Who Owns the Media: Comcast

Comcast 🐔

Capitulation Rank: Vulnerable
Category: Cable & Telecom & Entertainment
Market Cap: $136.6 billion

In February 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr moved to investigate Comcast for alleged violations of President Trump’s anti-DEI order. Carr’s targeting of the media giant seems largely driven by Trump’s dislike of subsidiary MSNBC’s White House coverage, something the president routinely complains about via social media and elsewhere. Comcast said that it would cooperate with Carr’s inquiry, but has yet to bend its knee and may take a more aggressive stance on diversity than other media outlets.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts may seek to settle outside court to avoid crossing swords with the FCC on a number of other policy matters before the agency. For example, it hopes to convince the agency to loosen broadcast-ownership limits to allow its NBC subsidiary to continue to amass local-television stations and cable channels. The FCC came after Comcast again in April, objecting to MSNBC’s coverage of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an innocent Maryland man sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without trial or due process.

Roberts is spinning off MSNBC and other cable assets into a separate entity to “reduc[e] his exposure to the headaches that come from owning an overtly partisan cable network,” according to Puck. It also believes that creating distance from MSNBC will smooth over the company’s path to official approval of any future acquisition.

DEI Doublespeak:

Comcast is under FCC investigation for its DEI initiatives, and according to its website, it remains committed to diversity, equity and inclusion: “We believe that a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company is a more innovative and successful one.” At the same time, Comcast has dropped its sponsorship of this year’s World Pride and San Francisco Pride events.

What It Owns:

Comcast offers cable-television services to 64 million locations in 40 U.S. states under the Xfinity brand. Television brands include NBC, Bravo, CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MLB Network, MSNBC, NBC Sports, Telemundo, Universal Kids and UNIVERSO, USA. Comcast owns licenses to 46 broadcast-TV stations in 30 geographic markets (including KNBC and WNBC) and entertainment brands (including DreamWorks Animation, Focus Features, Sky Studios, Universal Pictures and Working Title). It also owns Sky Media, Europe’s largest pay-TV provider.

Money & Influence Game:

Roberts has split his personal-candidate/PAC contributions between Republicans and Democrats, with a slight edge in contributions to Democrats. Comcast paid lobbyists $13,931,000 in 2024, and Comcast employees made $7,365,222 in contributions to political candidates (2024 cycle). (SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics