There may not be a more vivid illustration of how Comcast Chairman/CEO Brian Roberts has mismanaged NBC and the company’s other network properties, than the ratings jolt that Fox News‘s Greg Gutfeld injected into “The Tonight Show” last week.
Cross-appearances across the major networks’ late night programs by their hosts is not totally unheard of, but it is extremely rare. And as has been reported extensively, especially following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” by CBS recently, all the major networks’ post-primetime talk shows are financially underwater.
Fox has shown it doesn’t have to be that way. When Gutfeld was programmed in post-primetime opposite ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s offerings, he immediately outperformed Jimmy Kimmel, Colbert and Fallon. That’s even more the case now with his show running at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with most observers still thinking of him as a late-night competitor to the three others.
Thus it was odd that Fallon welcomed Gutfeld on last week, where his appearance helped “The Tonight Show” reach 1.7 million viewers for the evening, which exceeds the average 1.1 million the program has received so far this year. The boost wasn’t attributable to the show’s other guests — the Jonas Brothers — either, as Gutfeld’s segment (watch below) was viewed on YouTube over 1 million times, compared to 165,000 for the Jonases.
Brian Roberts/PHOTO: Fortune Global Forum (CC)
In June NLPC presented a shareholder proposal at the annual meeting of NBC’s parent company, Comcast, in which we called for the top leadership positions — Chairman and CEO — to be split between two separate leaders, instead of both roles being held by sole executive Roberts, as is the case now. During the speech we criticized Roberts’s mismanagement and poor stock performance during his 20-year tenure, which included the devaluation of NBC and a number of its cable networks including MSNBC, CNBC and USA Network — the latter of which Comcast is spinning off into a separate company so as to not further tank the fortunes for the parent corporation.
At both the annual meeting and in a proxy memo circulated to Comcast shareholders before the meeting, we pointed out specifically Comcast’s poor stock performance compared to Fox Corporation’s (as well as the S&P 500), during the time that Roberts has led the company:
It is unconscionable that Comcast let these major assets [NBC and MSNBC] devolve into political mouthpieces for one side and against the other, to the point they became such a financial drag that they must be removed so they don’t take down the rest of the Company.
And to head off the blame on cord-cutting, why didn’t something similar happen to the Murdoch family and Fox Corporation, whose broadcast properties make money hand-over-fist?
Over the past five years Comcast’s stock has gained only point-69 percent, while Fox’s gained 71 percent in value.
At all major 5-year markers during Mr. Roberts’s tenure, Comcast has significantly underperformed compared to the S&P 500.
Clearly where the Murdoch family and their Fox Corporation have succeeded, Roberts and Comcast have inexcusably failed. That it needed one of a rival’s top personalities to temporarily lift one of its most iconic programs out of its ratings doldrums should be cause for embarrassment — but given the way Roberts has stewarded NBC and MSNBC, it appears he is beyond shame.
