[Husker] DirecTV/Comcast/Versus

[Gary Fead]

Good Evening :

First there needs to be a correction to a statement someone else made earlier in this forum. Comcast DOES NOT OWN DirecTV. DirecTV is  owned largely by Ruppert Murdoch (owner of NewsCorp, owner of FOX News Channel, New York Daily News et al), with some minority ownership by Liberty Media. Comcast does owns a few regional sports channels (i.e. CSN Chicago, CSN Philadephia, CSN Bay Area et al).

Currently there is a dispute between DirecTV and Comcast, which I think is nowhere near being resolved so I would not hold my breath about the NU/Baylor game if you are a DTV subscriber. At this point DirecTV has no reason to worry about Versus being off their system and in fact actually will make some additonal money since they are no longer paying Comcast to carry Versus and certainly did not lower their rates because Versus isn't on. 

A potential merger to keep your eye on however is this - Comcast entered discussions with General Electric to purchase NBC Universal, doing so would create a large sports monster with the intent to very directly compete with ESPN. Any merger between those two would require approval from the Department of Justice, FCC and probably some Congressional oversight committee and quite honestly I don't see them letting that go through, but then again stranger things have been known to happen.

Gary Fead
Omaha