m saying that, none of that matters now because you can just distribute it via a digital service provider. But yeah, I think net neutrality mattered much more to the cable TV networks than it ever did to an internet company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, I think the internet companies all needed it to matter. They needed it to not be there so they could preference their own content. This is the argument that I\u2019m making. If Comcast had a Peacock and watching Peacock was free while watching Netflix incurred some additional charge, we\u2019d all understand why Comcast customers would probably watch more Peacock today than they do Netflix.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>But they weren\u2019t allowed to do this. First, because they all insisted the market wouldn\u2019t let them. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, the regulator said in that big, complicated Comcast NBCUniversal merger agreement that you can\u2019t do that for a long period of time. So, they weren\u2019t allowed to achieve their vision.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>AT&amp;T tried this in weird ways. There was a time when <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/6\/2\/21277402\/hbo-max-att-data-caps-netflix-disney-plus-streaming-services-net-neutrality\"><strong>HBO Max didn\u2019t hit the data cap<\/strong><\/a><strong> for AT&amp;T subscribers, and they got real spiky when I asked them about it. Then, it turned it off because it realized it didn\u2019t want that fight, and it didn\u2019t matter because no one was using their AT&amp;T phones to watch HBO Max anyway. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s something here where it could have played out differently, where the self-preferencing of the networks for their own content might have actually worked.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I guess. I look back at every attempt from every company to make you watch something you didn\u2019t want to watch, as opposed to paying for something you didn\u2019t want to pay for. That\u2019s different. That\u2019s the cable bundle. We agree that\u2019s the best business model ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But getting you to watch the thing that you don\u2019t want to watch on the service you didn\u2019t want to watch? The internet says that doesn\u2019t work. What you can do is say, \u201cHere\u2019s some free shit with ads; it\u2019s not great but it\u2019s free,\u201d and people will watch it. YouTube has that model. So is\u2026 what is the Roku channel? Is it Howdy? No, actually there\u2019s The Roku channel, which is free and just on your Roku TV. It has a lot of shit, but it\u2019s free. That is now a reasonably-sized internet video provider.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That can work, but you can\u2019t say, \u201cYou must watch Netflix or we\u2019re going to make Netflix $5 cheaper, so you will have to pay for it as compared to Peacock.\u201d We haven\u2019t ever seen that play out. It\u2019s dumb to get overly optimistic and cheery about the internet in 2026, but we have seen that one thing that the overlords have not been able to pull off is to get us to pay for video we don\u2019t want to pay for. That\u2019s the one little bit of freedom we still have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>They\u2019re all moving to ad-supported one way or another. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Actually, you brought up Roku. The question I have is, where does the vertical integration begin and end? <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/business\/949727\/fox-roku-acquisition-22-billion\"><strong>Fox is buying Roku<\/strong><\/a><strong> to get access to its distribution, its customers, and all of those TVs. That kind of vertical integration seems alive and well. Netflix was in the market to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount might still be in the market to buy NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal might be in the market to buy some other stuff. That kind of integration seems like it\u2019s going to keep happening.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>But the actual pipe, the actual internet connection \u2014 whether that\u2019s wired or wireless \u2014 that\u2019s the one that doesn\u2019t ever seem to work. Why do you think there\u2019s a big difference there?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The short answer is I don\u2019t know. Also, I\u2019m pretty interested to see what happens with Roku and Fox because in a lot of ways, this is another one of these content distribution plays that we have seen not work for more than 15 years \u2014 20 years, 30 years \u2014 going back to AOL and Time Warner. You could argue that there\u2019s less levered onto this. It\u2019s a smaller deal. There are no grand proclamations that this is going to connect everyone to everything. This is for a subset of internet TV watchers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Another is sort of practical. I think one of the reasons that Fox and Roku may be constrained will be the same reasons that all these other companies were constrained separate from regulation. If you have an asset like HBO, you want HBO to be distributed as widely as possible to as many people as possible. Privileging Roku customers in some way is likely to be counterproductive. It\u2019s not going to convince people to get Roku so they can get HBO. It\u2019s going to convince people to go, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just a pain in the ass to get HBO if I also have to get it through Roku.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s what happens time and time again with all of these content plus pipe deals. Everyone realizes there\u2019s nothing proprietary we can keep that will convince someone to get our broadband through us. Another version of this is Xbox, right? People like playing <em>Halo<\/em> but not enough to buy an Xbox so they can play that game. They want to play other games. Does that all make sense?