Benefits Of Comcast Cable And Nbcuniversal

Any change in the factors that make up the macro-environment can have a direct impact on the Comcast Corporation. These factors can affect the Porter Five Forces that shape their strategy and their competitive advantage over other firms.

Disney’s long-run success is mainly due to creating value through diversification. Their corporate strategies (primarily under CEO Eisner) include three dimensions: horizontal and geographic expansion as well as vertical integration. Disney is a prime example of how to achieve long-run success through the choices of business, the choice of how many activities to undertake, the choice of how many businesses to be in, the choice of how to manage a portfolio of businesses and the choice of how to create synergies between those businesses (3, p.191-221). All these choices and decisions are

After the first quarter of this year, the ABC network “income at broadcasting increased 35% to $240 million” (The Walt Disney

To answer the main question of the case, we must think of the main problems that it faces. We need to find the solution for Bob Iger. What to do with Disney: to make some improvements in the existed company to compete better with Pixar, or to make a deal with another studio? Or should he work more with Pixar, or maybe just buy the whole company?

The Walt Disney Company has seen their share of success in taking their parks and resorts into global markets. “60 years ago, the first Disney theme park opened, in California and was the brainchild of Walt Disney himself, who was motivated by the lack of entertainment options available to him and his two young daughters.” (Forbes, 2016). Disneyland California penetrated the market rapidly, and its popularity led to the opening of Disney World in Florida, followed by global expansion in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong. Their latest expansion came in June 2016, on a 963 acres’ site in Shanghai, China (Xu, 2012). After one year in operation, Shanghai Disneyland is outpacing their most optimistic projections, and the park’s

Comcast Corporation, based in Philadelphia, PA, with its bundling services operates as a media and technology with its two primary business, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast sprung into life in 1963 and went public in 1973 (James, 2014) It has acquired many corporation to take a firm stand where it is at today. Comcast Cable is nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet which has continuously increased its speed 13 times in last 13 years which now offers up to 505 Mbps to residential customers and up to 10 Gbps to businesses as well as phone services under XFINITY brand (Comcast, 2014). NBCUniversal operates in media, entertainment and sports cable network, the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, television production operations, television station groups, Universal Pictures and Universal Parks and Resorts (Yahoo Finance, 2015). Comcast also invests heavily in innovative businesses that represent the next generation of entertainment, communications and digital technology by partnering with entrepreneurs who have the vision, passion and tenacity to succeed (Comcast, 2015).

Of the four business units that make up The Walt Disney Company (Disney), the Media Networks unit is by far the largest with revenues accounting for about 43% of total company revenues in 2016 (Appendix C) (MERGENT Online). This segment is made up of cable networks like ESPN and Freeform, broadcasting networks, and all the technology and assets that go into producing content for these networks (MERGENT Online). Through it’s media networks division, Disney aims to provide family-friendly entertainment options to households across the world through television and radio networks. Because the cost to watch Disney’s channels is essentially the same as the cost to watch a competitor’s channel, competitors in this industry must compete on differentiation to attract viewers. This value proposition and strategy helps to focus the segment’s value chain and its efforts to capture value. The value chain (Appendix A), seems to suggest Disney’s brand, technologies, and recruitment capabilities are driving the segment towards its 24.86% margin (MERGENT Online).

The cable provider would purchase 50 percent of Store Communications Inc., which increased the number of subscribers to over 2 million. At this point in time the company was recognized as one of the largest cable providers in the nation. The company would continue to add subscribers as they acquire Maclean Hunter’s U.S. cable operations, adding 550,000 customers and becoming the third largest cable operator in the United States with approximately 3.3 million customers in 1994. A year later they continued to add subscribers at an alarming rate when they announced the acquisition of E.W. Scripps cable systems, adding 800,000 subscribers and bringing Comcast’s customer total to 4.3 million. In another effort to add more subscribers in 2000 with the acquisition of Lenfest Communications, Inc., the company is able to add approximately 1.3 million cable subscribers. While adding subscribers is important to the business plan, Comcast was always looking for ways to appeal to their customers: specifically, the ones who enjoyed watching sports. So along with entrepreneur and owner

Comcast Corporation, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest cable company in the United States. Comcast develops broadband cable networks and are involved in electronic retailing and television programming content.

Comcast is spending $500 million dollars a year for the next 4 years to help build up the parks. These additions vary from rides, transportation, shows, hotels, restaurants and many more attractions. There is a lot of hype in the Disney community because the year of 2021 is Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary.

Comcast is a large cable and satellite television provider in the United States. The company has been plagued with internal weaknesses and external threats in recent years and is in desperate need of turning around its customer service department as quickly as possible. Aside from customer service, the way the television industry is marketed to is changing, Comcast has to stay on the cutting edge in price, product quality, flexibility of plans, and customer service. Comcast has many different areas of their business that need to be analyzed to see where they can invest time and monetary resources to improve the quality of their product and service to their customers.

In addition, by having access to the Pixar brand and its characters, they would help to supplement Disney’s existing characters across its different businesses like theme parks, merchandise, and television, which provide more sales opportunities. Despite the dilution of Disney’s earnings per share, it is for the short-term. The acquisition fills a crucial strategic gap for Disney and can create long-term value for its shareholders. As such, Pixar is a “near perfect strategic fit” for Disney and hence should be acquired by Disney to remain competitive.

In response to the market trend, the company has introduced some new products. Comcast launched a constant guard, a security program designed to help protect its high-speed internet users from online threats. Comcast also launched a beta version of Fancast Xfinity TV, its online television service. The Xfinity service gives subscriber access to hours of content not previously available online. Comcast also took the opportunity of the market trend and added to its mobile content. It released Comcast Mobile app 2.0, which includes a remote DVR programming service. Also, the company launched COMCAST4U, a mobile SMS text service, which gives customers access to frequently accessed account functions. All of these new additions will allow Comcast

Disney operates in very competitive industries such as media, tourism, parks and resorts, interactive entertainment and others. The competitive landscape changes quite drastically in the media industry, where news and TV go online and new competitors with new business models compete more successfully than incumbent media companies. Disney’s parks and resorts business segment also receives strong competition from local competitors who can offer better-adapted product. This results in growing competitive pressure for Walt Disney Company (Ovidijus Jurevicius).

Established in 1923, Disney Studios released the first ever full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. By 2015, Disney Studios employed about “6,500 employees, and spent $2 billion producing films annually”. Alan Horn, Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, oversees five studios, that together made up Disney Studios. The Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures ‘Disney Live Action’ and Walt Disney Animation Studios ‘Disney Animation’ are directly from Walt Disney’s original studio. The three others were acquisitions made during Bob Iger’s time as chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. The first was Disney's competitor animation studio, Pixar, which was purchased for $7.4 billion in 2006; second, Marvel Entertainment, which had its roots in comic books, for $4 billion in 2009; and finally the legendary filmmaker George Lucas’ Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012. During this time, Disney Studios began pursuing a “tentpole” strategy, which entails investing in higher budget films that would hopefully produce a larger profit by pulling in a large portion of the market. The larger profit would also help compensate for losses that may occur in smaller budgeted films. As it stands, Disney studios currently produces 10-12 films annually with approximately eight of them with production budgets in excess of $150 million. The current breakdown of tentpole films expected annually is as follows: two from Marvel, one from Lucasfilm, one from Pixar,