Live, from Bloomberg Screentime, Comcast NBCUniversal Brian Roberts Chairman & CEO discusses the state of TV and streaming. Roberts spoke with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.
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We're keeping a watch on media. Let's go to a panel up on stage at the theater here at screen time, our Lucas Shaw talk with Brian Roberts, CEO and chairman of Comcast NBC Universal.
Coming out.
Well, look, you have a We're not gonna go there right away, but you have earnings in a few months. You can just wipe that clean, right that'll. I want to start just with news of the moment, because you guys have a pretty big business in Florida, which I believe has been affected by the hurricane down there. So is everything fine at the parks?
Thanks for starting there both theme park great news for that is will be open tomorrow and maybe even tonight with the city walk. We also are the cable company right in Fort Myers and right where the storm came in. So a lot of devastations we all have witnessed, and fortunately we have a culture probably a thousand peace but working on it today.
We'll have people soon's powers back. We'll be back.
Just had this storm a couple of weeks ago hit Georgia and Florida. It's awful this time of year, so hopefully everybody is safe, and it was good. I think the media did a great job for warning people and it was taken quite seriously, So thank you for asking.
Yeah, I feel like there's more.
I mean, for obvious reasons, there's just so much more storm coverage than ever before.
Maybe global warning.
Yeah, that's probably why. No easy way to transfer off of it. But I'm glad everyone's okay. I wanted to start sort of big picture with you. Most of your peers, i'd say, are getting are A lot of them are getting out of the media business, right, So Shery Redstone, Cells Rupert sold a few years ago, or at least out of the entertainment business. AP and T and Verizons or telecom companies got out. You seem to be investing more in media and entertainment at a time where there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty about it. Why does it make sense for comcasts to be in the entertainment business and what do you see that sort of bright about the future that maybe others don't agree with.
Well, I think a broad statement like that. You know, Larry Ellison just chose to get in. You're sponsored by AWS. There's you know, a complete change of who's enthusiastic and what do they bring to the party, and maybe some of those folks thought it was time to exit. We're pretty excited about the company we've got. We have in the media part of the business, studios growing great. Some of the clips you said, I hope Wicked wins that that poll and more importantly wins the box office. Fabulous bet by Donna team last year Oppenheimer, Chris Mellandandre You've got Jason Cumming later.
I'm just bummed out.
I'm not doing the hot wings your body well, thank you.
Yeah.
And so you know, we have in Peacock a strategy. I'm sure we'll get into a little more. That is a growth business for us. And we've also selling our Hulu steak so we actually will have you know, very little money net in streaming in terms of losses versus profits, so.
You know, each company is different.
Then we also have a broadband the majority of the company that my dad started, Comcast Cable now really a broadband connectivity.
Business Wi Fi. You know, if you were to go back ten years and you say, let's design.
With your perfect knowledge of what the world looks like today, what would be a cool company. You would say, I like to connect everybody to what we're doing, whether it's in streaming, or whether it's in AI, or whether it's going to be in you know, whatever comes Nest Zoom calls working from home, and we have the nation's most connected broadband customers. We have a converge service with wireless and broadband in more homes than AT and T, Verizon T Mobile combined, and a lot of that content. A hundred million people every quarter coming to watch today's show, Tonight's show SNL which is fabulous as always this year, And don't know how one Michael can do it every time, but this being such an important year, what a great first two shows, and then film and television and the stories we have, and then of course sports, and I'm sure.
We'll talk a little about that as well.
So I think we have a pretty great company, and I more excited.
This will be our sixtieth year. My dad founded it.
This will be and last year was the most profitable year and the best year in company's history. And you know, we're about to do earnings everything. We're gonna have a great year this year by all the analyst accounts, and maybe even the best year in the company's history are right there, and so why would you not be excited.
You brought up Peacock.
I'm curious how long until Peacock is really a profitable and sustainable business on its own.
Well, first of all, we don't look at as on its own, So I'm not doing a duct your question completely. But that's not how we're running the business. We're running it as part of the media business. So take the Olympics. Eighty seven percent of the viewing was on NBC or one of our cable channels. Thirteen percent was on Peacock. But together we presented to the consumer all those choices, every event, every athlete, every country, Mike Turico doing two prime time shows in a heroic fashion.
Hard to get. We have the stats here.