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It does. It\u2019s funny you brought up Xbox, because <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2012\/5\/15\/3021839\/comcast-throttling-net-neutrality-xfinity-netflix-xbox\"><strong>Xbox is the other famous example of Comcast zero-rating a service<\/strong><\/a><strong> and people freaking out until it was turned off. Zero-rating, by the way, is when some data doesn\u2019t hit your data cap and some does.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Again, there\u2019s a long history here of these companies trying to do the thing that would make the economics of owning the distribution and the content together work but then immediately meeting either market or regulatory backlash.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think the market in the end has been more important than regulatory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s true that people want net neutrality, and it\u2019s funny that for as boring as it is, the market does freak out whenever you point out that the bad thing is happening. So, you may not need the regulation because everyone\u2019s always so mad about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You were <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/brian-stelter-on-the-60-minutes-mess-nilay-patel-on\/id1080467174?i=1000771997954\">on my podcast recently<\/a>, and you brought this up, right? You can\u2019t have an iPhone without access to Instagram. It doesn\u2019t matter whether Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook like each other. They have to play nicely, or nice enough, to make that work. They both lose if it doesn\u2019t work. Again, I guess that\u2019s the market working.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s funny, you ask most cable subscribers or broadband subscribers, \u201cIs this market working? Are you getting faster speeds for less money?\u201d I think most of them would say no. But it is competitive in very specific ways.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">What\u2019s also hilarious is that people say on the internet and in real life that, \u201cI wish we could go back to the old days where you just got all your stuff from one company and it was called cable TV. Wouldn\u2019t that be funny?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYes, it\u2019d be funny.\u201d You hated it! Everyone fucking hated that model. Everyone who says we should go back to that model either was not alive, was not paying their bill back when that model existed, or just memory wiped themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Comcast, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), or whatever your cable company was, was the most loathed company in the world because you hated them. They gave you shitty service and they made you buy things you didn\u2019t want. Now we\u2019re in a world where they might still give you shitty service, but you don\u2019t have to buy things you don\u2019t want from them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And every tech company thought they could take the living room by just putting a nicer user interface around your cable box because the cable box interfaces were so bad and so insulated from competition. All of that failed against the miserable technology stack of cable television.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yes. But now you have Roku, which is successful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And now you have YouTube TV, which is a growing cable provider. I think that\u2019s because it is everywhere. It\u2019s on your phone, on your TV, and all of the other places without that second push to subscribe to some physical connectivity.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It works great on your phone. They are marketing the hell out of it. They are putting money into it. I ask YouTube and Google people all the time why they don\u2019t push it even harder. It\u2019s essentially selling you the same cable TV package at the same price as everyone else. Why not sell the same cable TV package at half the price? You\u2019re Google. Why don\u2019t you just eat the losses for X number of years and own the entire connected TV market?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s funny that you asked that. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just put the sports in 4K? Why don\u2019t you just pay the money and put 4K cameras in every NFL stadium? You\u2019re Google. You can figure it out. Then, I\u2019ll have 4K NFL and pay you as much money as you want.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>They just kind of look at me and they say, \u201cThe local TV market is more complicated than that.\u201d Then, they get a 1,000-yard stare. The reality is, \u201cNo, we\u2019ve got to distribute to a bunch of local broadcasters, we\u2019ve got to share these feeds, and regulators are involved.\u201d It can\u2019t just throw money at the problem the way I think it wants to.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That is a big mess, right? That whole TV ecosystem is a relic from maybe three different eras: the broadcast era when there were only three networks in the entire country; the premium cable era when HBO was ascendant; and now whatever declining era we\u2019re in where there\u2019s 45 subchannels on my main NBC broadcast that are all infomercials. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s something happening there that seems hard to reckon with that everyone\u2019s just running away from, but it\u2019s still there. Everyone still has to deal with it. And it\u2019s still the main economics for everybody. FCC Chair Brendan Carr is running around saying, \u201cI can regulate ABC content because of broadcast spectrum.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That\u2019s a lot of machinery. That\u2019s a lot of complexity. Is one of the reasons you would take NBCUniversal and the studios away and apart is to chase cleaner, purer, direct-to-consumer internet distribution instead of that whole mess? Or are they still going to have to deal with that whole mess?