I honestly can’t believe I am even posting about this nightmare of a buyout. I mean really, does anyone care that NBC Universal has purchased the Weather Channel? To make matters worse, GE partnered with Bain Capital and Blackstone Group. One question….Why?
Why take on partners? GE is sitting on billions in cash, it couldn’t be because Jeff Immelt has short arms and can’t reach his GE Consumer Credit Card, the deal is only valued at $3.5 billion, I mean that’s Jeff Zucker’s expense account a year. Is it to spread out risk? It’s the weather channel for the love of it all! Your not building a nuclear power plant, your buying a useless TV property and an online presence you will surely eff up in a shorter amount of time then it took us to realize that Katie Couric was terrible on the evening news.
The TV property is useless for one reason….demographics. My Grandmother watches the Weather Channel and she is obviously a product of WWII, where they taught you how to not only squeeze a buffalo off of a nickel, but to ask for change. There is no Super Bowl advertising money on the Weather channel, there is no Olympic events going to be shown on the Weather Channel. You know when I watch the Weather Channel? When some terrible, horrible, monstrous crap is happening or to see pretty pictures of snow falling in the meadow. The other 360 days of the year I could care less about the Weather channel
But that’s not the real problem. It’s the fact that NBC Universal will ruin the online property within two years because that’s what old media does. Old media has no idea how to make money with online properties. They simply see 37 million eyeballs that come by weather.com and crap themselves because NBC hasn’t seen 37 million people in a long time.
Not convinced? Want me to show you how badly NBC is at anything other than free TV? Here goes:
If you have Comcast Digital cable, go right now and look under your “Network Shows” listings in the “On Demmand” section. There you will see all three networks. Now check any show for NBC, there is a charge of $.99 cents to watch the show right? Now go to CBS or ABC. No charge for any of their shows. That’s right boys and girls, NBC is charging you to watch previously free content. Why not put an ad in the pre-roll, one in the middle, and one at the end and give it away? Nah, that’s not what old media does.
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