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Comcast

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     Comcast

Comcast is the third-largest US cable television operator, with 2000 revenues in 2000 of US$8.2 billion

     the group

Comcast began, like TCI/Liberty Media and Cablevision, in the 1960s with minor cable television operations. It's since expanded through acquisition (nothing like deregulation, cash flow and junk bonds) to embrace 8.4 million subscribers in the mid-Atlantic region (northern New Jersey to northern Virginia), Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana and New Mexico.

It acquired home shopping group QVC, built by former Fox Network czar Barry Diller, and currently expanding into the UK, Germany and Japan. QVC had revenue in 2000 of around US$3.5 billion

Like its competitors the group has been expanding into content production and packaging. It has stakes in the 'entertainment networks' E! Entertainment and Style, sports and lifestyle networks such as The Golf Channel and Outdoor Life Network, and regional television networks such as the Sunshine Network.

It has a majority stake in the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team, the Philadelphia Flyers NHL franchise, several minor league baseball and hockey teams, and Philadelphia's two major indoor arenas.

Comcast's main connection with Australia is through its 2000 takeover of Lenfest Communications, which had become involved in Australia's paytv debacle. Lenfest begain in 1974 when Gerry Lenfest bought two cable tv companies from Walter Annenberg (he's previously been an Annenberg corporate lawyer and managing director of Triangle's Seventeen magazine and cable arm).

A chronology is here. An indication of major holdings (most activity outside the US involves the Cablevision subsidiary) is here.

     studies

For Barry Diller see George Mair's thin The Barry Diller Story: The Life & Times of America's Greatest Entertainment Mogul (New York: Wiley 97).

The cable business is discussed in L J Davis' The Billionaire Shell Game: How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans Invented A Future Nobody Wanted (New York: Doubleday 98) and Stephen Keating's Cutthroat: High Stakes and Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier (Boulder: Johnson 99). 

For the wider environment see Reed Hundt's You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 00), Road Warriors - Dreams & Nightmares Along the Information Highway (New York: Dutton 95) by Daniel Bursten & David Kline and The Highwaymen - Warriors of the Information Superhighway (New York: Random House 97) by Ken Auletta.

For Lenfest in Australia see Mark Westfield's The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale: Pluto Press 00) and the drier Pay TV in Australia: Markets & Mergers, a
72 page IPA paper (PDF) by Cento Veljanovski.




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