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s just saying that those businesses are not connected. We\u2019re back to where we started. We thought we could connect them in some way, but they remain unconnected. They\u2019re completely separate businesses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Again, the real answer is that we think our stock will go up if we get rid of this thing that is dragging our stock down. More optimistically, this media company has no value right now. If we split it, then we\u2019ll have a media company and a broadband company, so maybe we\u2019ll have some lift by owning two companies instead of one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We\u2019ve talked about the broadband company quite a lot. Let\u2019s talk about the media company for one second. NBCUniversal is a player. It has a sparkling brand name. It has the Minions. It has the parks, as you\u2019ve mentioned.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Taylor Sheridan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yes, Taylor Sheridan now. He\u2019s going to get better \u2014 or worse \u2014 at writing women with the power of AI. We\u2019re going to find out.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We don\u2019t need women in our TV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>[<\/strong><strong><em>Laughs<\/em><\/strong><strong>] Is that the winner of all this? Is that the company you want to be at?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Everyone I talk to at Versant has a good game face: \u201cWe can invest in our own future and we don\u2019t have to worry about feeding the parent company.\u201d They all have the same handbook. I don\u2019t know how much they believe it. I think you can make a pretty strong case that NBCUniversal as a standalone company is interesting, either as a standalone company or as an asset to be acquired by somebody else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You can\u2019t replicate that theme park business. I can\u2019t understate how big of a deal that is, especially in a world where AI is going to be the future and people are going to want tactile experiences. That is a great thing to own. The studio is super valuable. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/streaming\/960235\/comcast-breakup-peacock-streaming\">Peacock has not really worked<\/a>, and it\u2019s been reluctant to throw around the same kind of money their rivals have, so I don\u2019t know what will become of that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">And broadcast, man. Broadcast is hot again. What you keep hearing from the Paramount folks is that yes, they bought all those cable TV assets. They know that\u2019s not their future either. They\u2019re going to try to milk money out of them just like Versant is, but they really think that broadcast TV is a special thing. That mostly comes down to broadcast TV being a thing you can show football on, and that\u2019s super valuable. But they seem to think that is a very valuable asset.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Again, there are only a handful of broadcast TV networks. NBC owns one of them. Another way of putting it is that there are only a handful of places where you can distribute NFL programming to all of America, and it owns one of them. So yeah, it\u2019s a thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s the sports piece that makes broadcast valuable. The NFL is the big one. It\u2019s the World Cup right now. The idea that you need big, free sports distribution that you control seems ascendant.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s really the NFL, right? I mean, the primary reason CBS and Fox, in particular, exist is to distribute football. Fox basically doesn\u2019t have any other programming. It has some reality shows and it has football. That\u2019s what it does now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s funny, I was watching the World Cup on Fox One yesterday, which is its big streaming app. They\u2019re very proud of it. It\u2019s a new platform. You have to either pay for it or log into it with a cable provider. I was watching it and I did what I think everyone does: I opened TikTok on my phone to be distracted from the thing I was ostensibly watching. The first thing I got was the official Fox TikTok account streaming the same game for free. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The economics of this make no sense to me. You need to reach the young consumer on this platform for free \u2014 and who knows how you\u2019re monetizing it \u2014 or you\u2019re going to make old people pay to watch it on TVs or apps, which they don\u2019t know how to download and they have to go through some horrible auth flow. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>How does any of that work? Does that ever get reconciled? The kids are all going to watch TikTok for free? A big thesis on the show is that we all have to reckon with the fact that there\u2019s an army of teenagers making content for free on Instagram and TikTok every single day, and every media business has to just ignore the elephant in the room that destroys their cost structure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s well put. I don\u2019t know if they have an answer. Every time I hear them talk about it, it\u2019s the wrong answer. They\u2019ll say things like, \u201cWell, if we make this in a format that works for phones, then people will pay for it.\u201d I mean, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/10\/22\/21528404\/quibi-shut-down-cost-subscribers-content-tv-movies-katzenberg-whitman-tiktok-netflix\">there\u2019s Quibi<\/a>, but a million other things like that. It\u2019s not that no one can watch something on their phone. It\u2019s that no one wants to pay for the stuff that you have on their phone. They don\u2019t want to pay for most things. They can get most things for free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That is why sports remain sports. Also, Fox <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/24\/world\/europe\/fifa-world-cup-fox-broadcast-rights.html\">paid almost nothing<\/a>. They paid $500 million for the World Cup. Deal of the century for them, especially with the extra water breaks. Sports is the one thing that is immune to this. But even that\u2019s not really true because young people don\u2019t watch sports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Find a Zoomer and ask them to sit and watch a two or three-hour football game, no fucking way. So, this is one of those things where the economics are not sustainable. It has to collapse. It has to have a reset. Year after year, we say this, and year after year, the rights for sports go up and up and up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Because it\u2019s the only thing that can consistently draw an audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">One day it has to snap. One day it will reach a point where NBC, ABC, or Paramount will cry uncle and say, \u201cWe can\u2019t do this.