Should NBC affiliates be wary about Comcast deal?

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Mike Fiorile isn’t nervous about cable giant Comcast Corp.’s plans to take control of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, but maybe he should be.

That’s because Fiorile, chairman of the NBC affiliates board, is also CEO of Dispatch Broadcast Group, which owns WTHR, the NBC station in Indianapolis. The cable operator that serves his city is none other than Comcast. If the deal goes through -- and it is expected to be announced as early as Thursday -- he’ll be counting on the same company to provide him with programming and distribute his channel on cable.

That’s a lot of leverage.

With almost 25 million cable subscribers, Comcast is far and away the nation’s biggest cable operator with systems in just about every major market except New York and Los Angeles. In theory, there is nothing stopping a Comcast-run NBC from experimenting with making the broadcast network a cable channel in many cities. Even just the possibility of that happening could give a Comcast-NBC combo a lot of clout in the often testy marriage between a network and its affiliates.

There are pros and cons to this and of course we’re being hypothetical here. The folks at Comcast and NBC Universal are far too savvy to even discuss such a potentially controversial strategy before their deal gets regulatory approval (and that will likely take at least a year). While there are no FCC rules that would stop NBC from dropping an affiliate in favor of creating a local cable channel, TV stations do have clout on Capitol Hill, and the last thing Comcast wants is a bunch of lawmakers asking if this deal is a threat to local television.

The benefits to creating their own affiliates would be many, primarily more advertising dollars and control of distribution.The downside would be that Comcast-NBC would have to program these stations when NBC shows are not on, and that would include starting local news operations. There would be short-term costs to that but also long-term benefits to NBC and MSNBC.

‘We’re all going to find out together,’ said Fiorile of Comcast’s potential plans for NBC Universal. ‘I may be naive, but I’m not terribly concerned.’

When Bob Wright used to run NBC, he’d sometimes float the idea of going all cable. We’ll see if Comcast was listening.

-- Joe Flint