Nbcunivers Will had the most viewership of any company TV viewership had any company in August because of thelige.
Did it for seventeen straight days. It's so hard to keep America's a viewer's attention for more than two hours, let alone seventeen days.
So that was a whole company effort.
And so to pick one part of the company and say, well, how's that part doing well? If your goal is to just be Netflix. That's a really important question. If your goal is to have a media company that, particularly in the United States, which is where most of our emphasis is, is to deliver sports to I think of you know, Bloomberg didn't have a print business where I was chatting with some friends from the Wall Street Journal and they had to go from a dying print business to a growing digital business.
And New York Times had to do the same.
And there's some people that didn't make it USA today may not quite get there. So if you inquire regional papers, tough business.
We think NBC we.
Are going to get there, and Peacock is going to be part of how that happens is more and more people cut the cord, more and poor people will take Peacock.
That's why people ask about the sustainability to Peacock.
I get that it's part of.
This broader group, right, but your cable networks are the way, right, so you need something.
To offer that.
Peacock we think this year will be the most losses we've had, even including the NBA investment that we're making.
We're already improved. That's what last y won't hurt profitability going.
We well, it might theoretically if in the short run, but in the long run we're super excited and think that it's factored into what we need to spend and what will monetize if you go back, we had all our content on Hulu.
We bought the company.
That was what NBC had committed to before we own the company. Then Fox happened and Disney got control of Hulu, got an amicable way to extricate, which was taking five years. We didn't want to sell our Hulu steak until the end of those.
Five more than five years. At this point, a little.
Bit going to We're going to figure out eventually the end and we will have taken We've already taken, you know, a lot of billions of dollars out off of several hundred million dollar investment and maybe more to come, we hope. And so when that's all said and none, we got all the content onto Peacock, but we had to start at a very late date compared to other streaming coad So our strategy was to take all the sports we had and now make them available to people who didn't buy the bundle. We're the first ones in a way to actually do that, and then later on all the episodes and all the seasons and all the great content that Donna's making and film created a new set of windows. Team did a super job where some of our content is for four months, all of it's on Peacock. The next ten months it goes to either Amazon or Netflix, and then back to Peacock. Nobody had ever done that before, So we've been kind of innovating, I think, in the changing industry and the changing landscape to work for our set of assets to give us a very sustainable path to be able to say to you that our media business will be profit is profitable, will continue to be profitable, and I believe will grow despite the downward pressure because of the growth of Peacock.
Right, I'm wondering if you are confident in Peacock on its own, not on its own, you know, within your company, but as a as a viable streaming service going forward. Why it's been publicly reported by Bloomberg and others. You've had conversations with other companies about merging streaming services, joint ventures, that sort of thing. You know, paramounts certainly been out there. Why have those talks if you're a big believer in Peacock.
Well, there's always just because you reported at Bloomberg, I'm not going say it's accurate, but of course if it's Bloomberg, it must be accurate.
So therefore, well you reference the Journal they also reported. I feel like if we're if both Bloomberg and the Journal are reporting something odds.
Are it's accurate?
Absolutely so, and throw NBC News in there too. So in all seriousness, obviously people are going to say, there is a changing landscape, what can I do that would advance myself? So conversations is always going to happen. They happen all businesses all the time. I think it's a tough thing to actually get executed because I'm a believer coming from where I started my career in cable.
My first job was selling HBO.
Door to door, one of the first jobs, and we had a lot of channels. When John Malone said we're going to go to five hundred channels, it kind of got laughed about. And then the Internet, of course went to Infinity Infinity, so the notion that we'd have ten streaming service doesn't intimidate me whatsoever. The technology for the consumer is the question can I bounce from show to show.
I'm not sure hard to get from Netflix to Peacock to Apple.
If you believe that's how it's going to be, then that's an issue. I'm coming from a world that we went from three channels when my dad started to five hundred channels and we had no problem doing that, and the consumer.
Got used to it. So the question will be can we solve that?
Well, we have a technology which we've licensed to Charter, We've launched the Rogers. We do it with Sky, we do in Australia, we do it in South Africa where you just talk to it and say House of Cards, Sunday night football, Dodgers game, congratulations, af Phillies didn't do.
So well yesterday. You just go. It's just like changing channels.
Now somebody will come along and say, well, can I buy one subscription and get all these services?
So I'm not out of luck.