\u201d I mean, you already saw Warner Bros. pass on basketball, which is a much, much smaller sport. It\u2019ll be a big fucking deal when one of those companies bows out one way or the other. That will be a giant shift. But we keep saying that, and it does not happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>By the way, my prediction is that eventually, YouTube just pays the money to have it all. It already pays for NFL Sunday Ticket. It\u2019s already the big NFL partner. At some point, it\u2019s just going to say, \u201cLook, it\u2019s all on YouTube. We\u2019re just going to take the whole thing.\u201d Then, the NFL will have to reckon with the fact that there\u2019s nothing next to YouTube that can compete the way that CBS can compete with Fox or with ABC.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah. I mean, the NFL is religion and politics all wrapped up in one. I don\u2019t know how you ever get to a place where the US government allows all of football to be only in one place. I think it wants it distributed. So, we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s already some noise about this. This is a different episode, but the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpr.org\/news\/congress-antitrust-broadcasting-law-green-bay-packers\"><strong>Green Bay Packers are at the center<\/strong><\/a><strong> of this noise. The economics of the Green Bay Packers are tied up in sports rights in the way that you\u2019re talking about.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Could NBCUniversal be a buyer? Could it buy a bunch of other stuff that\u2019s available? Could it get bigger?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s what it\u2019s saying. Its argument is, \u201cWe are a buyer, not a seller.\u201d On the record, this is what it wants to do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So, you\u2019d buy a bunch of studios and content and put it out on TikTok?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I don\u2019t really know what you\u2019d buy. There\u2019s a bunch of cable networks available. No one wants to buy those. Does it go do transformational things? Does it do little tuck-in businesses? Again, if you talk to Versant about how it\u2019s going to build the business, it talks about the online golf stuff, where you can buy tee times. It\u2019s been talking about that for literally a decade. So, I\u2019m not sure what these businesses would be that you can tack onto the media business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The big argument for all the big studios has long been whether they will be a supplier to platforms like Netflix or build their own distribution. Thus far, all the big studios have taken a run at building their own distribution.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Paramount built Paramount Plus. Disney built Disney Plus. NBCUniversal alone did not build NBCU Plus. It built something called Peacock. Peacock is not as big as the others. As you\u2019ve said, it hasn\u2019t invested in it as much as the other studios. Is there a chance it just gives up and it becomes a supplier to the Netflix\u2019s of the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That is always a possibility. That has been an internal debate for a long time. Before all these companies went to create their own distribution to build their own Disney Plus, they were very happy to be Netflix suppliers. They thought it was a great business because they were selling all their stuff at huge markups, and Netflix was a dummy for buying it. Then, they realized what they had created.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Then, Netflix got to roll up and say, \u201cWe\u2019re so big, it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I could definitely see a world where some version of NBCUniversal is the broadcast business, the studio, and the theme park. Then, if Netflix or anybody else wants to buy the programming, go for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Could it sell to one of the tech companies, like an Amazon or an Apple?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I don\u2019t even know how to put this. Yes, they could. The politics of that are very complicated because we don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to be in office and what regulatory stances we\u2019re going to have. There are deals that the Murdochs can do in 2026 that the Roberts family would have a harder time pulling off. I think that Trump is fundamentally transactional, not ideological, so there\u2019s always a way to make the deal work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">By the way, even as he\u2019s doling out favors to the Murdochs, he\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/13\/trump-epstein-murdoch-wsj-lawsuit-dismissed.html\">suing them for $10 billion<\/a> \u2014 no cognitive dissonance there. So, I think a lot of folks assume there will be combinations of these assets no matter what the Comcast executives were saying on their investor call last week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, just to make it plain. The Murdoch family owns Fox News<\/strong> <strong>and <\/strong><strong><em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong><strong> \u2014 specifically <\/strong><strong><em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong><strong>\u2019s editorial page, which is religiously pro-Trump<\/strong><strong><em>, <\/em><\/strong><strong>and the<\/strong><strong><em> New York Post<\/em><\/strong><strong>, which is religiously pro-Trump.