A no-fly zone was being enforced in Libya. "I know everybody hates the idea, but you need to give a rat a place to go," Matthews said of Moammar Gadhafi's possible exit strategy. He spoke in his rapid-fire Philly-style delivery to a group including his executive producer, patched in by speakerphone from 30 Rock in New York. Everyone laughed.
Seven weeks after Philadelphia-based Comcast officially assumed control of the prized NBC Universal Inc. from General Electric Co., the sky hasn't fallen at the news and entertainment company. During visits to Rockefeller Center and the bureau here, there was a sense that Comcast has a plan - or is hard at work on one - to rebuild the Peacock brand, and that the new ownership would likely benefit NBC in a rapidly changing media landscape, where the mass audience is fragmenting via tens of millions of iPads, smartphones, e-tablets, and the ever-expanding Internet.
"We are now working for a company that's selling our content to the home," said Matthews, an often-repeated view at NBC. "They can help us. Before, we were working for a company that manufactured aircraft engines and lightbulbs."
That is not to say there is not some apprehension. "It's very business-oriented," Matthews later observed confidentially. "These guys, I understand, are very IBM-ish."
In the depths of the recent economic downturn, Comcast bought NBC Universal from General Electric - which still owns 49 percent of the company - primarily for its profitable cable networks, led by USA, and the potential to rebuild the NBC broadcast-TV business. A property such as MSNBC seems to offer both potential gain and risk.
For years a flailing cable news channel, MSNBC - which shares office and newsroom space with the NBC News broadcast team - currently offers a left-leaning slate of prime-time hosts that counterbalances Fox News' conservative talkers.
