Comcast and General Electric announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by Comcast, 49 percent owned by GE and managed by Comcast.
The joint venture will consist of the NBC Universal businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, regional sports networks and certain digital properties and certain unconsolidated investments.
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NBC Universal is attracting an average of 29.1 million US viewers to its coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games, according to figures just released.
While viewership was undoubtedly helped by the extravant opening ceremony and early coverage of US swimming star Michael Phelps, the unprecedented high def footage must take some of the credit.
NBC has made no secret of the fact it plans to use the Beijing Olympics as a campaign platform for HDTV.
Now the US network has announced that the summer games will also act as a research lab to guage how viewers use different media platforms.
The network hopes its research will reveal how people combine, for example, high def TV coverage of an event with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones.
Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s research chief, said the company would publicly issue a TAMi (Total Audience Measurement Index) for the first time.
“An event of this magnitude requires the biggest and most sophisticated research effort to measure it,” he said.