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I disagree about <em>The Journal<\/em>, but go on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, it doesn\u2019t like tariffs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s far to the right. But they criticize Trump quite a bit, but not that it matters. Go on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We could get into it, but it doesn\u2019t like tariffs. It doesn\u2019t like screaming with the Fed. It\u2019s with him on almost everything else.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It came out in favor of birthright citizenship the other day. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/world-cup-u-s-mens-soccer-team-immigrants-birthright-citizenship-0e9b5082?mod=hp_opin_pos_1\">It noted<\/a> that several of the US men\u2019s national soccer team\u2019s players were not born in America, and it\u2019s good that they get to play for America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>[<\/strong><strong><em>Laughs<\/em><\/strong><strong>] All right. We can agree to disagree on <\/strong><strong><em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/strong><strong>\u2019s editorial page, but it\u2019s the Murdoch family. Everyone knows where they\u2019re generally politically aligned.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The Roberts family ran MSNBC. They\u2019re potentially politically aligned in a very different way. Is there a chance that this split is so that they can do mergers and acquisitions without the stain of MSNBC or MS.NOW?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s definitely something I thought about. I think that is a lot of bending. If there\u2019s something you want to accomplish, there are easier ways to make Donald Trump happy than splitting your company up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I have thought about whether not having to worry about what Donald Trump says makes it cleaner and easier for the Roberts family to maneuver since they no longer own MSNBC or NBC. What are the things he cares about? He thinks about things that are on broadcast and cable television. So, there\u2019s maybe a there there, but I wonder if we\u2019re just doing 5D chess.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>At the end of the day, Comcast was the company that best executed the strategy of having a bigISP and a big content arm that would work together, and that has all come apart. I think it\u2019s come apart because of internet platforms at large. Meta exists. Instagram exists. YouTube exists. People are spending their time in different ways that have nothing to do with the economics of Hollywood. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I was just at Cannes. Everyone is talking about creators at Cannes as though they were just invented yesterday <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/961603\/raina-penchansky-ali-berman-dba-uta-influencer-cliff-marketing\"><strong>because they\u2019re the future of marketing in some huge way<\/strong><\/a><strong>. They\u2019re the future of audiences in some way. I spent time listening to creators at Cannes talk about how they\u2019re spending more money making video than ever before, and I thought, \u201cOh, we\u2019re just doing Hollywood again.\u201d It\u2019s because the ad dollars are there to be directly integrated into the content they\u2019re putting on YouTube. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Is this party just over for Hollywood? There\u2019s a part of me that says there\u2019s a whole generation of creators and creatives who came up in a different economic model. That model is ascendant, and it is the only model that works.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Sony was a company that made huge IP and then monetized it by selling it to different TV providers around the world, and had buildings full of accountants running audits on how many times the video was played on NBC5 in Chicago. That\u2019s all over. Those economics are over, and maybe this just needs to be a clean break. Is there a way out? Is this split the way out or are we all just shuffling deck chairs?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s funny. Sony was supposed to be a synergy company too because they had this electronics company. Come on, there was never any synergy between Sony, the company that brought you the Walkman, and the Sony that brought you Adam Sandler movies. Just none. They just happened to be owned by the same conglomerate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>[Laughs] Hey, they use the Spider-Man font on the PS3.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I don\u2019t know about the end of Hollywood stuff. I know that we like to write narratives. It\u2019s a very exciting narrative. People who have a reason to pitch that narrative have a reason to pitch that narrative. Aren\u2019t <em>Obsession<\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/entertainment\/938437\/backrooms-youtube-kane-parsons-a12\"><em>Backrooms<\/em><\/a> exciting? I mean, people are going to see <em>The Odyssey<\/em> from NBCUniversal this summer, and that\u2019s a giant, epic movie. There\u2019s going to be a new Spider-Man movie from Sony. That\u2019s a giant, epic movie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Could you, in theory, finance these things yourself and do it without making a studio? Sure, I guess. But record labels still exist. There is some combination of capital and talent that still allows these companies to create what the individual creator cannot. It seems like consumers want both of those things, not either or.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So, I would assume they exist in some form, but I do think they get gutted quite a bit. Knowing that your competitors are people who are spending next to nothing just makes it harder and harder if you are a giant Hollywood studio to justify the way you\u2019re spending money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>As you report on all this, is there self-awareness from these media executives that these big bets didn\u2019t work and they need to try something else in a different cost structure?