Burke Overhauls NBCUniversal As Comcast Unit Combines Distribution, Content

NBCUniversal CEO STEVE BURKE and the changes made at the company under his watch were profiled by Marr & Stewart of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, who wrote in the two years since Comcast bought NBCU, Burke has "shown a zeal for shaking things up with little sentimentality, weeding out some of the company's most well-known personalities in the process." Burke is "the man in charge of pulling off a colossal wager." Comcast is "betting that its distribution business, combined with a content company, can create outsize benefits." That logic "runs counter to the trend of big U.S. media companies breaking themselves into smaller pieces." Burke over the past two years "has been busy scrubbing a culture of intrigue and competing fiefdoms." One "casualty of the purge" was former NBC Sports Group Chair DICK EBERSOL. A source said, "These two guys were never going to mix" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/23).