You’re most likely familiar with NBC if you indulge in American TV screen time and radio at all. So, who owns NBC? The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was founded in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America and was owned by General Electric (GE).
NBC is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network, and Comcast currently owns it through NBCUniversal.
The network headquarters can be located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. They also have other primary offices near Los Angeles (at 10 Universal City Plaza) and Chicago (at the NBC Tower).
It can be referred to as the Peacock Network because of its peacock logo. This logo was introduced in 1956 due to the company’s new technologies in color broadcasting, and they introduced it to the brand’s emblem in 1979.
In 1986, the “Peacock Logo” was modified to what we have right now. NBC is one of the “Big Three” regarding American Television networks and the oldest. Among the big three are also ABC and CBS.
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Who owns NBC?
Initially, as stated above, it was owned by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA); now, however, it is owned by General Electric (GE). GE was forced to sell RCA and NBC because of antitrust issues in 1932.
This sale only lasted for a period of 54years as by 1986, GE was able to repurchase RCA with a sum of $6.4billion. After this acquisition of NBC, Bob Wright became the Chief Executive Officer.
At this time, GE was liquidating all the various divisions of RCA yet retained NBC. Jeff Zucker succeeded Bob Wright at his retirement in 2007.
There was a merging of the entertainment assets of a French media company, Vivendi, with GE in 2003. This birthed NBC Universal.
During this up and down ride, another company called Comcast in 2011 bought a controlling interest in NBC, and in 2013, the remaining stake of General Electric was acquired by Comcast as well.
At this point, Jeff Zucker ceased being the CEO, and an executive of Comcast, Steve Burke, replaced him.
NBC owns thirteen stations which it also operates, and about 200 affiliates throughout the United States and its territories.
Some of these affiliates are also available in Canada and Mexico through the pay-television providers or in border areas over the air.
NBC also maintains brand licensing agreements for international channels in South Korea and Germany. They also have other services they render.
NBC Other Services
Since you now know who owns NBC, let’s outlined some of the other related services by NBC below.
NBC HD
This service is about NBC’s high definition. The master feed is disseminated in 1080i high definition, the standard resolution format for NBCUniversal’s television properties.
However, 19 affiliates transmit the network’s programming in 720p HD; four others carry the network feed in the 480i standard definition.
Some due to technical considerations for associates of other major networks that hold NBC programming on a digital subchannel and others because a main feed NBC affiliate has not yet upgraded their communication equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.
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Video-on-demand services
Another of the services provided is the video-on-demand access for delayed viewing of the network’s programming through various means.
These means include its website at NBC.com, a traditional VOD service, NBC on Demand, available on most traditional cable and IPTV providers.
They also make use of content deals with Netflix and Hulu. This Netflix deal only carries NBC’s cataloged episodes since it lost its right to carry newer episodes of their programs since July 2011.
NBCi
As one of their other services, NBC launched NBCi In 1999. They even got a website called NBCi.com.
This move saw NBC partner with online services like XOOM.com (not to be confused with the current money transfer service), e-mail.com, AllBusiness.com, and Snap.com ( NBC eventually acquired all four companies totally; Snap should also not be confused with the current-day parent of Snapchat).
This was a stepping stone to launching a multi-faceted internet portal with e-mail, chat and personalization capabilities, web hosting, community, and news content.
NBC subsequently purchased GlobalBrain in April 2000. GlobalBrain is a company that specializes in search engines with searches looked up by their users, and NBC purchased it for $32million.
NBCi’s undertakings didn’t last very long. It lasted just 1 season. When this happened, NBCi was folded back into NBC.
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Conclusion
Comcast Corporation still presently owns NBC through NBCUniversal. There has been a roller coaster ride in the stability of the company.
NBC is still at the top of its game to provide quality entertainment services to its audience.
There you have it, we’ve come to the end of this piece written to enlighten you about who owns NBC and their other services, we hope this piece gave you the knowledge you require.