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Usually, you need an entirely new executive to come in. I mean, that\u2019s what you\u2019re seeing at Xbox right now. This morning, they put out a memo basically saying that their predecessors at Xbox got this all wrong. The only way you can sort of acknowledge it is if you bring in a new team and say the people who were here before are the ones who screwed up, which is actually not a new dynamic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The CEO of AT&amp;T was the guy pushing for the AT&amp;T Warner Bros. Discovery deal when he was COO. Then, he became CEO and sold Warner Bros. saying,, \u201cOh, that was never my deal to begin with.\u201d Everyone decided that that was a polite fiction they would live with. It\u2019s a great world. If you and I spend $83 billion in the wrong way, we see real consequences and other people get raises.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, Peter, I suspect you and I will be talking to each other many more times over the next year or so as all of these splits happen across all these companies because none of this seems settled. It also seems like there\u2019s a lot of money that\u2019s going to fly around without a thesis and it\u2019s our job to figure out what the story actually is.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s great fun to write about. Over the last year or so, I was saying, \u201cI\u2019m kind of getting tired of this beat. I feel like I spent years talking about what would happen if the internet finally became TV.\u201d Well, it did become TV, and it\u2019s really fucking boring. It\u2019s just Peacock and some streaming services, and that\u2019s not fun to write about. It feels like it is now splitting again, and that is extra fun for us to cover.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The bundling part of the cycle is pretty boring. The unbundling cycle seems wild. There are a lot more characters. They\u2019re literally having to compete more. And somewhere in there is Elon Musk saying he will fund a rocket company with telecom margins, which\u2026 who knows, man.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Peter, this was wonderful. We\u2019ll have to have you back soon. Thank you for coming on <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong>. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _18mzr4ba _19wv7tc1\">Thanks, Nilay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><em><sub>Questions or comments? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac1 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--action-box _1044qizj _1044qiz11 _19kgta32 _19kgta30\">\n<div class=\"_19kgta35 _19kgta33\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _19kgta36\">Decoder with Nilay Patel<\/h2>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">A podcast from <em>The Verge<\/em> about big ideas and other problems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m2 _11kb06m0 _19kgta39 _19kgta37\" href=\"https:\/\/pod.link\/decoder\"><span>SUBSCRIBE NOW!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tly2fw0\"><span class=\"tly2fw2\"><strong>Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"tly2fw3\">\n<li id=\"follow-author-article_footer-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\"><span 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economy, with the agents making it happen\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-DCD-20260706-RainaPenchansky-AliBerman-Art-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/961603\/raina-penchansky-ali-berman-dba-uta-influencer-cliff-marketing\">Inside the big business of the creator economy, with the agents making it happen<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How Keurig saved\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and ruined \u2014\u00a0your coffee\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRH_Keurig_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/961470\/keurig-coffee-k-up-version-history\">How Keurig saved\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and ruined \u2014\u00a0your coffee<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The video game disc is dead\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-VST-20260702-NewsRoundup-Thumb-16x9-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/960810\/video-game-disc-dead-vergecast\">The video game disc is dead<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"AI won\u2019t save advertising, says Digitas\u2019 Amy Lanzi\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/DCD_Lanzi_Digitas.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/959792\/digitas-ceo-amy-lanzi-cannes-ad-industry-marketing-ai-creators\">AI won\u2019t save advertising, says Digitas\u2019 Amy Lanzi<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Let him cook: How Weber Blackstone CEO Roger Dahle went from upstart to the biggest name in grilling\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/DCD-Roger-Dahle.png?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0.027173913043484%2C0%2C99.945652173913%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/958790\/weber-blackstone-ceo-roger-dahle-grilling-griddles-merger-outdoor-cooking\">Let him cook: How Weber Blackstone CEO Roger Dahle went from upstart to the biggest name in grilling<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nest\u2019s quest to fix your thermostat\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/VRH_Nest_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/958735\/nest-thermostat-version-history\">Nest\u2019s quest to fix your thermostat<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1hofmaw2\">\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjj _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Inside the big business of the creator economy, with the agents making it happen\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-DCD-20260706-RainaPenchansky-AliBerman-Art-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Inside the big business of the creator economy, with the agents making it happen\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-DCD-20260706-RainaPenchansky-AliBerman-Art-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/961603\/raina-penchansky-ali-berman-dba-uta-influencer-cliff-marketing\">Inside the big business of the creator economy, with the agents making it happen<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-06T14:30:00+00:00\">Jul 