Well that sounds like cable TV was, So I have a bias that I could see it all kind of being some form of consumer wants to go where the great content is. And if AMC makes a show breaking bad and nobody had ever watched AMC before that, perhaps and all of a sudden, they had AMC and they had breaking bad.
That's the great community here makes the breakthrough.
Must have programming, whether that one day is an Olympics or one day is a show that I never knew I wanted, and the word of mouth, and I'm confident that Peacock can play an important role in that. And whether we do that with others or by ourselves or in some sort of partnership, you know, those are things that right today we're pretty happy where we're at.
But we'll see. We didn't bid on Paramount. You know, all the.
Press wants to have us do something I don't know that we are going to do.
Right, Okay, I was going to take you in another direction, but you brought up M and A, so let's go and do it. You didn't bet on Paramount. The company you've been linked to most often is WBD. There's this sort of belief in the market. You want to spin out any Universal, you want to merger with Warner Brothers, Discovery, you want to buy something like that. You've publicly, privately, through my understanding, like been not necessarily dismissive, but said you don't think that's going to happen. Is why don't you think that that deal makes sense?
Well, I think I don't want to come on any specific deal, and you can understand and why that would be the case. And you know, there are a wonderful set of assets and Davids Aslove is doing working really hard, trying to figure out.
Back to say, doing a good job.
And then your self, how do you how can you read my mind? But I in all seriousness here they're trying to do something very different than what I just described. And therefore I think we're going to do our thing. And we're the company we've got and the assets and the team.
The people.
You know, I'm you know, you can characterize any way you want. I think we're on a good track. And I start because I think at its heart, the company we've got started with again before I was there for fifty years at NBC and one hundred years at Universal. But take NBC and the assets that have been created are appealed to Americans and maybe they appealed to Britain too. It's English speaking for the most part, it's relevant. One hundred million consumers touch us every ninety days. Most of the country watches something from NBC Universal, and how do we get that to the digital world and monetize that with digital ads.
That's what we're trying to do.
And we've got a broadband business and a television business at Comcast Exfinity.
So during the Olympics we.
Had almost double the viewing two x in the Comcast homes because when you turned on the TV, there was all things Olympics in our X one guide, in our Zumo boxes. And I think that we have a playbook that works for us. Other companies are trying to chase Netflix, and you've got Netflix coming on later. Done an incredible job everywhere in the world, but in the US, I think we can do an incredible job in our And then we've got Sky in the UK, which had been doing the same kind of thing in the UK, so it kind of fits really well in our English speaking universal it does globally distribute, so we set up a partnership with Paramount Sky show Time, we partner with others. There's always going to be conversations around how do we remain very relevant globally, But where we have our own distribution and our own platforms and our own set of skills, I think that's what we're focused on.
Would do you think the current regulatory climate would you be able to buy a big media company.
Look, I think.
That's not a reason were that I would give you as an answer not to do something.
You brought up cable.
There was a belief, I think among analyst executives for a while that there was what you'd call a floor. Right, there's been a decline in the cable business, but at a certain point it would level off because a certain number of people would always want to pay for it or would just have it right, like older people, whatever, sports fans, whatever it may be. The last six month, twelve months, it feels like there's been a little bit of a revision there where there's some discussion that maybe there isn't a floor, that it just falls to zero when you're talking with your finance guys, for strategy people, what do you see as or the base the floor for cable.
So that's not actually how I think we should think, because who knows is they answer that question.
I look at it as a consumer and then trying.
To have a set of products that we offer the consumer that were indifferent to the answer. So if there's many people want to buy a bundle in video great. We want to have the best bundle and that's Exfinity. We have a talking remote, Emmy Award winning, we have all the content. We were the first people to put Netflix on that box. It was just as good as HBO. We could switch channels everything you said earlier, no problem. We have the I think the best entertainment operating system out there. The same time, along came streaming in a much healthier way, and people said, I want.
To cut the cord.
We make virtually the same amount of money, some cases more if you take broadband only.
Why do I say more? Well, we don't have.
To bill you all those extra fees, and we don't have to raise rates. And when you're unhappy about something, you call us.
There's cost to doing business.
