There’s a lot of moving pieces at Comcast right now and a big wild card is its former NBC The Apprentice host Donald Trump.
As the NBCUniversal owner looks to spin off many of its cable channels — including MSNBC — into a separate untitled holding company (aka “SpinCo”), the President is stepping up attacks on the company, weeks after his Federal Communications Commission chair also targeted Comcast.
In a post on his social platform that mentioned Comcast CEO Brian Roberts by name twice, Trump disparaged the company, claiming: “The corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”
Trump’s Truth Social post, in keeping with his running commentary on cable news hirings and firings, was ostensibly a dig about MSNBC canceling anchor Joy Reid’s show amid incoming president Rebecca Kutler’s planned series of changes to shake up the lineup at the left-of-center cable news channel. Expected among the moves: a panel show with Symone Sanders, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez is set to replace Reid’s hour.
If the deal closes later this year, other NBCU brands making the move to SpinCo alongside MSNBC will be CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and the Golf Channel. The company, to be led by veteran NBCU exec Mark Lazarus, touts that its brands reach 70 million homes and generate $7 billion in revenue annually.
The second such missive about MSNBC in the past few days isn’t a new refrain for the President, but also comes at a moment of transition for the cable channel. When the brand is spun off from Comcast into SpinCo, it will move from a vast telecommunications and media empire to a much smaller company that also is plotting out how it will change its editorial strategy.
Earlier this month, FCC chair Brendan Carr wrote a letter to Comcast on Feb. 11 to open an investigation in to the company, as well as NBCUniversal, over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies. “I am concerned that Comcast and NBCUniversal may be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations,” Carr wrote, adding: “For instance, Comcast states on its website that promoting DEI is ‘a core value of our business.’”
The move followed Trump’s executive order in January titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which has caused a scramble among companies to evaluate their inclusion initiatives to comply.
Carr explained that he targeted Comcast, in part, because “your companies cover a range of sectors regulated by the FCC — from cable to high-speed Internet and from broadcast TV stations to MVNO wireless offerings. Therefore, I expect that this investigation into Comcast and its NBCUniversal operations will aid the Commission’s broader efforts to root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination across all of the sectors the FCC regulates.”