Comcast The epilot of the majority of its NBCUniversal wired network portfolio will be appointed slope, the company announced on Tuesday, ending a one -month process to select a new company nickname.
The new company has chosen slope (pronounced as the root of the word “knowing”) to underline its versatility and its familiarity with several subjects, according to the chief executive Mark Lazarus, who spoke in an interview.
Square, which had been called Spinco until a permanent name is chosen, will have cable networks, notably USA, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and Golf Channel. It will also house digital active ingredients Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Golfnow, Golfpass and Sports Engine.
The rest of the Comcast nbcuniversal portfolio, including the broadcasting network, Peacock Streaming Service, Universal Studios, Theme Parks and Bravo, will remain with Comcast.
The new name is not supposed to be oriented towards the consumer. Lazarus said he wanted a pourant to be considered a brand house, each active ingredient interacting with users rather than the business detention entity.
“We are going to focus on the individual brands we have, not on the name of the company,” said Lazarus. “This is a name for portfolio company. It will be used for business commercial purposes.”
Square is on the right track to be removed from Comcast before the end of 2025, confirmed Lazarus. The assets held by the new company generated about $ 7 billion in revenues last year.
The emphasis put by the company on versatility is notable given the media ecosystem rapidly evolving. Lazarus will have to build a Wall Street growth story for investors once the company is starting to negotiate publicly. This will include acquisitions to rely on the heart of the company. Some of these transactions can get out of pure media games, he said.
Lazarus cited the acquisition by Golfnow by Golf Channel, a tee-time booking company, as an example of how brands can go beyond linear television and streaming to create profitable companies.
“Most people do not know that Golfnow is even part of our business,” said Lazarus. “We are not going to be purely a collection of linear and digital media assets.”
Mark Lazarus at the initial presentation of Nbcuniversal from Radio City Music Hall in New York on Monday May 13, 2024.
Charles Sykes | Nbcuniversal | Getty images
For a brand like CNBC, which can include the acquisition of personal finances or fintech platforms, said Lazarus. For MSNBC, Lazarus said he had already had preliminary conversations on the potential purchase of podcasts that are aimed at Democrats. He noted that if the new company should make such an acquisition, the plan would not be to put this air programming for MSNBC, but to make it work as a separate commercial unit, using the wired network as a marketing funnel.
Square will not launch its own streaming service, said Lazarus. Rather, it will be based on brands to develop their own digital strategies.
About 20% of the company’s income is already digital, said Lazarus. As a slope is also likely to return money to shareholders via a dividend, CNBC reported in November.
A strategy that the company cannot continue is to acquire a group of wired networks.
Lazarus said it had little interest in accumulating more debts attached to low growth assets. If a wired network also had associated companies that had better growth prospects, this could be more attractive on a case-by-case basis, he said.
Square is also unlikely to acquire groups of television channels in the current regulatory environment, said Lazarus. The president of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Sara Eisen de CNBC on Monday that national media companies, including NBC, “exercise more and more control” on local television channels, which, according to him, is not “a good thing for the country”.
Selection of “slope”
Comcast relied on marketing employees in each of the Spinco brands to help decide a name.
The meetings began at the end of December, according to people familiar with the process. After a few weeks, the company had more than 1,000 potential names. Employees were invited to focus on the names that called in New York, cable television or references to the 30 Rockefeller Center, the headquarters of Nbcuniversal, said the people.
The names were then filtered for problems of legal and brand counterfeit and other potential problems, such as the definition of a word in various languages. Comcast also hired three marketing agencies to help generate names and eliminate the list.
Lawyers spent only 43 of the first names, said Lazarus. This list was shortened to approximately a dozen finalists, who were then presented to the decisive committee.
Lazarus and his marketing team chose slope In the past few weeks. The word means “a sloping land region in a general management”, according to certain references.
Lazarus joked by saying that a difficult slope reminded him of “an increasing stock market”.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of Nbcuniversal, owner of CNBC. Square would become the new parent company of CNBC as part of the proposed spin-off.