Like many publicly traded companies last week, General Electric released its quarterly report and showed a dip in profit ($4.31b this quarter, compared to last year's $5.56b), which was expected. But Friday's paperwork also revealed one startling discovery: The Beijing Olympics, which GE's NBC unit paid nearly $900 million for, and racked up more than $1 billion in revenue? Despite all the cheering about the additional ad dollars squeezed out of every 30-second block, the 2008 Games actually produced a loss for NBC. Or, uh, did it? CONTINUED »
Warren Buffett, the billionaire Berkshire Hathaway investor who seems to have more billions of dollars to spare than the U.S. government, just threw down a $3 billion stake in General Electric, the parent company of NBC, after throwing $5 billion at Goldman Sachs to float the bank's bragging rights as a survivor of the economic fallout. And while we care about Wall Street and all that, it's Buffett's investment in GE that piqued our interest, particularly because of the favorable terms he worked out with maybe racist Jeff Immelt.
GE sold Buffett $3b worth of preferred stock, which pays a 10 percent dividend, though NBC is entitled to buy back the stake in three years so long as they fork over a 10 percent return, or $3.3b. But Buffett wouldn't have extended an olive branch to GE if things weren't even more favorable to him. And indeed, they are: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway "is receiving warrants to purchase $3 billion of G.E. common stock for $22.25 a share, at any time over the next five years." With GE trading at $24.50 a share now, if the stock goes up, Buffett gets to pick up a larger stake at a discounted rate. And now that Buffett has given GE his vote of confidence, well, that's a pretty possible scenario, since Wall Street sees Buffett's touch as that of Midas.
So, good news for everybody, right? All of this dealmaking, though, has one individual raising a single eyebrow: Brian Williams. CONTINUED »
Since our story on Wednesday about General Electric CEO Jeff Imelt's comments at a black business conference, the responses have poured in. We've been on the phone and emailing with GE's communications department (friendly); GE execs (firm); GE shareholders (furious); staffers at NBC Universal, MSNBC, NBC and Access Hollywood (in shock, but not surprise); and others who attended the Black Corporate Directors Conference earlier this month.
And here's the takeaway: A number of people are countering our story, but almost all of them were not at the conference, and they all happen to be GE employees. That, and we've also been told by other attendees that the way we depicted Immelt's comments was, in fact, accurate. So: CONTINUED »
The latest sign that General Electric brass isn't pleased with the MSNBC situation? You know, besides their attempt at correcting all the in-fighting?
They're ousting HR head Jim Mills and bringing in a GE heavy to take over.
Mills — who isn't fired, but is instead moving to head HR operations for 30 Rock's "boring" units, like ad sales and corporate communications — was instrumental in the merging of NBC News and MSNBC, when the cable network physically moved from New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan. Even before the dust was settling, many senior staffers considered Mills to have done a mostly terrible job.
We're told a memo just went out to all NBC News and MSNBC staffers with the news (send over a hard copy please?), also naming Mills replacement: Kevin Lord, the SVP of GE's enormous HR department, who's been dipping his feet in 30 Rock for the past year. This was what we refer to as a very clear sign GE's executive suite is getting deeply involved in MSNBC's day-to-day. Nice to see you?
Two former GE execs who attended the Black Corporate Directors Conference — Lloyd Trotter, the ex-CEO of GE Industrial GE vice chairman, and Art Harper, the former CEO of GE Equipment Services — weigh in on our post of Jeff Immelt's remarks about trusting black men and women. (Worth noting: Both Trotter and Harper are black.) Read their comments here.
JOSSIP REPORTS — The future of NBC, and what to do about Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews at MSNBC, may be the least of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt's problems. Because he just dipped himself into the murky waters of race relations, and he's about to drown.
Two weeks ago at the annual Black Corporate Directors Conference in California, Immelt was one of several high-powered guests (among other corporate execs and political powerhouses) on a panel moderated by CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien (she of the Black in America specials). Official guests and attendees of the three-day conference operate under the assumption that everything is off-the-record; reporters and news crews are barred, and participants aren't supposed to share what's said there.
Except somebody did leak the conversation — and told Jossip about Immelt's thoughts on black men and women. We'll give you a hint: He only trusts them as far as he can throw them. CONTINUED »
The current economic climate has all but put the kabash on big time media deals, but that hasn't kept Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes from fantasizing about them. In Bewkes' dream world, there is a peacock running around on a farm, and the farmhands know the peacock is special, but it's eating up too much food without shedding enough magical peacock feathers, and Bewkes comes along to visit the farm's owners and ends up stuffing the peacock in a burlap sack and running away with it all the way to headquarters. Ya follow? CONTINUED »
If GE chairman "Jeff Immelt's fingerprints [are] all over" a supposed deal to beef up Keith Olbermann's contract while letting Chris Matthew's ride out his agreement until it expires next year, than Jeff Zucker's fingerprints are all over the Page Six item saying it's so. CONTINUED »
Emotional advertisements are proving to be the most memorable during the Olympics, because viewers were already primed to get all teary-eyed thanks to NBC's endless "Michael Phelps is an American hero" storyline.
Coca-Cola found great success with its animated "Bird's Nest" ad, which showed birds creating a nest out of drinking straws; Oreo scored points with two girls (one American, one Chinese) eating cookies on different trains as they passed by each other; and General Electric, which owns NBC, got propped up by its ad featuring a dragon that heats a village pool with its fire-breathing snout, reminding viewers that we're entirely dependent on fantasy to wean us off oil.
Former in-house attorney for General Electric, Adriana Koeck, hasn't been accused of keeping a blog while working for the business giant. But she does stand accused of leaking sensitive — and, um, legally confidential — documents to a reporter. The New York Times' David Cay Johnston, who retired April 11 and now writes for Tax Notes International, is said to have benefitted from Koeck's information generosity, publishing a story for his new employer about an alleged tax fraud scheme at a GE subsidiary in Brazil. Naturally, GE isn't very pleased about the article's allegations — which have been picked up in Brazil but not very much in the U.S. — or how it came to be. CONTINUED »
Jeff Zucker has used Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley media confab to once again deny that NBC is looking to be sold or spun-off, attracting a round of giggles from on-lookers. [Reuters]