6<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How Keurig saved\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and ruined \u2014\u00a0your coffee\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRH_Keurig_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How Keurig saved\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and ruined \u2014\u00a0your coffee\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRH_Keurig_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/961470\/keurig-coffee-k-up-version-history\">How Keurig saved\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and ruined \u2014\u00a0your coffee<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>David Pierce<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-05T13:51:56+00:00\">Jul 5<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The video game disc is dead\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-VST-20260702-NewsRoundup-Thumb-16x9-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=21.875%2C0%2C56.25%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The video game disc is dead\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/VRG-VST-20260702-NewsRoundup-Thumb-16x9-v01-KM.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/960810\/video-game-disc-dead-vergecast\">The video game disc is dead<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>David Pierce<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-02T16:31:09+00:00\">Jul 2<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"AI won\u2019t save advertising, says Digitas\u2019 Amy Lanzi\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/DCD_Lanzi_Digitas.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"AI won\u2019t save advertising, says Digitas\u2019 Amy Lanzi\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/DCD_Lanzi_Digitas.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/959792\/digitas-ceo-amy-lanzi-cannes-ad-industry-marketing-ai-creators\">AI won\u2019t save advertising, says Digitas\u2019 Amy Lanzi<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-02T14:00:00+00:00\">Jul 2<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Let him cook: How Weber Blackstone CEO Roger Dahle went from upstart to the biggest name in grilling\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/DCD-Roger-Dahle.png?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.684782608696%2C0%2C66.630434782609%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Let him cook: How Weber Blackstone CEO Roger Dahle went from upstart to the biggest name in grilling\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/DCD-Roger-Dahle.png?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0.027173913043484%2C0%2C99.945652173913%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/958790\/weber-blackstone-ceo-roger-dahle-grilling-griddles-merger-outdoor-cooking\">Let him cook: How Weber Blackstone CEO Roger Dahle went from upstart to the biggest name in grilling<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-06-29T14:00:00+00:00\">Jun 29<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjk _1ismqjl _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nest\u2019s quest to fix your thermostat\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/VRH_Nest_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nest\u2019s quest to fix your thermostat\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;filter: url(%23b);)\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/06\/VRH_Nest_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/958735\/nest-thermostat-version-history\">Nest\u2019s quest to fix your thermostat<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>David Pierce<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-06-28T12:02:44+00:00\">Jun 28<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--ad--native-ad-linkset _14xz0mv4 _14xz0mv5 _14xz0mva hidden\" data-native-ad-id=\"container\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"visually-hidden\">\n<div class=\"dynamic-native-ad-native_ad_linkset_link\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/\" aria-label=\"Advertisement\"><\/p>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"_14xz0mv7\"><span data-native-ad-id=\"preamble\" class=\"_14xz0mv8 _14xz0mv9\">Advertiser Content From<\/span><\/p>\n<div><img data-native-ad-id=\"logo\" src alt=\"Sponsor Logo\" class=\"_14xz0mvg\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"_14xz0mvj\" data-native-ad-id=\"title\">This is the title for the native ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"e3czlx6\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--header-pattern _75r1tr2\">\n<div class=\"_75r1tr3\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--page-header bpecqn0\">\n<div class=\"bpecqnj bpecqnf\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup bpecqno bpecqnm _19wv7tc2\">Top Stories<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_75r1tr4\">\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjj _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-09T13:45:00+00:00\">Two hours ago<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/report\/963106\/ice-doxxing-office-of-professional-responsibility-free-speech\">If you criticize ICE online, agents might just show up at your house<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-09T13:30:00+00:00\">Two hours ago<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/963105\/anthropic-claude-wrapped-reflection-ai-usage\">Say hello to Claude Wrapped<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-09T13:11:53+00:00\">Two hours ago<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/entertainment\/962897\/character-ai-series-microdrama-vertical-video\">Character.AI wants a piece of the microdrama pie<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjk _1ismqjl _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-07-08T11:00:00+00:00\">Jul 8<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/transportation\/962309\/new-jersey-robotaxi-bill-lidar-tesla\">The robotaxi law that could ban Tesla<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/main><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Podcasts Close Podcasts Posts from this topic will 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