Now you're buying your streaming, you're dealing directly with the content company. And we managed to get our business to where we're in. Different to the answer that question. So I remember the first time I met Bill Gates, really sat down and had a meeting. He said, someday, this is in the nineties, the Internet was just starting. You will have more data customers than you have video customers. At that point, we had zero Internet and we had, I don't know, twenty twenty five million video. Fast forward, we have thirty two thirty two million broadband and half as many video. So we set up our company with fiber optics, with long term investments to anticipate what has happened.
And now are we perfect about that? Of course not so.
I think I think you know, there could be more decline, It could level off YouTube TV, Hulu Live.
Is it going to hurt your soul a little bit if YouTube TV surpasses you as the biggest cable operator.
Not if they're using Infinity broadband and watching NBC and watching it, we will have transitioned our company pretty carefully. We're going to, you know, be pretty happy with the Comcast NBCUniversal that we got.
You brought up internet. Internet seems to also it's not shrinking at all. Obviously everybody needs it. But most people now have access to the internet, right there's maybe thirty forty million homes or people that don't because of where they live. When you're thinking about the future trajectory and growth of your business, is there a business you're not in now that you feel like you need to be to sort of be a quote unquote growth story or can you do it with the assets you have?
Well, I obviously there are things like AI that intrigue everybody and make it fun and stimulating to want to go to work every day and what's happening? And I love technology and it's inspiring and scary and all things in between. So I had answer. I'd start the answer to that by saying, Okay, go back ten years and ask yourself what you did with the internet. Then go back to the that Bill Gates moment, and what were you doing twenty years ago with the internet whatever number of years? And we were doing pictures, and then we got to Napster and we got to go down the list, and now we're into four K and we're working from home and we think we're done. And the way I keep score is bits per home. And if you look at the cagar of bits per home, it's gone up twenty five thirty percent since nineteen ninety seven.
Every year we're doing what we hope. There are bits, but they're your bits.
There's everybody in there's rooms bits, it's video cameras, it's hopefully healthcare, and.
Do you get as that keeps growing as it moves maybe to other devices you feel comfortable that your company will capture enough of that.
So the name drop one other person who I think understood this better than way better than me.
First time. Got to many times.
Go visit with Steve Jobs to try to get an Apple box to be our box. And we were trying to merge boxes and of course they have Apple TV, we have our box.
Never actually happened, and.
One of the meetings they said, well, you should give up because we're going to win that. Well, you should put Wi Fi in all your boxes and that's how you'll win. And you should be the best pipe and he said the best dumb pipe. And I said, well, that doesn't sound very exciting to be the best dumb pipe. And we would edit that when I go home. So I went home, went to our chief technology officer and said, what's Wi Fi? And today we have the nation's biggest Wi Fi network, and we have more customers and ninety percent of your cell phone usage ninety percent is Wi Fi. And that's because seventy percent of all the bits going over the Internet right now are streaming, and streaming wasn't here ten years ago. So I sit here and say the most exciting thing about our company is what's coming in the next ten years that happens in innovation around the world, hopefully here in America, hopefully Silicon Valley in LA and everywhere else Philadelphia, and that we're going to continue to have bits home go up and whether that's Apple provision pro Streaming sports is a natural. When we had one football game in America, went from CBS, NBC and Fox had Thursday Night and it moved to Prime so it went from TV to streaming. The number one night in bits traveling the Internet in America was Sunday night.
Thank you HBO.
The entire Internet moved at Thursday night with one football game. So the number one night in consumption on bits on Peacock was the single biggest night in the Internet's history in America. Work flawlessly, super proud of that moment led us to the Olympics. I think we're just scratching the surface all regional sports, the Dodgers games.
You know, the regional sports network business.
I will think we're going to reinvent itself in streaming. Right where else is that going? And so more and more that cord cutting question are we which side of that are we on?
Because the more it happens.
The more broadbands we're going to sell, the more broadband is going to be valuable to you as a consumer, and more it's going to differentiate from wireless. We have the best network, So I go back to what jobs said, let's be the best network.
We'll edit out dumb and.
Let's make sure we never lose sight of that. And that's where we're investing. So again, going back to what's a for our company, look like a winning hand. Be on the side that you don't care what the answer is to that question. If the consumer wants to cut it, yes, that will hurt some parts of our company, but other parts of our company are going to succeed, and that's going to be you know, indifferent or net Could.
You brought up sports? You just made a really big deal for the NBA. So I'm told there's a publicly announced now no.
Oh yeah, very excited about it.
