Comcast Eyes $10 Bilion Ad Biz; Says It'll Be Done by Year's End
With a strong 2Q behind it, Comcast was on a high yesterday saying the NBC-U deal will be done by the end of the year and ... FYI ... they'll have a nifty $10 billion ad business when the deal closes. Comcast's current ad biz comes in at $2 billion. With 10 billion reasons to play nice, Comcast is also supporting some extra time (2 weeks) for critics to review all 599 pages of documents on the deal at the FCC, but only so long as it doesn't stop the end of August shot clock.
Speaking of that second quarter ... Comcast beat the Street's earning estimates by 1¢ and would have done even better except for $36 million in costs related to the NBC-U merger. The MSO saw a continued drain in basic video customers (-265k) but boosts in digital cable, PPV and, of course, rates put the company's video revenues up by nearly 1% to $4.9 billion.•
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