Two questions. One, you're I have know the packages aren't exactly the same, but you know the price be like doubled this time, more than doubled. How do you pencil out the the math on that? Because one of the criticisms that at David Thazlewood level, he's a loser in the circumstance would be you overpaid. There's no way that those numbers make sense.
Well, we'll see right who knows.
He's suing to get it, So I don't think that that's a uh A good one.
He believes he'll have to pay. Last if you went with that lawsuit, I believe.
Okay, So you had Disney, Amazon, ourselves and potentially those guys, and if you took it on a per game basis and adjusted right, that one is the finals. We didn't get those, we got the semi finals. So adjusted a regular season added all and get it down to some sort of game per CPM or however you would look at it. We're all basically paying the same price. In our case, we got the most quantity as well as some incredible quality. And so the life cycle of Peacock and where we're at it is going to be a big driver.
It's a nine month product.
It is relevant to a really growing, diverse, young audience, exactly what we want for Peacock. It fits in with writing the schedule after Sunday night football. We've got Olympics, We've got many other great events, and.
So we think this is what the market was.
It's about once every twenty five years, twenty years, that there's a platform change. We're in the right place at the right time. Team Mark and Rick Cordell and Mike Cavanaugh others, fantastic job making it happen, and we really admire what the NBA is going to do has done, and we're excited to be a partner.
Couldn't be more excited.
Does that mean you're like, are you sort of out on the next big like the UFC's coming up next year you sort of made your bet that's not for you? Or do you still have the spending to go after We haven't.
You know, I don't want to speak on any one.
We haven't typically done that property, but we had NBA on NBC felt like no, I grew up in it right. There's a real, just incredible enthusiasm at NBC Sports and across the whole company that this is going to be an engine for growth for the many many years and hopefully there'll be a twenty thirty year relationship or long long after I'm gone.
So I'm excited.
I think, unfortunately about out of time. But I didn't want to ask you one more question. Because you've always the one more question.
This one's easy.
You brought up I'm ending on an easy note. This year you brought up Steve Jobs, you brought up Bill Gates. When you go to like the billionaire summer camps, right, like the.
Who's your click? Who are?
I was helping my wife recover from knee surgery. I wasn't there, so I didn't go any camps. It's been a great.
No.
It's a fun industry, right, And what happened over time and the first time my dad and I were invited to that, we went together. We always asked to stay in the same room and just use it as a chance to like pinch ourselves that a company. When I got out of college went to work for Comcasts, we had twenty million in revenues and this year give or take no guidance here, but you know called one hundred and twenty billion, and it's like only in America. So I think when we get to go and see the change, and what's obviously changed over the years is now the technology Google the first time they showed up or Yahoo, remember Warren Buffett ask him a question of Yahoo, of Jerry Yang or something like, well, tell me how you monetize, and you know, nobody could understand. And now, of course the world's changing. So I think that's what has allowed our company. We've tried to partner with those and say we don't have all the answers and keep some certain sort of humility as we continue to be in a very tough business and changing, and keep our enthusiasm and attract great people. And that's, uh, that's what we're trying to do.
Your dad started to pass the range Toro at a pretty young age, right, Have you thought about that in your circumstance at all?
You know, you know, I always it was a very different company, and you know, we have great kids who are doing their own thing in life. We'll see, But Mike Cavanaugh, we've had we've attracted people over time who I think, if I'm hit by a bus, our company is in great shape.
But we've been.
Able to use the two tier stocks that my dad created that kind of have a stability and a long term investor owner mentality by trying to be trying to recognize the public duty and importance of being a you know, best in class company.
Ryan, thanks for being here.
Thanks Lucas.
All right, that of course, is the head of Comcast, Brian Roberts with our Lucas Shaw. I mean this is someone where the media business, right, cable business has certainly.
Been in decline.
I think it's fair to say well, but also said where's the floor. That's what Lucas asked, where's the floor of this business?
But he grew up in it right, and he's been part of the changes. If you think about he came to Comcast back in nineteen ninety, that's over a quarter of a century ago. That company that he now leads has transformed dramatically.
We'll just think about what the landscape looked like then when Comcast was started by his father. He said, there were three channels out there, and there were five hundred channels. And now you have people using the smallest screens that they carry around in their pockets each and every day to consume more content than they're consuming on the big screen.